Lottery

Beijing's bet on the lottery a state-run exception to China's ban on gambling appears to be paying off handsomely with the recently concluded World Cup driving sports lottery ticket sales up 83 per cent year-on-year last month. China alighted on the lottery as a means to boost revenues and supplement woefully underfunded social spending in the 1980s, creating an exception to a ban on gambling that has been strictly enforced since the days of Mao Zedong.