A leading gambling expert has called on the Chinese government to legalize more betting products to cash in on some of the 700 billion yuan (US$87.5 billion) that are being lost through illegal gambling each year.

"Illegal gambling in China has continued to grow in recent years. According to our market investigations, the revenue gained from the legal lottery in China is ten times less than the illegal gambling revenue. In 2005, the total revenue of China's legal lottery reached 70 billion yuan (US$8.75 billion), while the illegal betting revenue was around 700 billion yuan," said Wang Xuehong, head of the China Center for Lottery Studies of Beijing University.

"The development of lottery in China is in line with its social development," Wang said, "If the government could legalize more lottery products, the illegal market would definitely shrink."

The market is there and gambling is part of human nature. If the choice of legalized products is too limited the majority will be forced underground, she added.

She cited that in developed countries, gambling revenues usually account for 2 percent to 3 percent of their GDP, while in China, the authorized gambling income makes up less than 1 percent.

Illegal gambling in China mainly involves Internet betting, playing at underground casinos and selling and buying private lotteries, according to Wang.

The center previously reported that each year, 600 billion yuan (75 billion U.S. dollars) are bet overseas, 15 times more than the amount spent each year on China's state-run lottery and equal to the annual revenue of the country's tourism industry.

But the government is showing no immediate signs of relaxing the country's gambling laws. Luo Yifeng, a deputy to the National People's Congress, said, at present, the most severe penalty for gambling is a three-year prison sentence, which is too slight to curb crimes. He suggested that the congress make special laws to prohibit gambling.