For 60 years, the old Chinese city of Macau has been an international symbol of the glamour, allure and squalor of the casino. Until recently the former Portuguese colony, 20 miles across the water from Hong Kong, had the biggest gambling industry in the world.

Its seedy neon charm has inspired numerous depictions in fiction and on film, such as Lawrence Osborne’s novel The Ballad of a Small Player. In the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall, Daniel Craig battles his attackers in the Golden Dragon Casino and ends up in a pit of man-eating Komodo dragons.

Now Macau’s gambling industry has been plunged into crisis, an economic downward spiral from which it is difficult to see a way out. The Chinese president, Xi