马洪刚曾经是中国地下赌博圈子里一个传奇人物。他曾经辗转于不同城市的地下赌场，在烟雾缭绕的牌桌前度过了无数个夜晚，几乎从来没输过。如今，马洪刚开启了另一项事业：劝说越来越多的赌徒戒掉赌瘾。

　　尽管从1949年共产党执政以来，赌博在中国大陆就是一种违法行为，但它却比以往任何时候都更加普遍。不断增加的收入和新出现的赌博方式（例如境外赌博网站）对一个以好赌著称的民族产生了巨大的破坏性影响。

　　中国只有两种得到政府批准的彩票。但据估计，中国每年的非法赌资高达1万亿元。对一个仍有7亿农民人均年收入仅为4700元人民币的国家而言，这是一个令人震惊的数字。

　　非法赌博的场所和方式形形色色，包括街头的棋牌室、城市的地下赌场，农村的私彩和数以百计的赌博网站。

　　眼下，中国开始正视一个令官员不得不承认的尴尬问题：非法赌博催生了数量庞大且越来越多的“问题赌徒”。

　　马洪刚赢钱最多的一次是在1小时之内赢了78万元，现在他承认自己当时出了“老千”。在过去5个月里，他一直在向赌博成瘾的人证明，一个熟练的“老千”操纵扑克牌或麻将吸引对手下注是多么容易。由于认识到赌博会毁掉一个人，马洪刚去年3月在沈阳创办了“马洪刚反赌俱乐部”。

　　这个俱乐部既前所未有也是独一无二的，因为尽管中国有大量病态赌徒，却没有任何官方认可的治疗方式。相反，北京倾向于采取更加严厉的处罚方式，因为它认为赌博与腐败有着千丝万缕的联系。

　　去年中国有大约60万人因为赌博被捕，任何公开承认自己需要帮助的人都可能面临被关进精神病院的命运。因此，大多数赌博成瘾的人都宁愿忍受债务和绝望带来的地狱般的生活。

　　直到2007年，杨斌（音）还很可能成为中国新兴中产阶级中的一员。他在武汉经营着一家比较成功的钢铁销售企业。后来他在两年之内输掉了170万元，最多的一次一晚上就输了20万元。自从马洪刚向他演示了“千术”后，他就没再赌过。

　　中国的大多数病态赌徒身边并没有马洪刚这样的人为他们提供帮助。马洪刚的个人行动得到了当地政府的支持。而北京大学中国公益彩票事业研究所所长王薛红多年来一直劝说政府批准她开办戒赌中心，却始终没能成功。

　　在毗邻香港的前葡萄牙殖民地澳门，赌场的数量不断增加，因为这里是中国唯一允许赌博的地区。在澳门以外，政府彩票是唯一合法的投注渠道。1987年开始销售的政府彩票每年给中国政府带来1000亿元的收入。

　　王薛红认为，政府从彩票中获得的巨大收益使之难以承认或解决赌博危机。“许多呼吁是嗜赌成性的人发出的。”王说，“这些人破产了，离婚了，甚至产生了自杀的念头。”

　　译文

       Ma Honggang was once a legend in the secretive, twilight world of China’s high-stakes gamblers.

　　Moving from city to city, he spent countless nights around card tables in the smoke-filled apartments that act as secret casinos in a country where gambling is illegal and regarded by the authorities as a serious social evil.

　　China doesn't give a stuff about global warming: thank God!Now he has embarked on a different career: persuading China’s growing army of illegal gamblers to think again about what to many has become a destructive addiction.

　　“I’d play with criminals, although I don’t want to say what they did, as well as rich businessmen and officials,” said Mr Ma.

　　What made him unique was that he hardly ever lost. An accomplished card sharp, with the sleight of hand of a professional magician, Mr Ma can pick any card from a shuffled pack, roll dice to order, or deal a winning hand of mah-jong tiles.

　　Sometimes, he would wear customised contact lenses to identify the marked cards he had specially made for him, at a cost of 1,000 yuan （？90） a pack.

　　Even more remarkable, however, is that there was never a shortage of punters for Mr Ma to trick. For, despite the fact that gambling has been outlawed on the Chinese mainland since the Communist Party took power in 1949, today it is more widespread than ever before.

　　Rising incomes have combined with the advent of new ways to gamble, such as foreign internet betting websites, to devastating effect for a nation whose people have long been known for their love of a flutter.

　　There are just two officially sanctioned lotteries in China. But an estimated one trillion yuan （？900 million） is also wagered illegally each year in China – equal to the entire economic output of Beijing. It is a staggering figure for a country where 700 million people – more than half the population – live in rural areas with an average of just 4,700 yuan （？415） a year.

　　The gambling takes place in card and mah-jong schools on street corners, in underground casinos in the cities, through unofficial lotteries in the countryside and on hundreds of websites catering to internet gamblers.

　　Now China is beginning to face up to an awkward problem for its Communist leaders to admit: illegal gambling has spawned huge and increasing numbers of addicts.

　　“Based on international statistics for countries with developed gaming industries, two or three per cent of gamblers have a problem,” said Wang Xuehong, director of Peking University’s Centre for Lottery Studies, who has made a study of China’s problem gamblers.

　　“In China it’s more than that, because people are still not rational when it comes to gambling.”

　　Mr Ma knows that better than anyone. His biggest win was 780,000 yuan （？70,000） in one hour of cards and he is unabashed about deceiving the people who played with him, despite their losing huge sums.

　　“I never felt bad about cheating at cards because in my experience, all gambling is 90 per cent cheating,” he said. “I don’t know why more people don’t realise that. Even when I warn people, they don’t believe me – until I show people the tricks.”

　　Mr Ma has now given up gambling and has instead spent the last five months demonstrating to addicts just how easy it is for a skilled operator to rig a card, dice or mah-jong game, in an attempt to cure them of their desire to bet. Prompted by what he says was a realisation that gambling was destructive, in March he set up the Ma Honggang Anti-Gambling Centre in the north-eastern city of Shenyang, Liaoning Province.

　　“I didn’t find it hard to stop and because I gave up gambling, I can be a good example to others,” said Mr Ma, an unremarkable-looking man – until he has a pack of cards in his hands.

　　Now instead of fleecing punters, Ma offers them free sessions in which he demonstrates how luck or skill often has little to do with whether a gambler wins or loses.

　　His centre is both unconventional and unique because despite the huge numbers of problem gamblers in China, there is no officially-sanctioned treatment for them. Instead, Beijing prefers a more draconian approach, reflecting its belief that gambling is inextricably linked to corruption.

　　Last year, some 600,000 people were arrested for gambling, while anyone who admits publicly that they need help faces the prospect of being confined to a mental hospital. Unsurprisingly, most addicts prefer to stay in a private hell of debt and despair.

　　They come from every sector of society.

　　Until 2007, Yang Bin could have been a poster boy for the new middle class that has emerged in China. He ran a successful steel distribution firm in Wuhan in southern China and had an adoring wife and a newborn son. But then he started playing the Chinese version of blackjack.

　　“I think I’ve lost around 1.7 million yuan （？150,000） in the last two years,” he said. “The worst time was when I lost 200,000 yuan （？17,500） in one night.”

　　Now, his life is very different. “My wife has left me,” said the 32-year-old. “She took our son back to her mother’s house. I don’t have the cash flow to buy any more stocks for my business, so I’m losing a lot of orders.

　　“It took me seven years to save two million yuan （？176,000）； now it’s almost all gone. You could say that my life has been ruined by gambling.”

　　After seeing Mr Ma on television in May, he decided to make contact in an effort to stop. “He showed me all the different ways you can cheat at cards,” said Mr Yang. “I couldn’t believe it actually. I began to think that I might have been cheated. I used to play with a regular group and a few of them always won, while I always lost.”

　　Since Mr Ma demonstrated his skills as a card sharp, Mr Yang says he hasn’t gambled again.

　　Mr Ma has no doubts about his effectiveness. “This is the best way to stop people gambling; it is better than being locked up by the police,” he said.

　　So far, he claims to have helped more than 700 addicts quit. Such is the lack of information available to problem gamblers in China that many, like Gao Qiang, were not even aware they were addicted.

　　“I was initially reluctant to come to see Mr Ma,” said Mr Gao, who has lost his clothes shop in Shenyang and is 80,000 yuan （？7,200） in debt from betting on mah-jong games. “I wanted to borrow more money to keep on playing. I thought if I was lucky I could win back what I lost. But my wife threatened me with a divorce and my relatives and friends wanted me to come too.

　　“I don’t think I’ll gamble again. Now I know now that it’s too hard for me to win.”

　　Most of China’s problem gamblers, though, don’t have a Mr Ma to help them.

　　While his one-man operation has the blessing of the local authorities, Wang Xuehong – an academic at Peking University – has been trying unsuccessfully for years to persuade the Beijing municipal government to let her open a gambling addiction centre.

　　She has been allowed to set up China’s first help line for problem gamblers, and despite a ban on advertising the telephone number her staff are overwhelmed by calls.

　　Yet they can only listen. “We can’t do anything to help them because we don’t have a treatment centre,” said Mrs Wang. “If people have a really serious problem, we ask the local government if they can be admitted to a mental hospital.”

　　There are booming casinos in Macao, the former Portuguese colony that neighbours Hong Kong and is the sole corner of China where gambling is allowed. Otherwise the official lotteries are the only legal outlet for a bet.

　　Set up in 1987, they raise 100 billion yuan （？90 million） a year in revenue for Beijing. But Mrs Wang thinks that figure is dwarfed by the money wagered illicitly. “I’d estimate that 10 times more is spent on illegal gambling,” she said.

　　She believes the government gains so much from the lottery that it won’t admit to, or tackle, China’s gambling crisis. “Many calls are from people addicted to buying lottery tickets,” said Mrs Wang. “These are people who are going bankrupt, who have been divorced by their partners, who want to commit suicide