China: Communist Party wants to calm discontent of middle class

Power closely monitors the social tension caused by banking and real estate scandals against the backdrop of essay slowdown.

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Less than seven weeks before the opening of its 20 e congress, the Chinese Communist Party (CCC) closely monitors social tensions. However, despite an unprecedented control of the population since the cultural revolution (1965-1976), two homes of tensions have recently emerged. In the Henan, the fraudulent bankruptcy of four small rural banks threatens thousands of savers who had been promised interest rates from 13 % to 18 %. However, since spring, these have not been allowed to withdraw their savings. More serious, throughout the country, real estate developers, insolvent, are unable to finish the sites and deliver the owners the apartments already paid. In both cases, the population has not allowed themselves to be done and in both cases, the authorities now seek to appease tensions.

Despite the police repression, thousands of people had demonstrated on May 23, then on July 10, in front of the banks’ headquarters in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan, to be able to withdraw their frozen savings. A number accused the authorities of complicity. In June, several hundred savers who wanted to go to Zhengzhou had indeed seen their health code moved red, as if they had the COVVI-19. Impossible to buy a train or plane ticket. This first massive embezzlement of the health control of the population for political ends had been strongly criticized throughout the country, including by certain official media.

For their part, also in the spring, the ownerships of the property, noting the stop of the sites, launched on social networks, a call to the boycott of payments, increasing the difficulty of the promoters. A appeal apparently very followed despite the censorship which he was quickly the subject.

Monday August 29, Henan police announced the arrest of 234 people, according to her, of a “criminal organization”, accused of having participated in financial embezzlement caused the difficulties of the four small banks. Above all, the government oversees the reimbursement of savers starting with the most modest deposits.

Structural weaknesses

Beijing can be even less indifferent to stopping sites: 328 development projects in a hundred cities would be affected by the boycott, or around 5 % of all the real estate in progress. To facilitate the resumption of work, the government is preparing, according to the economic magazine Caixin, to unlock 200 billion yuan (around 29 billion euros), a sum intended to allow local authorities to provide loans on two or three years at approximately 3 % interest rate for promoters short of liquidity.

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