Students get protection from loan sharks

The China Banking Regulatory Commission recently launched a series of measures to reduce internet financing risks. One of the measures is aimed at regulating online student loan platforms. It says such platforms or agencies should not grant loans to university students who don't have the capability to pay back, and bans promotions that trick students into borrowing money and ending up paying exorbitantly high interest rates.

The commission's warning comes amid a growing number of students being harassed, even blackmailed, by loan sharks.

In one such case, a female sophomore in a university in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, was forced to flee to her hometown in Hainan province to avoid her creditors, Huashang Daily reported recently. In less than a year, she borrowed about 250,000 yuan ($36,270) from 34 online loan platforms - often borrowing money from one to repay the loan taken from another. She confessed spending most of the money on cosmetics.