Shanghai - A 59-year old woman from the
central Chinese city of Wuhan transformed her appearance through
plastic surgery in order to avoid 25 million yuan (R48 million) of personal debts, state news agency Xinhua said.
In a case highlighting the challenges facing China as it
tries to establish a "credit society", police officers were
reported to be "astonished" after apprehending the woman, who
fled to the southeastern Chinese city of Shenzhen after a court
in Wuhan ordered her to pay off her debt.
"We were very surprised at the scene," the official Xinhua
news agency quoted a policeman as saying. "She looked in her
thirties and was different from the photos we had."
The woman, identified as Zhu Najuan, also confessed to using
other people's identity cards to travel across the country by
train. She financed her plastic surgery using borrowed bank
cards, Xinhua said late on Friday.
Representatives from more than 300 Chinese cities released a
declaration earlier in July promising to make more credit
available for consumer spending, part of the country's efforts
to find new sources of economic growth and reduce its dependence
on heavy industry and state-driven infrastructure investment.
But as the country strives to make more credit available to
individuals, it is also facing a surge in household debt, which
is estimated to have reached around 50 percent of gross domestic
product last year, more than doubling in less than a decade.
As regulators try to establish a reliable nationwide credit
rating system, authorities across the country are also exploring
new ways to crack down on those who do not pay debts.
According to state media, one court in Jiangsu province has
drawn up a blacklist of defaulters. Anyone who telephones an
individual on the blacklist will first be forced to listen to a
pre-recorded message saying "please urge this person to fulfil
their legal obligations".
Xinhua said the city of Wuhan has also launched a series of
crackdowns on debt defaulters, and detained a total of 186
people in the first half of the year.