ONLINE LOAN SHARKS SPUR CHINESE MASS SUICIDES

ONLINE USURY SPARKS SUICIDES
More and more Chinese see suicide as 'the only way out'

On April 4, 2023, four young people at Tianmen Mountain in Zhangjiajie Province shocked the country, committing a mass suicide by taking poison and jumping off a cliff. They felt suicide was their 'only way out' because they had accumulated unmanageable debt through online loans. This incident has sparked fury and concern among the Chinese people.

In recent years, China's deteriorating economic and social environments have caused many people to take on the burden of high interest online loans. It is usury, but usury is still legal in China with no legal limit on interest rates. A recent study by the Centre for Economic Fairness [CEF] showed that online lenders are charging interest rates as high as 78%. With this outrageously high interest and equally outrageous violent collection methods, some people feel that suicide is 'the only way out.'

These hard working and kind-hearted people find themselves cornered. And their oppressive environment contributes to their helplessness. Under the enslavement of loan sharks and having limited capital with which to pay them, their efforts and wages fall victim to exhorbitant interest rates and violent collection methods. In the end, they get deeper and deeper in an unrelenting morass of growing interest which often exceeds the original amount borrowed. It quickly becomes impossible to extricate themselves from this mess.

This most recent and shocking mass suicide in Tianmen Mountain in Zhangjiajie Province shows us the ugliness behind our society. A large and growing number of the social underclass, those in the middle and lower income groups, have become vulnerable to the loan sharks of the Chinese Internet. In only a few weeks, one can become literally enslaved with no way out.

Keep in mind that, if interest isn't paid in a timely fashion, collection methods are brutal and can even be fatal. Online lenders employ rather large and convincing people to collect debt interest. Also, under Chinese law, even if someone dies still owing a debt, his surviving family is obligated to fulfill any and all contracts of the deceased.

However, this law only applies to loans and debt occurring through normal channels such as bank loans, company loans, and personal loans. This law does not protect online lenders with the same recovery sources but the victims of online lenders aren't lawyers and don't know this.

This only exacerbates the horror of Chinese online lenders and their dirty industry. With virtually no regulation of the online loan industry in China, millions have become subjugated to the force and threat of violence presented by online lenders.

Shouldn't government take this seriously? The recent Zhangjiajie suicides are by no means just a symptom of the violence of online loan collection, but rather an unavoidable sign of worse things to come. It has exposed the most prominent and dangerous contradictions of our Chinese society.

As long as these loan sharks prey on the citizens, there can be no hope or freedom for the Chinese people. Only through regulation and prosecution of these very bad actors can China see a future for its society.

I'm Max, and that's the way I see it!