Статья NYT с подсказками на русском языке

Macao Surpasses (опережает) Las Vegas as Gambling Center (DAVID BARBOZA)

Macao surpassed (опередил) the Las Vegas Strip to become the world’s biggest gambling center (центр игорного бизнеса) in 2006, measured by (по) total gambling revenue (выручка).
In the eight years since Macao, a former Portuguese colony on the coast (побережье) near Hong Kong, was returned to Chinese control in 1999, it has experienced a huge boom in casino investment, and millions of mainland Chinese have been flooding (устремились) into the tiny island territory to gamble (играть в азартные игры).
As a result, gambling revenue (выручка игорных заведений) soared by (выросла на) 22 percent in 2006, reaching $6.95 billion.
Where Macao was once derided (высмеивался) for its seedy (обветшалые) gambling dens and endemic (повсеместная) organized crime, it is now being referred to as Asia’s Las Vegas, and not just by the locals.
Hoping to ride the gold rush, some of the world’s biggest casino operators, including Las Vegas tycoons (магнаты) like Sheldon Adelson, Steve Wynn and Kirk Kerkorian, have agreed to invest more than $20 billion to outfit (снабдить/снарядить) Macao with new luxury hotels, giant casinos and V.I.P. suites to cater to (удовлетворить) the enormous (огромный) gambling appetite of the mainland Chinese.
Macao is the only place in China where gambling is legal, and it is only in recent years that many ordinary Chinese people have been able to get permission to visit the city. In 2005, some 22 million visitors poured in, most of them from China.
For investors, one of the big lures (соблазн) is that, on average, the city’s gambling tables pull in about seven times more money than tables in Las Vegas, despite the fact that income per person (доход на душу населения) in Chinese averages just $1,700 a year.
Other cities in the region are eyeing (наблюдают за) Macao’s success and rethinking (пересматривают) their tourism strategies. For instance, Singapore is now planning to build its own casino resort (курорт), and Hong Kong officials have talked about allowing casino gambling.
But few rivals (соперников) will be able to try to match (смогут соответствовать уровню) Macao, which already has 24 casinos and over 2,700 tables in operation. To accommodate (чтобы разместить) even more visitors, the 10-square mile city of 470,000 residents is expanding (расширяет) its airport and reclaiming broad tracts of land from the sea.
The city’s transformation began in 2002, with the expiration (истечение срока действия) of the Macao billionaire Stanley Ho’s 40-year monopoly on gambling in the territory. New licenses were issued (лицензии были выданы) to a handful of competing operators as well as Mr. Ho, and a construction boom began.
But perhaps no one in Macao has quite the ambitions of Mr. Adelson, who operates Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Mr. Adelson says he plans to spend $4 billion to build whole Vegas-style strip, including a a 10.5 million-square-foot hotel, casino, shopping mall and entertainment complex that would include the world’s largest casino.
Still (однако), the Chinese government is not wholeheartedly (полностью) supportive of the Macao gambling boom, because the city seems to attract the corrupt (безнравственных людей).
Some of Macao’s highest rollers (транжиры) have been caught gambling with government money or with cash siphoned off from state-owned companies rather than their own funds. In 2005, for instance, Beijing said that more than 8,700 “party members and cadres” were punished for gambling.
In one publicized case (преданном огласке судебном деле), a married couple embezzled (растратили) more than $50 million from the state-run Bank of China to pay off gambling debts (долги) in Macao.
In an interview, Mr. Adelson once said that turning Macau into the next Las Vegas was not rocket science (не требует быть семи пядей во лбу).
“This is a no-brainer (это не трудно),” he said. “If you build it, will they come? In my mind, not only will they come, but they’ll come in droves (толпами).”