However, the financial crisis has also hit the property market, with people across China staging a surprise boycott of mortgage payments on their homes. In all, buyers of more than 230 properties in at least 86 cities have joined together to collectively refuse to make mortgage payments on stalled units. The crisis even led to a rare large-scale protest in China’s central Henan province last weekend, which was violently broken up by security personnel. A crowd of more than 1,000 protesters gathered in front of the People’s Bank of China on Sunday to try to recover frozen savings held in rural banks. JUST IN: EU accused of ‘brainwashing’ over war in Ukraine WION’s Palki Sharma explained: “A protest in China was crushed by officials, people who had lost their lives. “In April, four banks in Henan stopped withdrawals. People struggled for months and every protest was met with harsh repression. “The Henan Bank protest is just the beginning of China’s nightmare. Chinese banks have $9.2 trillion in debt. “The scale of the problem is huge. This is a mortgage riot.”
