Gamblers chain-smoking and speaking Mandarin are feeding $100 bills into hungry roulette machines at the Holiday Palace Casino Resort. Next to them, dragons and pandas dance to music blaring from giant TV screens.

The once-peaceful seaside paradise of Sihanoukville has become one of Asia’s major gambling hubs, thanks to Chinese money flowing into Cambodia.

“People call it Macau Number Two,” said Kong Monika, leader of the Khmer Will Party, which opposes the Cambodian prime minister’s pursuit of money from Beijing. “We now go to China without a passport,” he jokes.

About 80 casinos have popped up in the city, which has a local population of around 157,000, helping to double the number of Chinese tourists in two years, to 120,000 in 2017.

Skyscrapers crowd the skyline next to the pristine beaches that used to be Sihanoukville’s biggest draw. The city is located on Cambodia’s only deep-water port – part of a vital trade route for President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road development initiative.

Hun Sen, Cambodia’s prime minister, and Mr Xi have said Beijing’s £1.3 billion investment in Cambodia last year is a “win-win”.