The velvet rope and the Chinese consumer: a science of the queue apparatus

• Published in: Applied mobilities Vol. 7; no. 1; pp. 1 - 9
• Main Author: Simpson, Tim
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 02.01.2022
• Subjects: apparatus; consumption; integrated resort; Macau; tourism; velvet
• ISSN: 2380-0127; 2380-0135
• DOI: 10.1080/23800127.2019.1608656

After nearly a half millennia of administration, in 1999 Portugal returned the city-state of Macau to the People's Republic of China, and the territory was designated a Special Administrative Region of the PRC under the "one country, two systems" regime. After the handover of sovereignty, the local government liberalized the city's casino gaming monopoly and opened the industry to foreign investment, and in the intervening years, Macau has been transformed into the world's most lucrative site of casino gaming. Today Macau is visited by more than 35 million annual tourists, the majority of whom are from mainland China, and whose travel to Macau is enabled by a special PRC exist visa called the Individual Visit Scheme. This paper analyzes velvet ropes which are positioned to manage queues of Chinese shoppers at the entrance to select retail outlets selling luxury branded fashion items in Macau's integrated casino resorts. With attention to the PRC's ongoing governmental efforts to deploy tourist mobilities in order to enhance the "quality" (suzhi) of select Chinese citizens in hopes that their consumption behaviors will contribute to domestic economic growth, the article explores the role of Macau's velvet rope apparatus in producing a post-socialist Chinese subject appropriate to China's economic reforms.