Why so many Chinese are drowning in debt
为什么这么多中国人深陷债务泥潭

THE RISE of a property-owning, entrepreneurial middle class in China has transformed its cities this century. It has helped to drive consumption in the world’s second-largest economy. In May retail sales grew 6.4% year on year—the fastest pace since December 2023—helped by state subsidies aimed at reviving consumers’ enthusiasm. The government has even cautiously promoted borrowing in past years. But all this has created new risks. Along with car-jammed streets, glitzy restaurants and vast malls has come a massive, invisible change, no less far-reaching: soaring household debt.
本世纪，中国拥有房产、具有创业精神的中产阶级的崛起改变了中国城市的面貌。它帮助推动了世界第二大经济体的消费。在 5 月份，在旨在重振消费者热情的国家补贴的帮助下，零售额同比增长 6.4%，这是自 2023 年 12 月以来的最快增速。过去几年，政府甚至谨慎地鼓励借贷。但这一切也带来了新的风险。伴随着拥堵的街道、光鲜的餐厅和巨大的购物中心而来的是一场巨大的、无形的变革，其影响同样深远：家庭债务的飙升。

As a proportion of China’s GDP, household debt has risen from less than 11% in 2006 to more than 60% today, close to rich-country levels. Lenders include state-owned banks and tech platforms. Between 25m and 34m people may now be in default according to Gavekal Dragonomics, a research consultancy. If those who are merely in arrears are added, the total could be between 61m and 83m, or 5-7% of the total population aged 15 and older. In both categories, these numbers are twice as high as they were five years ago, the firm reckons. Amid high youth unemployment and a property slump, the situation will probably only worsen.
中国家庭债务占 GDP 的比重已从 2006 年的不到 11%上升到今天的 60%以上，接近发达国家水平。贷款方包括国有银行和科技平台。据研究咨询公司 Gavekal Dragonomics 称，目前可能有 2500 万至 3400 万人违约。如果加上仅仅是拖欠还款的人，总数可能在 6100 万至 8300 万之间，占 15 岁及以上总人口的 5-7%。该公司估计，这两个类别的人数都是五年前的两倍。在年轻人高失业率和房地产市场低迷的情况下，情况可能只会恶化。

Dealing with personal debt remains shameful and unfamiliar in China. But the government is struggling to help. It is already busy tackling debt throughout the system: local-government debt remains painfully high, and corporate debt uncomfortably so. Household debt is one more thing to worry about. It is not an imminent threat to financial stability. But it weighs increasingly heavily on the minds of middle-class people, inhibiting their spending and undermining a belief in ever-rising prosperity that the Communist Party sees as crucial to its grip on power.
在中国，处理个人债务仍然是一件令人羞耻和不熟悉的事情。但政府正努力提供帮助。它已经忙于解决整个体系中的债务问题：地方政府债务仍然高得令人痛苦，企业债务也令人不安。家庭债务是又一件令人担忧的事情。它不是对金融稳定的迫在眉睫的威胁。但它越来越沉重地压在中产阶级的心头，抑制了他们的消费，并破坏了他们对持续增长的繁荣的信念，而共产党认为这种信念对其掌握权力至关重要。

Chinese households have a buffer: overall, their savings relative to disposable income were nearly 32% in 2023, according to JP Morgan, a bank. That is far higher than the rate of less than 3% in America in the build-up to the global financial crisis in 2007. But in the boom years money borrowed for housing seemed like a one-way bet, especially as jobs were plentiful and secure. People grew accustomed to splashing cash from big online lenders such as Alipay and WeBank. Others borrowed to invest in family businesses. Then came zero-covid lockdowns in 2020 and the start of the property crash the year after. Whatever the origins, debt trouble and interactions with cuigou, or “pressure dogs” (ie, aggressive debt-collectors) has been the result for many.
中国的家庭有一定的缓冲：摩根大通银行的数据显示，总体而言，2023 年他们的储蓄相对于可支配收入的比例接近 32%。这远高于 2007 年全球金融危机爆发前美国的不到 3%的比率。但在繁荣时期，为住房而借的钱似乎是一项稳赚不赔的赌注，尤其是在就业机会充足且有保障的情况下。人们逐渐习惯于从支付宝和微众银行等大型在线贷款机构那里挥霍现金。还有人借钱投资家族企业。随之而来的是 2020 年的清零封锁，以及次年房地产崩盘的开始。无论起因如何，对许多人来说，债务问题以及与“催狗”（即，激进的收债人）的交涉已成定局。

Start with property. Borrowing for housing made up 65% of household loans last year (excluding loans for business purposes). Most mortgage lending is done by government-owned banks who have to be careful about how they get their money back from those unable to pay. The number of foreclosed residential properties listed for auction last year was 366,000, slightly up from 364,000 in 2023, according to China Index Academy, a private research firm. The numbers of people failing to pay their mortgages may be growing much faster. Regulators are wary of aggressive repossessions involving people’s primary homes: they worry about triggering public protests. Banks may be mulling another problem. In today’s depressed market, auctioning a property may not recoup the mortgage. Online lenders, who provide a more modest share of mortgages, can be far tougher about getting their money back.
从房产说起。去年，住房贷款占家庭贷款的 65%（不包括商业用途贷款）。大多数抵押贷款由国有银行提供，它们必须谨慎地从那些无力偿还贷款的人手中收回资金。据一家名为中国指数研究院的私营研究公司称，去年挂牌拍卖的止赎住宅物业数量为 36.6 万套，略高于 2023 年的 36.4 万套。但未能偿还抵押贷款的人数可能增长得更快。监管机构对涉及人们主要住房的激进收回行为持谨慎态度：他们担心引发公众抗议。银行可能还在考虑另一个问题。在今天低迷的市场中，拍卖房产可能无法弥补抵押贷款。在线贷款机构提供的抵押贷款份额较小，但在收回资金方面可能要强硬得多。

Spendthrifts are another group in trouble. Lily, a millennial in Shanghai, got into debt trouble when her employer, a software company, stopped paying her wages because of its own cashflow difficulties. She owed 30,000 yuan to online lenders. To help she is dabbling in “debt IP”—when people turn stories of ruin into a means of generating cash as online influencers. She describes her travails as a debtor in short videos on her social-media accounts, but hasn’t hit the big-time. Some of the most popular have hundreds of thousands of followers. “Some people are even competing, oh, I’m 10m in debt, I’m 100m in debt,” she says.
挥霍无度是另一类陷入困境的人群。莉莉是上海一位千禧一代，由于她的雇主——一家软件公司——因自身现金流困难而停止支付她的工资，她陷入了债务困境。她欠在线贷款机构 3 万元人民币。为了摆脱困境，她开始涉足“负债 IP”——即人们将破产故事转化为在线网红的赚钱手段。她在社交媒体账户上的短视频中描述了自己作为债务人的困境，但尚未成名。一些最受欢迎的账号拥有数十万粉丝。“有些人甚至在竞争，哦，我欠了 1000 万，我欠了 1 亿，”她说。

Now consider investment debt. In Hangzhou, Ms Bai used to run a successful education business and took out personal loans of millions of yuan to invest in it. Many Chinese borrow to boost family-owned firms and lenders often require personal guarantees, putting households at risk if the ventures fail. At its peak, her outfit organised cramming classes for between 50,000 and 60,000 students at 30-odd tutoring centres, generating an annual revenue of 100m-200m yuan ($14m-28m). Then came covid-19 and a political crackdown on crammers. She had to sell her house and car to pay the debt.
现在考虑一下投资债务。在杭州，白女士曾经经营着一家成功的教育企业，并为此借了数百万元的个人贷款进行投资。许多中国人为了发展家族企业而借款，而贷款方通常要求提供个人担保，这使得家庭在企业失败时面临风险。在她事业的巅峰时期，她的机构在 30 多个辅导中心为 5 万到 6 万名学生组织补习班，年收入达 1 亿到 2 亿元人民币（1400 万到 2800 万美元）。然后，新冠疫情和政府对补习机构的政治打压接踵而至。她不得不卖掉房子和汽车来偿还债务。

Dealing with the banks was the easy bit, however. During the pandemic the government urged them to be gentle with debtors whose businesses had been affected by it; they agreed to waive tens of thousands of yuan in interest. The tough part was dealing with the pressure dogs hired by online lenders from whom she had borrowed money for personal use. They repeatedly called Ms Bai, her friends and her relatives, often from different phones so they couldn’t be blocked. She is particularly angry about the harassment of her parents. “In China,” she says, “we generally don’t tell our parents about bad news, so they were very, very affected.” Ms Bai became depressed and thought of suicide. Her husband divorced her.
然而，与银行打交道还算容易。疫情期间，政府敦促银行对受疫情影响的企业债务人宽容一些；银行同意免除数万元的利息。困难的是应付那些受雇于网络贷款机构的催债人员，她曾为了个人用途从这些机构借款。他们反复给白女士、她的朋友和亲戚打电话，而且经常使用不同的电话号码，让人无法屏蔽。她对父母受到的骚扰尤其感到愤怒。“在中国，”她说，“我们通常不会告诉父母坏消息，所以他们受到的影响非常非常大。”白女士变得抑郁，并想到了自杀。她的丈夫和她离了婚。

Regulations relating to the debt-collecting industry are new and patchily enforced in China. Rather than helping Ms Bai, a court put her on a “social credit” blacklist, which meant she could no longer fly, use high-speed trains or stay at luxury hotels.
在中国，与债务催收行业相关的法规是新出台的，执行情况也不尽如人意。法院非但没有帮助白女士，反而将她列入了“社会信用”黑名单，这意味着她不能再乘坐飞机、高铁或入住豪华酒店。

So where can debtors find relief? Support groups for them have been growing online. Jiaqi Guo of the University of Turku in Finland has been studying one of them, called the Debtors Alliance, on Douban, a social-networking site. Founded in 2019, it now has more than 60,000 members. Dr Guo says users often discuss shesi, meaning “social death”. It refers to the destruction of relationships caused by “contact bombing”, as the debt collectors’ phone calls are described.
那么，负债者可以在哪里找到慰藉呢？为他们提供的互助小组在网上不断涌现。芬兰图尔库大学的郭佳琪（音）一直在研究其中一个名为“负债者联盟”的小组，该小组位于社交网站豆瓣上。该小组成立于 2019 年，目前拥有超过 6 万名成员。郭博士说，用户经常讨论“社死”，指的是因“电话轰炸”（对讨债公司电话的描述）而导致的人际关系破裂。

As their numbers rise, the government has tried to show a modicum of sympathy with the plight of debtors. Last year it banned debt-collection agencies from threatening violence, using abusive language or calling people at anti-social times. It also reminded lenders to protect personal information (presumably meaning, stop misusing contact details). But data-privacy regulations are loosely enforced in China. Complaints aired on the debtors’ forum suggest little change in the collectors’ threatening and intrusive behaviour.
随着负债者人数的增加，政府试图对他们的困境表示些许同情。去年，政府禁止讨债公司威胁使用暴力、使用辱骂性语言或在非社交时间打电话。它还提醒贷款人保护个人信息（大概是指停止滥用联系方式）。但中国的数据隐私法规执行不严。负债者论坛上发布的投诉表明，讨债者威胁性和侵扰性的行为几乎没有改变。

One reform that might help is the introduction of a personal bankruptcy law, of the kind found in rich countries, to protect debtors from claims that would leave them totally destitute. The lack of such legislation has fuelled the growth of online loan-sharks offering high-interest credit to desperate defaulters. In 2021 Shenzhen became the first city to introduce a bankruptcy law for individuals. But it has been used with caution. By the end of September 2024 more than 2,700 people had applied for bankruptcy protection under this law but courts had only accepted about 10% of their cases. A few other places have also been conducting trials of similar schemes. But the government appears in no hurry: creditors are often big state firms. Officials worry that a national law might signal tolerance of reckless spending or speculative investment. ■
一项可能有所帮助的改革是引入个人破产法，就像在发达国家常见的那样，以保护债务人免受可能使其一贫如洗的索赔。缺乏此类立法助长了网上贷款鲨鱼的增长，它们向绝望的违约者提供高息贷款。2021 年，深圳成为第一个为个人引入破产法的城市。但它一直被谨慎使用。到 2024 年 9 月底，已有超过 2700 人根据该法律申请破产保护，但法院仅受理了约 10%的案件。其他一些地方也在试行类似的计划。但政府似乎并不着急：债权人通常是大型国有企业。官员们担心，一项国家法律可能会发出容忍鲁莽消费或投机性投资的信号。■