Guan County “debt collector” : this industry will end sooner or later

Du Zhihao, the “debt collector”, froze his life in the early morning of April 15, 2016.

Although many witnesses have been confirmed in the judgment, Du Zhihao take off pants extreme way insulted in huan mother Su Yinxia, but Du Zhihao wife Liu Qiqi (a pseudonym) told reporters that she was still reluctant to admit that, “is a rumor,” she said: “he is not that kind of person, no matter what he does is to the family, let us have a better life.”

According to the first judgment in The Yu Huan case, Liu Qiqi was born in 1989 and married Du Zhihao. He gave birth to twins in 2010. Two years later, he gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. As for the future, she said, “I smashed the pot to sell iron also want to pull up the children.”

In fact, before Yu Huan stabbed Du Zhihao, who had insulted his mother, “violent debt demand” was nothing new in Guanxian County, Liaocheng county, Shandong province, which lies at the intersection of Hebei, Shandong and Henan.

“Violent debt collection” is nothing new. “Violent debt collection” is nothing new.

1

Guan County is known as “the hometown of bearings in China”. Local people once said proudly in an interview: “There is no bearing that cannot be bought here.”

In 2010, guanxian Industrial Park began to be developed. At about the same time, Su Moved her Company, Yuanda Industry and Trade Co., into the park, which mainly makes bearings.

Also in 2010, Wu Xuezhan established Guanxian Taichang Investment Co., LTD., with a registered capital of 10 million yuan. Two years later, Wu xuezhan established Guanxian Taihe Real estate development Company with the same registered capital of 10 million yuan. According to the report, Wu xuecheng used the name of a real estate company to collect deposits at high interest rates and to attract idle people to engage in loan sharking and debt collection business.

In July 2014, the leader of one county of Guanxian county said at the county industrial and economic operation analysis conference that “this year’s industrial and economic operation of our county showed a trend of slowing growth and obvious downward trend.” As for the problems existing in the bearing industry, “low-end products are run off by large bearing enterprises, making it difficult to survive.”

‘Some companies are eligible for loans, but because of the tight schedule and the long and time-consuming approval process of bank loans, they have to turn to guarantee companies or private lenders,’ the official said.

As a result, Mr. Wu’s company has attracted a lot of business.

Yu Huan’s aunt Yu Xiurong told reporters that Su Yinxia wanted to make the company bigger, and continued to invest money, in addition to the bank, also borrow usury.

In an online post, the owner of a local bearing company said the company was short of funds and had taken the risk of borrowing money from usury when formal channels could not meet its needs. Of course, the boss was also threatened by debt collectors.

“I read about the incident on the Internet. I used to do this in a local area myself. There have been so many such incidents in recent years, but it just sounds new to outsiders, and the punishment is too heavy, so it has attracted such high attention.” “Yu Ming (not his real name), who used to be a manager at an investment company in Guanxian, Liaocheng, told reporters.

He quit the business in 2015, he said, “because my boss took the money and ran away, and I realized at that point it wasn’t viable.”

“What we say externally sounds like an investment company, but in fact, our employees all know in their hearts that what we do is usury.”

2

Usury, in the local jargon of Guanxian, is called “release chong”.

This is originally the term on the mahjong table, to usury here, it means to give money to others to lend out at high interest.

“When I started out as a loan shark, it was around 2011, and a lot of people in the county got rich overnight. We have a lot of local demolition, people took the demolition money has no place to spend, some local dignitaries, relatively rich, do not want to put their money in the bank, the bank interest rate is too low.

Yu Ming said that around 2012, when I went to the bank to deposit money, the annual interest rate was only about 5 cents, but when I saved money in the investment company, the interest rate every month was at least 5 cents. “What is the concept? If you put 100,000 yuan into the investment company, you will get 5,000 yuan in monthly interest, which is already higher than many people’s monthly salary.”

Around 2012, guanxian large and small investment companies like malignant tumor, spread to the streets.

“There is a saying in Guanxian that putting money in investment companies is the only way to narrow the gap between rich and poor,” remembers Yang Lei, a guanxian native. At that time, the streets of our small county suddenly appeared a lot of millions of luxury cars, a lot of people looking for jobs, desperate want to go to the investment company to work, at that time loan sharks, the road were cross, money.

“These investment companies eat black and white and put their money into investment companies hoping to make money,” Yang said. “There are all kinds of people, and there are some powerful people.”

Large and small investment companies like a malignant tumor, spread to the streets. Large and small investment companies like a malignant tumor, spread to the streets.

Yu Ming witnessed the extravagance of the investment company at that time. “People in the company went to KTV every night and spent money during the day and everywhere at night.”

He was under the impression that the highest interest he had ever spared was 15 cents, or 15 per cent a month. “The man was the owner of a local enterprise and had a good reputation. He could not open the capital and was short of 1 million yuan. He said he would pay me back in a month, but I had more than 1 million in my account at that time.

Doing nothing, making $150,000 a month. Yu Ming with his own experience to help investment companies to attract more clients. But as the number of investment companies grew and more money was lent out, “there were people who were mortgaging their homes to the banks to make money, taking loans out of the banks and putting them into our investment companies.” Yu Ming gradually realized that the situation was wrong.

“As long as many enterprises don’t pay back the money on time, they will only drag on more and more. In the end, the principal is often paid off long ago. As a result, the interest rolls out higher than the principal.

3

In the private lending system, debt collectors are called “urging customers”.

At the end of 2016, a reporter from Shandong TV found in an investigation that the debt collection industry in Shandong has already formed a huge industrial chain. Videos of violent debt collectors are widely circulated as training materials in online chat groups of debt collectors. In an internal training video, the speaker exhorts “customers” to resort to violence to demand debt: collection is for life and inheritance after death.

“It speaks the law first, but outside the law, it does not speak the law completely… I’ve been watching you, and every once in a while… I wish I could burn your house and sell your baby…”

According to Yu Ming, in the way of debt collection, the most common way is to follow the whole day, “just find a dozen people, do nothing, is to follow the people in debt, eat, go to the toilet, eat and drink all here, let you not a moment of peace and quiet.

Later, guanxian local debt began to upgrade.

“There are those who spill red paint at the door of enterprises, others threaten the elderly and children at home, or put people in a place for a few days”. In one of the most extreme calls Yu has ever heard, “The loan sharks asked each other to strip naked and post nude photos on local telephone poles if they didn’t pay back the money. At that time, even I couldn’t bear to watch it. I thought this business would end sooner or later.”

Yu Ming’s hunch was not wrong.

As early as 2012, private lending in Zouping, not far to the east of Guanxian county, caused a stir. The Jinan Times once titled “The Lending Village after the Dream of sudden wealth was broken” and reported the tragedy of zouping, where private lending reached 100 billion yuan and ended in collapse. At the time, more than 30 people died in a dispute over private lending.

In an online petition, Yu’s mother su Yinxia also expressed her regret for taking part in private lending: “We fell into the usury trap and hurt ourselves as well as others.”

The people of Guanxian have always been proud of mencius who left a famous saying in their hometown through the ages: no wealth, no wealth, no poverty, no power, no subjugate. More recently, guan county has become known to outsiders as usury, mother-shaming and life imprisonment.

(The author/Yi Fangxing, Simple-Park; Intern/Zhiyuan Zhao, Xuan Peng; Editor/Stone)