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Thursday July 26, 2018

At a Glance

Train intervalsSHENZHEN Metro Co. has shortened train interval on Line 11 during rush hours to 4 minutes and 10 seconds. Line 11 now handles about 400,000 riders a day, dou-bling when it was put into use two years ago.Mobike functionTHE operator of Mobike added a new function by allowing its users to unlock the bike without scanning the QR code. However, the user needs to activate the smartphone’s bluetooth and press “unlock” key on the app.

The new function solves the diffi culty of using bikes when the QR codes have been defaced.Road closuresHONGHUA Road, Binlang Road and Zijing Road in Futian District will remain closed until Jan. 24, 2019, due to the construction of the extension of Metro Line 3.Magnetic cardsTHE use of social insurance cards with magnetic stripes will be suspended in August and they would be replaced by cards with chips. It takes about 20 days to have a chip card delivered after applying. Residents can apply for a tem-porary card if their chip cards are not ready.

Advances in judicial reform called for

SHENZHEN police recently caught a criminal gang and arrested 12 suspects that had defrauded more than 300 college students. The case involved more than 10 million yuan (US$1.47 million), according to Xinhua News Agency.

A student of a vocational col-lege in Shenzhen surnamed Chen wanted to buy a new mobile phone. He contacted a lender who was engaged in making small loans through a class-mate. The lender asked Chen to write an IOU before giving him the money and said Chen could return the money whenever he wanted.

Chen signed the IOU without discussing the details and quickly received 6,000 yuan. However, not long after he got the money, he was told that he would be charged 30 percent in interest every fi ve days. If he failed to return the money on time, the overdue charge would be 500 yuan per hour.

As Chen was unable to return the money by the due date, he was told to borrow more money from other lending companies. Nevertheless, Chen could only get 20,000 yuan if he borrowed 100,000 yuan from the com-pany. The rest would be trans-ferred back to the company as interest, deposit and service payments.

Moreover, the company asked Chen to mail a list of phone num-bers and WeChat friends to them in order to urge his relatives and friends to pay his debt.

“I owed them 6,000 yuan at the beginning. But I can’t fi gure out how much I owe them now, because all of the IOUs are in their hands,” said Chen.

A woman surnamed Wang said her child borrowed 5,000 yuan at the start, but the debt had reached over a million yuan in half a year.

“The lender would threaten us when my child failed to repay the money. As parents, we felt like this was the end of the world,” said Wang.

According to Yuan Chengbin, a police offi cer from Taoyuan Police Station in Nanshan Dis-trict, the victims in this case are all college students and their families. “These college students generally lack social experience and knowledge about fi nance and law. Therefore, they are easy to be tempted and deceived,” he said.

Yuan said the lenders usually fi nd easy targets among college students and then force them to sign a contract before letting them to read it. Additionally, the exorbitant overdue fees are often decided by the lenders, can be charged by the day, hour, or even minute.

(Zhang Yu)

Students fall victim to usurious loan scam

ONLINE payment has gradually changed the way many people consume, but some residents still prefer to pay by cash and fi nd that they are sometimes unfairly treated by shops and business owners, the Daily Sun-shine reported.

An offi ce worker, who gave only her family name Yang, said she likes paying by cash although most of her co-workers choose to leave their wallets and cash at home. Recently, Yang fi nds that a lot of shops will no longer take cash and ask her to pay by WeChat or Alipay.

Another resident, surnamed Wang, has encountered the same thing. When dining at a hotpot restaurant in Longhua District, Wang was told to order food on his phone by scanning a QR-code

provided on the table. When it came time to pay the bill, Wang found that he could only pay on his phone and the restaurant said it was because they were promot-ing the self-help service.

A waiter at the restaurant said they only accept payment through WeChat, Alipay or bank cards. If customers insist on paying with cash, the staffers will collect their cash and help them pay through their own online payment apps.

A staffer said that their boss had received a few hundred yuan in counterfeit banknotes on one occasion, so he decided to cancel cash payment.

Also, some group-buying apps offer discount coupons for cus-tomers who pay online, but cash payers can’t enjoy the discounts.

Third-party payment compa-nies in China have been con-stantly promoting their services in recent years by giving out discounts to promote a “cash-free society.”

On Aug. 8, 2015, WeChat Pay-ment launched a “Cash-free Day” campaign. Public data showed that 80,000 businesses joined the promotion in 2015, and the number soared to 700,000 the next year.

In 2017, Alipay also put forward the“cash free”concept and claimed that it hoped to accelerate China’s development of “cash-free society” in fi ve years’ time.

To attract users to pay online, the third-party payment plat-forms offer discounts and award consumers, which makes some

people who pay with cash feel they are being treated unfairly.

A woman surnamed Qin said one time she shopped at a cloth-ing store and paid cash. However, another customer paid on WeChat and earned discounts on certain items. “Although I know the busi-ness owner was just encouraging online payment, I felt I was being discriminated against for paying cash,” said Qin.

A report on China’s Internet development in 2018 showed that by the end of 2017 there were 527 million online pay-ment users.

On July 13, the central bank issued a public notice announc-ing that all work units, businesses and individuals shall not refuse to take cash in any form.

(Zhang Qian)

Some residents fi nd ‘online payment only’ unfair

A COUPLE, who had been engaged to marry in October, were hit by a car while jaywalk-ing hand-in-hand across Bao’an Boulevard in Bao’an District on Monday morning.

The man surnamed Zhou was killed and the woman surnamed Yuan was injured.

A video clip provided by police showed the couple had crossed half of the road and were ready to cross the other half.

At around 2:22 a.m., they stopped in the middle of the lanes for southbound vehicles on the boulevard. Two vehicles fl ashed their lights to signal them and passed them.

About 20 seconds later, an SUV came traveling in the second lane. The couple attempted to back up to evade the vehicle, but the SUV was moving very fast and knocked them more than 10 meters.

The video showed that there was a footbridge near the scene.

According to Bao’an police, a similar accident happened there earlier this month. On July 4, a man was killed by a car while crossing Bao’an Boulevard.

There is a footbridge not very far from the accident scene, but the victims chose the dangerous way to cross the road. Police advised pedestrians to follow traffi c rules. (Han Ximin)

Man killed jaywalking, girlfriend injured

Former women’s badminton world champion Gong Ruina receives a certifi cate from Tan Yunlong, director of the competition department of China Badminton Association, at Futian Cultural Hall yesterday. Gong will be the ambassador of the Shenzhen leg of the 2018 First National DXNBZ Junior Badminton Tournament. The matches of the Shenzhen leg will be held at Futian Sports Park from Aug. 10 to 12. Sun Yuchen

Teenagers badminton championship to start

A SENIOR offi cial of the Com-munist Party of China (CPC) has called for advances in judicial system reform.

Guo Shengkun, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Com-mission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Com-mittee, made the call at a meeting on pushing judicial reform held in Shenzhen on Tuesday.

Guo spoke of the need to make progress in rule of law and build-

ing a socialist judicial system with Chinese characteristics.

He stressed the absolute lead-ership of the Party and a people-centered approach to reform. He also emphasized that the system needed to be well-organized, effective and professional.

Meanwhile, at the meeting, courts and procuratorates are ordered to further streamline structures to let more judicial personnel work at the forefront of case-handling.

The Internet court should expand its pilot areas and a state-level system can be explored to hear appeals of intellectual prop-erty cases, according to the meet-ing. The public interest litigation system should be reformed while the establishment of a prosecutor assistant system can be tested.

Police departments need to be restructured. Areas of deepening reform also include government legislation, administrative review, prisons, community cor-

rection, and compulsory isolated drug rehabilitation.

China aims its judicial reform at strengthening its judicial organs’ capability in maintaining social justice by optimizing the structure of the judicial organs and allocation of their functions and power, standardizing judi-cial acts, and enhancing judicial democracy and legal supervi-sion, according to a white paper on judicial reform issued by the State Council in 2012. (Xinhua)