6.5 M ‘discredited individuals’ in China banned from buying plane tickets

BEIJING -- China’s courts have listed 6.7 million people as “discredited individuals”with 6.5 of them restricted from buying air tickets and 2.22 million banned from taking high speed trains, an official said on Tuesday.

Lou Yan Jun of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) informed the local and foreign media that campaign against violators of national credit system has resulted in the filing of 550,000 cases of rejected loans and credit cards involving RMB 7 billion or more than Php 51 billion.

She said the government’s strict measures and laws have also left 22,858 enterprises and individuals blacklisted while 71,000 legal representatives and executives were restricted in the commercial and industrial banks.

”This has formed a strong deterrence for discredited entities and individuals and has driven about 700,000 discredited individuals to voluntarily fulfill their obligations,”Lou said.

In the same press conference, General Administration of Customs of China (GACC) Vice Minister Li Guo released the Memorandum of Cooperation on Jointly Introducing Punitive Measures against Discredited Import and Export Enterprises signed last March 14.

”This memorandum is another major initiative in building national credit system, marking a new era in the development of import and export credit system of customs,”Li told the media.

He said the memorandum was signed by 39 government agencies including NDRC, GACC and People’s Bank of China, hoping to help the government in curbing out discredited enterprises and individuals.

The memorandum of cooperation for joint punitive measures was released four months after a separate memorandum was signed for joint incentives measures for honest individuals and enterprises.

”Enterprises with good credits are entitled to joint incentives while discredited enterprises are subject to punitive actions,” Li said.

Li said the joint punitive measures have been summed up to five categories namely: blacklist discredited enterprises; stiff cr ed i t eval uat i on; strengthen verification and inspection; measures that restrict activities; and, use punitive measures as reference in setting import and export quota allocation limit.

The GACC official also said the memorandum of cooperation is part of the customs efforts to improve supervision in import and export field line with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

”GACC is supporting the Chinese companies going global with the coming of the Belt and Road Initiative," Li said.

Li also announced that GACC has also signed major cooperation agreements with other countries like Singapore, Republic of Korea, Hong Kong of China, European Union, Switzerland and recently with New Zealand.

”Some of them have been implemented officials and trade volume with these countries has exceed 40 percent of our export total and the number is swelling,” he said.

He added that negotiations are ongoing with other countries from Southeast Asia, Russia, Kazakstan, Israel and India.