Reuters North American News Service, November 28th, 2007
BEIJING, Nov 28 (Reuters) - A Chinese person from a
dirt-poor province has won the country's largest ever
individual lottery prize -- $14 million, a newspaper said on
Wednesday.
The unidentified buyer from the northwestern province of
Gansu bought 20 identical "Double Colour Ball" tickets issued
by the China Welfare Lottery at a cost of 40 yuan ($5.40) on
Tuesday, the Southern Metropolis Daily said.
The buyer chose the same seven sets of two-digit numbers on
each, reaping a total of 102.7 million yuan ($14 million), the
newspaper said.
The puritanical Communist Party abolished lotteries in
China after taking power in 1949, denouncing it as an evil of
decadent capitalists. But the country launched state-run
lotteries in 1987 as market-oriented reforms loosened the hold
on society.
Lottery-related crimes have been on the rise and
underground lottery schemes have become rampant across the
country in recent years, bankrupting many families.
The Welfare Lottery Centre in arid Gansu, where farmers
make an average of just over 2,000 yuan a year, was quick to
head off a possible lottery-buying stampede the huge prize
might trigger.
"The centre's officials were glad to hear of such
surprising news, but they would also like to remind
lottery-ticket buyers that it is a recreation the state offers
the people," said a statement on the lottery's official Web
site (www.zhcw.com).
"They hope everybody can take part in the game with a
recreational, relaxed and normal attitude and buy rationally,
taking into account their own financial means."
(Reporting by Guo Shipeng; Editing by Nick Macfie)
