Online casino gambling is a sensitive issue in China these days, following online casino news reporting that China loses 75 billion Dollars each year to online gambling. This report contradicts previous reports made by Western research firms, indicating more conventional figures and estimating the Chinese online casino industry at 12 billion Dollars in annual revenues, anticipated to double itself by the year 2010.
Peking University's China Public Interest Lottery Research Institute has found that online casino activities are drawing around 600 billion Yuan out of the country. That means, online gambling in China is worth 75 billion Dollars, 15 times the amount allocated by China Lottery and China Sports Lottery in the year 2003. Also, this sum spent on online gambling each year, actually equals the total revenue of China's national tourism in 2004.
Chinese authorities, say sources in Beijing, are now forced to take action; as online gambling, though illegal, has become all the rage in China and can't seem to be stoped. In an attempt to halt this outflow of close to 75 billion Dollars spent each year on online casino activities, police had swooped down some large online gambling rackets, mostly during the period when the World Cup was held in Germany. The China News Service reported that during that time, 10 billion Euros found its way to gambling companies world wide, 60 per cent of this amount coming from China and other Southeast Asian countries. Also, local police had solved 15 football gambling cases in Shenzhen, arrested 53 people and confiscated around 260,000 Yuan, in addition to 20 million Yuan which were frozen.
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