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Jackpot!

By Li Weitao (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-28 15:04

On July 27, 2007 at a ceremony celebrating the 20th anniversary of the country's first lottery, Vice-Minister of Civil Affairs Li Liguo said the country recorded 242.3 billion yuan in total sales of lottery tickets by July.

Last year the country sold lottery tickets worth more than 100 billion yuan, with 62 billion yuan of welfare lottery tickets and 38 billion yuan of sports lottery tickets.

But illegal lottery sales could be "10 times" that amount, said Wang Xuehong, executive director of China Center for Lottery Studies at Peking University during a CCTV talk in January.

Irregularities have been rife even in legal lottery sales. In March 2004, migrant worker Liu Liang became the lucky winner of a scratch-to-win sports lottery in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province. But he was denied the prize when he went to get his award, a BMW car and 120,000 yuan in cash. The seller claimed Liu was holding a fake lottery ticket.

Extensive media coverage of the incident led to an investigation that found that a lottery ticket contractor had won top prizes by marking the tickets and employing people to falsely claim the winnings.

Liu was found to be the real winner and finally received the prize and several people were sentenced to jail, including the head of the local sports lottery center for dereliction of duty. After that the government discontinued the scratch lotteries.

The high-profile scandal led to increasing calls for lawmakers to introduce regulations for lottery supervision.

However, China only has a provisional regulation for the management of lottery distributions and sales, issued by the Ministry of Finance in 2002. Some observers are betting on the law to break the monopoly of the China Welfare Lottery Administrative Center and the sports lottery administrative center of the China General Administration of Sport, the only two legitimate lottery issuers in China.

The law is expected to be introduced next year at the earliest.

However, one of the biggest hurdles thwarting China's lottery market is the so-called hate-the-rich mentality. The increasing prize amounts have drawn more buyers but it has also brought trouble to the top winners in a country where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. The security of winners is always an issue.

Most winners claim their prizes with their faces covered and sometimes accompanied by bodyguards.

One exception is a lottery buyer in Wenzhou who gave his surname as Lin. Lin claimed 51 million yuan in prizes in June himself without covering his face but otherwise stayed away from media spotlight.

Large crowds swarm to a square near Changsha Railway Station in Hunan province to buy scratch-to-win lottery tickets in 2004.

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