Chinese woman has plastic surgery in bid to escape debts!
29 Jul 2017
A 59-year-old woman in China underwent plastic surgery in an attempt to disguise herself to avoid paying massive debts.
Zhu Najuan, 59, underwent plastic surgery and disappeared after a court in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, asked her to pay off huge debts of over 25 million yuan ($3.71 million) earlier this year.
In July, Zhu was reported to be in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, where police officers from the Intermediate People's Court of Wuhan detained her and were astonished by her brand new face.
"We were very surprised at the scene," a policeman said. "She looked in her thirties and was different from the photos we had."
Zhu was detained and confessed that she had used people's ID cards to buy high-speed train tickets and borrowed bank cards to support her face-changing "career".
The case highlights the challenges facing China as it tries to establish a "credit society''. Recently, Wuhan judicial authorities launched a series of crackdowns on debt avoidance. The city's courts detained 186 people for debt avoidance in the first half of the year, Xinhua reports.
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 per cent 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"
