A 59-year old woman from the central Chinese city of Wuhan has transformed her appearance through plastic surgery in order to avoid $3. 7m of personal debts, state news agency Xinhua said .
In a case highlighting the challenges facing China as it tries to establish a “ credit society ” , police officers were reported to be astonished after apprehending the woman , who fled to the south eastern city of Shenzhen after a court in Wuhan ordered her to pay off her debt.
“ We were very surprised at the scene, ” Xinhua quoted a policeman as saying . “ She looked in her 30s and was different from the photos we had. ”
The woman , identified as Zhu Najuan, also confessed to using other people ’ s identity cards to travel across the country by train . She financed her plastic surgery using borrowed bank cards, it was revealed .
Representatives from more than 300 Chinese cities released a declaration earlier in July promising to make more credit available for consumer spending , part of the country’ s efforts to find new sources of economic growth and reduce its dependence on heavy industry and state- driven infrastructure investment.
But as the country strives to make more credit available to individuals , it is also facing a surge in household debt, which is estimated to have reached around 50 per cent of gross domestic product last year , more than doubling in less than a decade.
Xinhua said the city of Wuhan has also launched a series of crackdowns on debt defaulters, and detained a total of 186 people in the first half of the year.