China Bars 60 Lakh Bank Defaulters From Travelling, Getting Promotions

New Delhi: Vijay Mallya packed his bags, purchased a flight ticket and fled to London. This would have been much more difficult in China.

The country has toughened restrictions on 60 lakh bank defaulters, barring them from flights, getting loans and credit cards or even promotions.

There are 67.3 lakh Chinese citizens on the Chinese Supreme Court’s blacklist, Global Times reported, quoting the Meng Xiang, the head of the court’s enforcement bureau.

So far, 61.5 lakh people have been barred from purchasing plane tickets and 22 lakh cannot travel by high-speed trains. Around 71,000 defaulters cannot serve as corporate representatives or executives.

The Supreme People’s Court, China’s apex court, has shared the defaulters’ ID card and passport information with airlines and railway companies. Previously, only ID card numbers were blacklisted and defaulters used their passports to circumvent the ban. But that loophole has been plugged now.

The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, one of China’s largest commercial banks, has rejected lakh loan and credit card applications.

The blacklist includes government staff, members of local legislative and political advisory bodies and Communist Party of China congress delegates, Meng said.