Protesters in Beijing’s financial district were met with hundreds of uniformed police on Monday, as citizens who have lost money from the recent collapse of P2P platforms across China expressed their anger.
Police and security guards patrolled the entrances to streets around Finance Street in central Beijing, according to the South China Morning Post, where many of the country’s major financial institutions’ head offices are located.
The protesters had previously organised to meet in their thousands, according to social media accounts and reports from the protesters themselves, but the number that turned up was considerably smaller. Many were immediately arrested and removed from the site.
The sudden wave of closures in China’s Rmb 1.2 trillion ($180 billion) P2P lending market has left many investors unable to access funds deposited with third-party lending platforms, with some failed company owners even running off with the money. In July alone, 221 platforms experienced such problems, compared to 217 for the whole of 2017, according to industry portal Online Lending House.
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