What to believe on that jackpot?
On Sunday, a report by the Chengdu Business Newspaper caused a sensation in China.The story is incredible: a mysterious man in Henan Province – who is also rumored to be a worker with a local steel mill – won a welfare lottery of 359.9 million yuan ($52.7 million). It is the largest amount of money ever won from the lottery in China.
The rumors have been typically colorful and noisy. However, public doubt about the jackpot is mainly focused on the way the winner bought his tickets – he bought two lottery tickets with the same number and multiplied each 44 times, meaning he bought the same number 88 times altogether.
Facing great pressure from the public, the Fucai Lottery Center of Henan Province held a press conference and declared that "the lottery is authentic and valid and there is no fraud in the whole process."
Ironically, the conference didn't quell the rumors, but in fact aroused even more criticism and doubts throughout Chinese society.
It would be presumptuous for people to make a hasty judgment as to whether it was pure luck or if there was some kind of fraud and cheating involved.
The doubts may seem to be pure jealousy on the part of those people who didn't have such good luck.
But after only a cursory search on frauds and cheating cases in China's lottery history, one finds that skeptical comments do not seem to just be sour grapes. ( Global Times)
Beleaguered by cheating scandals all these years, Fucai Lottery Center can barely straighten out the public doubts over the jackpot. But what deserves attention is why the State-owned institutions including even the banks have indiscriminately been so badly hit by the storms of public credit.
