中国大妈“讨债团”因涉黑被判刑
最近，中国一法院判处14名中老年妇女“讨债团”成员最高11年监禁，这是中国整治非正式贷款渠道的最新迹象。
A court in the mountainous province of Henan this week found that members of the “granny gang”, as local media dubbed them, used loudspeakers to publicly cajole and intimidate borrowers into paying up.
本周河南省一法院发现“大妈涉黑团”——当地媒体称呼——成员使用扬声器公开劝诱和恐吓借款人还钱。
The women, aged 50 to 70, were found guilty of engaging in “provocative and disturbing behaviour” that resembled “participating in gangster-like organisations”.
这群妇女年龄在50岁至70岁之间，被判犯有“组织、领导、参加黑社会性质组织罪和寻衅滋事罪”。
The women were largely unemployed and looking for work when local debt-collection agencies recruited them at outdoor dancing classes in 2013. In return for helping secure loan repayments, the “grannies” received Rmb200 ($30) per day as well as meals.
这些妇女基本无业，2013年她们在跳广场舞时被当地讨债机构招募。“大妈们”帮助讨债的报酬为每天200元人民币(合30美元)，而且管饭。
“I had nothing to do every day. When I was asked to help, I did it as a kind of fun,” Gao Yun, one of the women, told a local newspaper.
其中一名妇女高云(化名)向当地一家报纸表示：“我每天都没事情干，玩得好的叫去帮忙，我就去了，就当是好玩。”
The grannies employed a variety of tactics, including hitting and spitting at borrowers. A more common method was to give debtors an aggressive verbal dressing down until they handed over the money.
这些大妈采取了各种手段，包括殴打借款人，向借款人吐痰等。较常见的做法是强烈地辱骂债务人，直到他们还钱。
On their most recalcitrant targets, the women took more creative measures. In one 2015 incident, eight of the women began stripping to intimidate male borrowers to pay up, according to an interview that a debtor surnamed Zhao gave to local media.
对于最顽固的欠款人，大妈们采取了更有创意的做法。据被害人赵某对当地媒体陈述，2015年8名妇女见到男性借款人就开始脱自己的衣服，威胁对方还钱。
“Loan sharks use these methods frequently: harassing a person, encircling them, going to their workplace and not leaving,” said Han Chuanhua, a lawyer at Beijing’s Zhongzhi Law Office. “Using grannies or elderly people is just one of the ways I have seen loan sharks do this to collect debts.”
北京中咨律师事务所(Zhongzi Law Office)律师韩传华表示：“高利贷者经常使用这些方法：骚扰一个人，围着他们，去他们工作单位待着不走。用大妈或老人只是我见过的高利贷讨债方式之一。”
The case of the granny gang is the latest in a string of lurid incidents over debt collection in China.
“大妈涉黑团”是中国一系列耸人听闻的讨债事件中的最新一起。
Central bank statistics show that non-bank lending is one of the fastest-growing forms of credit in the country. Because China lacks a uniform credit system — making access to financing difficult — borrowers often turn to an informal network of shadow banks for loans that can carry interest rates as high as 10 to 15 per cent per month.
据中国央行统计显示，非银行贷款是中国发展最快的贷款形式之一。由于中国缺乏统一的信贷制度，加大了融资难度，借款人往往会转向非正式的影子银行网络获得贷款，其利率可高达每月10%至15%。
However, shadow lenders do not have legal recourse to recover loans, meaning collectors sometimes turn to unorthodox and even violent tactics to press borrowers into repaying. China’s economic boom was in part financed by high-interest credit, but growing defaults on debt are now exposing the darker side of such financing.
但是，影子贷款人无法求助法律来追回贷款，这意味着讨债人有时会转而采取非正统的，甚至暴力的策略来迫使借款人还款。中国的经济繁荣部分是由高利贷资助的，但越来越多的债务违约正在揭示此类融资的黑暗面。
In February, a 23-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison after killing a debt collector and wounding three others after they assaulted his mother. The case fuelled public outrage over the aggressive methods of loan sharks.
今年2月，一名23岁的男子因几个讨债人侮辱他的母亲，反抗时造成讨债人一死三伤，因此被判处无期徒刑。这起案件激起了公众对高利贷暴力讨债的愤慨。
Last year, authorities disrupted a ring of blackmailers offering high-interest, short-term loans. Under the scheme, borrowers — mostly young university students — were required to submit nude selfies as collateral, which loan sharks threatened to leak if they failed to pay up.
去年，有关部门打掉了一批提供短期高利贷的勒索者。按照该贷款方案，借款人——大多是年轻的高校学生——被要求提交自己的裸照作为抵押品，高利贷者威胁如果他们不还钱，这些裸照就会被泄露。
However, kidnapping still remains the most common method for extorting payment. In late July, a group of investors took the employees of an Australian brokerage in Shanghai hostage after the company lost $2.6m in foreign currency trades that week. All hostages were eventually released.
不过，绑架仍然是强行讨债最常见的方法。7月下旬在上海，一群投资者扣留了一家澳大利亚券商的员工，因为该公司当周亏损了260万美元的外汇交易。所有人质最终被释放。
