Asia Times: Taiwan in a lottery bind

Asia Times: Taiwan in a lottery bind - you can bet on it


	February 26, 2002	atimes.com

China

Taiwan in a lottery bind - you can bet on it
By Laurence Eyton

TAIPEI - Perhaps Taiwan's self-appointed guardians of public morality should have been more careful what they wished for. Throughout January, the commentariat moaned about the need for something to break the island's collective fixation on high-profile sex scandals. But state-supported gambling mania was not exactly what they had in mind.

Taiwan is in the grip of lotto mania. So far, since its introduction last month, it has made a handful of people unexpectedly rich, inspired a lot of very strange behavior, and left at least one person dead.

The original idea was a deft piece of government sleight of hand aimed at filling its coffers while appearing to give away money. One of the pledges of President Chen Shui-bian during his election campaign was that the government would start to provide stipends of NT$3,000 (US$85) a month to all over-65s on the island. Halfway through Chen's term of office, these stipends have not been forthcoming.

The problem is that Taiwan's legislature has, during the past two budget sessions, been firmly in the control of the opposition, which has been loath to give the government money to implement Chen's plan. The reasons are electoral. Whoever implements the plan is likely to thanked by elderly voters at the ballot box and the opposition does not want those thank-you votes going to Chen and his party.

Of course, there is the possibility of elderly-voter backlash against the parties that are perceived to be denying them the stipend - this was certainly a factor in the poor performance of the opposition in legislative elections in December. But that has not led to Chen getting the money he needs.

Hence the new so-called "public welfare lottery". Based on the US lottery system, a NT$50 ticket allows punters to choose six numbers - out of 42. If they prefer, the computerized ticket terminals will randomly select numbers for them. Jackpot winners must get all six numbers. If nobody wins the jackpot it rolls over. Lottery drawings are held every Tuesday and Friday evening. The chances of winning are about 5.3 million to one, about the same, it has frequently been remarked, as being struck by lightning.

The government plans to make use of the lottery in two different ways. For a start, it wants to provide employment as ticket vendors to disadvantaged groups, such as the physically challenged, aboriginals, single-parent families, and those with a low income. And second, it plans to retain about 26 percent of the money earned to fund social-welfare programs.

But the government can hardly have been prepared for the lotto mania that has consumed the island since the lottery's launch in mid-January and the strange phenomena it has created.

First it was road accidents. These attract morbid curiosity anywhere, with Taiwan being no exception, but the sudden development of large crowds of onlookers was something new. It wasn't that Taiwanese had suddenly developed a morbid streak, just that they wanted to jot down the registration numbers of the vehicles involved in case this might contain a secret prognostication of the winning lottery numbers.

And so it went on. Journalists at news conferences would demand to know the birthdays of the people they were interviewing, looking for "lucky" numbers. The island became obsessed with portents. Almost anything with numbers attached would be pounced on. This correspondent himself can testify to the zeal of cab drivers, unused to picking up a foreigner, badgering for birthdates, passport numbers or almost anything else they might consider to be omens of good fortune.

These even include potentially lucky "sites" to purchase lottery tickets. One such is the area of Taipei flooded by Typhoon Nari last year, popular because of a Chinese proverb according to which "water brings fortune".

The super-serious Taiwan lotto player, however, is unwilling to leave portents to chance. Hundreds of temples across the island have seen an unprecedented increase in worshippers in recent weeks. Many of these are not large temples dedicated to major deities in the Taiwan Taoist pantheon. Taiwanese believe that the big gods might have better things to do than pay attention to the lottery. It is small temples, particularly those dedicated to the spirits of the dead, that are seeing increased activity. Worshippers stand for hours watching dedicated incense sticks burning down and, from the way the ash falls, try to divine their "lucky numbers".

Meanwhile, cable TV channels have been airing - much to the government's displeasure - programs in which diviners, using various means, claim to be able to forecast lucky numbers.

Analysts have estimated that the government stands to take in some NT$100 billion out of its share of lotto loot this year. That would be a windfall to the government worth 8 percent of its current budget.

So far, so profitable. What the government will do with the money remains to be seen. It would like to implement the stipend for the elderly, but it is well aware of the danger of making long-term financial commitments on the basis of revenue streams of untested reliability.

But as the lines at ticket outlets on the day of the lotto drawings get longer, the possible damage of lotto mania has now, in the public debate, begun to eclipse any possible good that the government's windfall might do. There have been numerous examples of people spending their entire earnings on tickets in the hope of winning, only to be cast into penury when they don't, while there has been at least one successful and five attempted suicides specifically related to lottery disappointment.

There were, of course, always dissenters, even before the lottery started, who pointed out the usual criticisms - that given the social breakdown of punters, lotteries are little more than a form of regressive taxation, a tax on the "dreams of the poor" as one newspaper editorial put it.

And criticism has continued. Last weekend, Yu Ming-kuo, chairman of the Consumer Foundation, lashed out at the lottery, claiming that it was a system built on the misfortune of the most to benefit a few. Yu also questioned the lottery's public-welfare status since only half the money the government receives will in fact be used for ostensible welfare issues. The rest, he said, will go to bail out Taiwan's hugely inefficient and in some cases deeply corrupt local-government sector.

In government, the minister of finance has commented that "Taiwan is too crazy" about the lottery.

But the highest-profile dissent has come from Vice President Annette Lu, who has called lotto mania a social landslide threatening to engulf the island, and said that the lottery should be stopped. Her statement was greeted with such hostility that she was forced to make an almost immediate retraction, saying that it was not that she wanted to ban the lottery, but she wished that the people of Taiwan would focus on improving their lot through thrift and hard work rather than get-rich-quick schemes and wishful thinking.

Other experts have recommended reducing the frequency of lottery drawings, perhaps to one a week or even one every two. The problem with this, say officials at TaipeiBank, which runs the lottery for the government, is that it would mean jackpots increasing in size, perhaps dramatically so, which is more likely to fuel than cool the frenzy.

Others in government have leaped to the lottery's defense. Officials from the Ministry of Finance's Bureau of Monetary Affairs claim that since illegal gambling goes on in any case - often based on Hong Kong's Mark 6 lottery - why not create a legal channel which will do good for others apart from the gangsters who run the traditional numbers rackets. Which is all very well, say critics, except that playing the Mark 6 is a hardcore pastime for a very small minority, whereas playing the government lottery is now a nationwide social phenomenon.

Some social critics have pointed out that more interesting than the question of whether to reduce the frequency of lottery drawing or ban it altogether is what it shows about the people of Taiwan. After all, this isn't the first time that Taiwan has seen lottery mania.

A previous lottery, known as the Patriotic Lottery, had to be shut down in 1988, largely because of the huge amounts of illegal gambling going on in side bets around the drawing. So much money was changing hands and tensions reached such heights that the island suffered chronic absenteeism on days when the lottery was drawn and private commerce was almost paralyzed.

So what does this show? Social scientists and psychologists are having a field day. Does lotto mania show the Taiwanese are optimists or just opportunists? What is the relation of the lotto craze to the local enthusiasm to play the stock market - more than 90 percent of the value of which is in the hands of small-time "retail" investors?

There is, however, one thing on which almost everybody is agreed, namely that one of the most technologically advanced societies in Asia, a place that famously makes such a high percentage of the world's information technology that some deem it to have global geostrategic significance thereby, is hopelessly mired in superstition. That is a contradiction everyone can savor.

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