(SCMP) -A Chinese court’s decision to punish a nine-year-old girl for failing to repay her dead father’s debts has triggered a heated debate about the growing reach and power of the country’s judicial system.
The punishment also prompted concerns about the country’s burgeoning social credit system. The social credit system is similar to a credit-scoring system. It punishes individuals and businesses that fail to follow rules and regulations and rewards those who perform actions deemed beneficial to society, based on a wide range of data it collects.
In 2019, a court in China’s Henan province ruled the young girl, Chen Man, was liable for her father’s debts. The debt centered around a financial dispute with a man named Wang who had bought a flat from the girl’s father for about US$84,000. Wang never received the legal rights to the flat before Man’s father was sentenced to death in 2013 for killing the girl’s mother and grandmother the previous year.
Wang sued the girl to get his money back because the father was dead. The court ruled in Wang’s favor and demanded that Man pay off her father’s debt. The man was unable to repay the debt. She had been unaware of the lawsuit because her grandfather dealt with the case.
In November, after failing to comply, the court put her on a restricted spending list, prohibiting her from “high-level consumption” activities that include flying, traveling by high-speed train, and checking into hotels. A ban such as this is often used in China to force a debtor to pay up. FULL REPORT
