China may be trying to stomp out all the different ways locals gamble, either abroad or online, for the moment, but that could just be setting the stage for a future of legalized domestic gambling. That was the opinion of 1 panelist at a recent Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia webinar.

“I believe that China will, within 10 years, legalize gambling within their own borders,” said CEO and owner of Global Betting & Gaming Consultants, Warwick Bartlett, the Macau Daily Times reports. “The reason I believe this will happen is because you can’t continually criminalize ordinary people’s behavior.”

With gambling is clearly a favored activity of Chinese citizens, the current situation of trying to wipe out the activity is just untenable, historic precedents could point to how this situation will play out. “The British government discovered that in 1963 when they legalized gambling and other countries slowly followed,” Bartlett said. “It makes sense because customers are better protected and you can tax the revenue and it creates a whole new industry.”

If China follows this pattern, intentionally or not, it has more recent precedent to learn from. Bartlett said he thinks the “agonizing process very similar to what happened in the U.S. a few years ago. They are preventing payment solutions to the Internet and they are disrupting the process of gambling every way possible.”