No lottery tickets, no welfare funds

A community in a Chinese inland city had taken an unusual approach in promoting lottery ticket sales by threatening residents that they would not receive their monthly welfare money unless they spent 10 percent of it on lottery tickets.

However, last week the local government ordered the resident committee, which is responsible for the welfare money distribution, to stop the practice. The action came after a media report on the forced lottery ticket sales.

Since October, the resident committee of the Wencheng community in Suining city of the southwestern province of Sichuan had been pressuring some local residents to buy the tickets, according to a report by the official Xinhua News Agency, citing an unnamed resident.