Consumer Credit and Over‐indebtedness in China

Over the past three decades, China has experienced a significant increase in consumer credit. There are many causes for this growth and expansion in credit availability, such as deregulation of consumer credit markets. The expansion of consumer credit leads to the climbing of consumers' over‐indebtedness. Traditional remedies provided to consumers are limited to minor restrictions on attachment of the debtor's property. No statute has been passed in China to rearrange consumer insolvency. Moral hazard and debtor fraud are the two particularly salient concerns that hinder the adoption of consumer insolvency legislation in China. This paper makes use of publicly available data collected on government websites and bank websites to empirically describe the development of consumer credit and consumers' indebtedness in China and also theoretically examines the treatment of over‐indebtedness and the obstacles encountered in the adoption of consumer insolvency legislation. Based on these investigations, the paper suggests that although there are some obstacles, it is necessary and feasible to construct consumer insolvency system in China. Copyright © 2018 INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.