‘Nude selfies for loans’ scandal sheds light on China’s rampant underground banking
Scandal highlights murky world of loan sharks, nation’s underdeveloped financial system and absence of proper student loans, say analysts
Details have been revealed of more than 100 more cases of young women college students in China who were forced to hand over naked selfies to ensure they would pay money back to loan sharks.
The China Youth Daily said it had found nude pictures and intimate videos of 167 young women, mainly aged 19 to 23 and from across the country.
At least 10 gigabytes of the material has been leaked online to internet users, along with the women’s contact details and relatives’ addresses, according to the newspaper report.
The scandal sheds lights on the widespread use of “underground banking” in Chinese society, increasingly helped by internet technologies.
Students, blue-collar workers and rural residents seldom have credit records in the reference centre of China’s central bank, a system that registers residents’ credit information and can be viewed by the public online, so cannot borrow money from banks or traditional financial institutions. More than 500 million of China’s population is estimated to be in this group.