Mr Chan commutes from Guangdong province to Macao, the Chinese special administrative region and gambling centre, where he is a construction supervisor on a casino development belonging to Las Vegas Sands.

Earlier this month he noticed that the queues at the border were getting shorter. As Las Vegas Sands struggled to raise capital, construction was curtailed and the number of workers crossing the border began to fall. “I used to spend 45 minutes going through immigration in the morning,” Mr Chan, a Hong Kong native, told the Financial Times. “Now it takes 15 minutes.”

Last week Las Vegas Sands, which already operates three casinos in Macao, confirmed that it was suspending work at “sites five and six”, the future home of yet more gaming facilities and also international brand-name hotels, including Shangri-La, Sheraton and St Regis.