Debt at a distance: Counter-collection strategies and financial subjectivities of China’s working-class defaulters during COVID-19

Abstract

This paper undertakes an analysis of publicly posted videos sharing debtors’ strategies for responding to overzealous credit collection agencies during the earliest stages of the pandemic lockdown. It examines how Chinese debtors and credit collection callers responded to the uncertainties surrounding the handling of personal debts when the debtors’ economic activities are heavily restricted. Both parties invoked different imagined collectivities to establish their own moral justifications with regards to debt obligations, state regulations and family values. The paper argues for a recognition of the capacity of debt to collectivize people through loose discursive formations that remoralize debt, recasting the defaulter status as morally acceptable and reshaping their defaulter identities. The imaginative and discursive space built upon debt’s collectivizing potential presents a valuable analytical tool for understanding the social dimensions of debt and the dynamic emerging of financial subjectivities in the contemporary era.

Keywords:

• credit
• debt collection
• defaulter identity
• financial subjectivity
• media
• morality

Acknowledgements

An early draft of this paper was presented at the November 2020 workshop ‘Exploring cre-debt: Ethnographic perspectives, new economic theory (NET) and contemporary cashlessness’ at the University of Copenhagen. We are especially grateful to Atreyee Sen, Camilla Ida Ravnbøl, Christopher Harker and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval statement

Prior to commencing this study, ethical approval had been obtained from the HKU Human Research Ethics Committee (EA1904012).

Notes

1 The average annual disposable income of Chinese residents was 32,198 yuan in 2020 (PRC Government, 2020b).

Additional information

Funding

This research was facilitated by a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant awarded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation: ‘Surviving the Ruins of Hope: Life under China's P2P Lending Crisis’ [no. 9856]. PI: Yichen Rao.

Notes on contributors

Yichen Rao

Yichen Rao is an anthropologist at Liberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan. He is writing an ethnographic monograph, derived from his PhD dissertation, on ordinary fin-tech subjects in China. His dissertation fieldwork and book project have both been funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.

Tom McDonald

Tom McDonald is an anthropologist based at the Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong. His research examines novel formations of digital money, credit and technology. He has published articles in numerous academic journals, including American Anthropologist, China Quarterly and the Journal of Cultural Economy.