What does this mean?
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. [CNN/Business]
I’m not really sure. The article continues:
Police in Xuchang, a city neighboring Zhengzhou, said in a statement late Sunday they recently arrested members of an alleged “criminal gang,” who were accused of effectively taking control over the Henan rural banks starting from 2011 — by leveraging their shareholdings and “manipulating banks executives.”
The suspects were also accused of illegally transferring funds through fictitious loans, the police said, adding that some of their funds and assets had been seized and frozen.
Made up story? True facts?
Is the Chinese banking system beginning to fold under the strain of Covid and, perhaps, the CCCP economic system?
Or is this just a hiccup, not to be noticed?
