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.