Sfdebris.net

Hong Kong (CNN)Chinese authorities on Sunday violently dispersed a peaceful protest by hundreds of depositors, who sought in vain to demand their life savings back from banks that have run into a deepening cash crisis.
Since April, four rural banks in China's central Henan province have frozen millions of dollars worth of deposits, threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of customers in an economy already battered by draconian Covid lockdowns.
Anguished depositors have staged several demonstrations in the city of Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan, over the past two months, but their demands have invariably fallen on deaf ears.

On Sunday, more than 1,000 depositors from across China gathered outside the Zhengzhou branch of the country's central bank, the People's Bank of China, to launch their largest protest yet, more than half a dozen protesters told CNN.

The demonstration is among the largest China has seen since the pandemic, with domestic travel limited by various Covid restrictions on movement. Last month, Zhengzhou authorities even resorted to tampering with the country's digital Covid health-code system to restrict the movements of depositors and thwart their planned protest, sparking a nationwide outcry.

[...]

The face-off lasted for several hours until after 11 a.m., when rows of security officers suddenly charged up the stairs and clashed with protesters, who threw bottles and other small objects at them.
The scene quickly descended into chaos, as security officers dragged protesters down the stairs and beat those who resisted, including women and the elderly, according to witnesses and social media videos.
One woman from eastern Shandong province told CNN she was pushed to the ground by two security guards, who twisted and injured her arm. A 27-year-old man from the southern city of Shenzhen, surnamed Sun, said he was kicked by seven or eight guards on the ground before being carried away. A 45-year-old man from the central city of Wuhan said his shirt was completely torn at the back during the scuffle.
Many said they were shocked by the sudden burst of violence by the security forces.

[...]

The protest comes at a politically sensitive time for the ruling Communist Party, just months before its leader Xi Jinping is expected to seek an unprecedented third term at a key meeting this fall.
Large-scale demonstrations over lost savings and ruined livelihoods could be perceived as a political embarrassment for Xi, who has promoted a nationalistic vision of leading the country to "great rejuvenation."
Henan authorities are under tremendous pressure to stop the protests. But depositors remain undeterred. As the issue drags on, many have become ever more desperate to recover their savings.
Huang, the depositor from Wuhan, lost his job in the medical cosmetology industry this year, as businesses struggled in the pandemic. Yet he is unable to withdraw any of his life savings -- of over 500,000 yuan ($75,000) -- from a rural bank in Henan.
"Being unemployed, all I can live on is my past savings. But I can't even do that now -- how am I supposed to (support my family)?" said Huang, whose son is in high school.
Sun, from Shenzhen, is struggling to keep his machine factory from bankruptcy after losing his deposit of 4 million yuan ($597,000) to a Henan bank. He can't even pay his more than 40 employees without the funds.

BridgeConsoleMasher wrote: ↑Sat Jul 16, 2022 5:04 am Four rural banks? Not that it's not indicative somewhat to Beijing's reputation, though it's hardly anything revelatory to the west on an economic front.

Madner Kami wrote: ↑Sat Jul 16, 2022 8:36 am You read rural and understand "a few farmers". That's not what it is. Henan is one of the most populous provinces of China. A houndred million people live there, it posesses the 5th largest GDP within China (just under 1 Billion US-Dollar) and has about half the land-area of Texas.

Sovietskikh

I once worked for a company which sourced steel for construction projects around Europe. Most clients from most EU nations were fine, but Russia and China (from which we imported steel) were repeatedly bad clients and needed special treatment. Big payments can take a while to clear and some Russian companies always used the excuse of "payment is coming we promise" but sometimes never paid, so we only sent them product the moment payment cleared, no sooner. The Chinese were often horrible to deal with. They would regularly try to scam us with subpar quality steel, and would say things like "we're foreigners and we don't know how business is done here" to gaslight us.

charlie pearce

The quality of the steel we were buying had fallen beyond a joke.
I worked in the sheet metal department of an air conditioning co and couldn't believe being shown the centres of 8×4 foot sheets from a 1 ton load.
The sheets had been rolled that thin that they had large holes in the centre of them making them unusable..
It was a joke ..
We stopped buying from them.

gaijinPH

I used to source steel for a local contractor for public infrastructure. I get to talk with suppliers and I always hear the same thing, there are 2 groups of steel. Local steel and China steel. China steel tends to be more brittle as the suppliers told me. Not wanting to take a risk, I splurged the extra 2 to 3% to get the stronger steel. After seeing videos of construction sites in China, where just dropping the bent rebars is enough to destroy them, I feel I made the right choice.