Beijing struggles to defuse anger over P2P lending crisis

No protest allowed: Petitioners are escorted to a bus by security personnel before being driven away in Beijing last Monday. Hundreds of police swarmed the streets of Beijing’s financial district as Chinese authorities aggressively quashed a planned protest against losses sustained by P2P lending platforms. — AFP

BEIJING: Peter Wang was asleep at his home in Beijing last Monday when police officers arrived before dawn to detain him, saying he had helped organise a protest planned for later that day.

Across the city, others who had lost money investing in China’s online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms – including some who had travelled from as far away as Shandong and Shanxi provinces – got similar visits from police.