There’s a pretty simple formula for getting rich quick these days – secure a monopoly on something China has an insatiably appetite for. It can work on a company level – just look at Louis Vuitton and its handbags, Chateau Lafite and its fine red wines, and increasingly, Apple and pretty much everything it sells.

It can also work on a national level. Just look at China’s rush for Mongolian coal. But nowhere is the China boom story more marked than in the former Portuguese colony of Macao.

Casino revenues in the small city state-within-a-state rose almost 50 per cent y-o-y in February, hitting $2.5bn for a single month. Gaming revenues in the city in the coming year are expected to be 4 times that of Las Vegas. House prices are also galloping ahead, while annual GDP per capita puts Macao – at $72,110 – ahead of Qatar.