How do the participants govern the illegal gambling market in China? In spite of illegality and police crackdown, internet gambling has been prevalent in China. Based on extensive field research, we explore the reasons contributing to its prevalence, the forms of internet gambling, and extralegal institutions developed to sustain the market operation and avoid police crackdown. We find that participants have deployed a series of mechanisms, such as relation-based reputation, pyramid organization, threat of violence, and hostage posing, to collect debt and have developed a list of tips to evade investigation.

Dr Wanlin Lin is a Post-Doctoral Fellow of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong.