FIRST came shock and envy, then speculation on the identity of China's biggest-ever lottery prize winner.

And finally came suspicion over the credibility of the country's lottery industry.

Public sentiment had taken a dramatic turn two weeks after lottery officials announced on October 8 that the winning ticket worth almost 360 million yuan (US$52.7 million) was bought in Anyang City, central China's Henan Province.

The unidentified buyer has yet to come forward to claim the gigantic "Dual-colored Ball" jackpot of the China Welfare Lottery.

The winner must pay 20 percent of the win in a personal windfall income tax, or about 72 million yuan.

Calls from the public and the media have poured into the Henan provincial Welfare Lottery center, asking for the identity of the winner.

When lottery officials released the address of the outlet that sold the winning ticket in Anyang's Yindu District, reporters from across the country swarmed into the small store, trying to dig up details of the winner.

"I vaguely remembered that a man in his 30s or 40s bought that ticket," recalled the vendor, Chen Guixia. "He spoke with a local accent. He was not a regular customer in my shop. I can't remember exactly how he looked and dressed," she said.

Before selling the record jackpot winning ticket, Chen had sold tickets winning second prizes in the Welfare Lottery twice since opening for business in 2001.

Rumors circulating among the media and local community variously identified the winner as truck driver, a security guard, a steel products store owner and a pool of four people.

Netizens used the popular Website, Baidu.com, to allege that the record win could be the result of manipulation of the draw. They cited a post dated September 21 on the Website showing how to win a lottery jackpot of 300 million yuan by playing in an identical way as the announced winner did.

The IP address of the anonymous person who posted that information was also from Henan Province, a coincidence that fueled suspicions of fraud.

Another post by an unidentified "insider of China's lottery industry" alleged on the Tianya BBS Website on October 12 that the "Dual-colored Ball" lottery was used by lottery issuing institutions to "cheat money out of lottery players" as the video of the draw was pre-recorded.

The "insider" said the lottery issuing agencies could use the two-hour time gap between last-minute sales and the draw to manipulate the results.

The Welfare Lottery's Dual-colored Ball is drawn three times a week: on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. The insider said the lottery issuing agency used a super computer to analyze sales data and the draw team pre-taped several versions of each high-jackpot draw.

Higher officials of the lottery issuing agencies then allegedly decided which set to broadcast.

Scandals

Lottery frauds and scandals have been reported in different cities in China over the past five years.

In November 2007, Zhao Liqun, a 37-year-old lottery agent in the northeast city of Anshan, was given life imprisonment for taking advantage of a flaw in the Welfare Lottery "3D" system to illegally cash in lottery tickets for 28 million yuan.

Twelve people were found guilty of manipulating Sports Lottery scratch cards in the northwestern city of Xi'an in 2004 and were given prison terms ranging from six months to 13 years.

Xia Xueluan, a professor with the Department of Sociology at Peking University, said such a gigantic win at such low odds greatly influenced ordinary lottery players, who all expected a windfall.

"But suspicions over the big win are also normal, because similar scandals have happened in the past," Xia said.

He said an independent assessment agency of lotteries would be useful to regulate the industry. "Transparency is important because it is about social justice and can give people confidence."

Li Guangyun, deputy director of Henan Provincial Welfare Lottery Center, insisted that the win of 88 stakes with a single ticket was true.

"The authenticity (of the win) is indisputable," Li said, responding to Internet accusations of manipulation. "We will ensure the security of the winner's personal information and open a special channel with no intrusion by the media and the public for him to claim the prize if necessary."

Under China's lottery regulations, top prizes must be claimed within 60 days of the draw and personal information about winners should remain secret.

If the prize is unclaimed, the money rolls over into the next jackpot.

Feng Baiming, director of Lottery Research Institute at Henan University of Finance and Economics, attributed the controversy over the 360 million yuan jackpot win to a lack of transparency.

Feng proposed a panel of player representatives to supervise the draws because the process "is not without room for improvement."

"But some speculation on the winner's identity has gone too far and it is against the spirit of protecting privacy," Feng said. "On this matter, the public's right to know is limited.

"What we need to study is how to prevent people from becoming addicted to expectations of a big windfall," he said.

Since the first Welfare Lottery draw in 1987, China has sold 325.4 billion yuan (US$47.6 billion) in tickets.

Sales of the Welfare Lottery, administered by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, hit 60.4 billion yuan in 2008 alone and the sales of all lotteries, including the Welfare and Sports lotteries, are expected to exceed 130 billion yuan this year.

Supervision

The Ministry of Civil Affairs said a total of 110 billion yuan of public welfare funds was raised through the Welfare Lottery over the past two decades and the funds were earmarked for social welfare, relief and public utilities.

According to China's Regulations on Lottery Management, the money raised through lotteries is divided into three parts: the jackpot, the lottery management fees and the lottery public funds.

The Ministry of Finance is responsible for supervising lotteries nationwide while the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the General Administration of Sport are in charge of managing the Welfare and Sports lotteries separately.

More than a third of the money collected is allocated to public funds, which are usually spent on public welfare, such as the development of public sports facilities, education and health care for the disabled, according to the ministries, while the jackpot accounted for another third.

(The authors are Xinhua writers.)