China’s Henan Rural Bank Customers Face Harassment and Job Loss Over Protests

A protest by roughly 1,000 rural bank customers in China’s Henan was violently cracked down by police, resulting in several injuries, according to report on July 12th. A woman injured from police violence said she also faced continued harassment.

The woman, surnamed Geng, 32-year-old, was awakened on Tuesday morning by strange men knocking on her door as and claimed there was a water leak in her flats. “I don’t know how they found me,” said Geng. She said she was threatened to leave through another stairwell after hiding in her room for three hours while two unidentifiable men in black remained standing outside her apartment building.

At least $1.5 billion worth of deposit have been frozen at four small Henan province banks since April, and other customers for one of the banks have also been harassed in an incident. This is just a glimpse into Communist China’s deeply trouble financial system.

“It happened to a lot of customers, they want to delete videos and evidence from our phones,” Geng said.

Customers who called for attention on this event told Reuters that police, CCP officials in rural area and employers had visited them and their families in recent weeks to pressure them not to protest and even threatened to take away their jobs. “The rural party secretary will go to your house, will talk to your family and say you are making trouble,” said a customer, surnamed Chen, “I was accused of being an overseas subversion force because he spoke to foreign media.”

After protests in the provincial capital Zhengzhou turned violent, police announced that a man named Lu Yi had used banks to illegally siphon off funds through a company he controlled called Henan Xincaifu Group.

While it is unclear whether the troubles at Henan Bank will have wider impacts, the thousands of small and mid-sized lenders in mainland China are closely link to the bank’s lending channel and are critical to the domestic financial system.