More deadbeats forced to pay up

Shanghai courts have taken action against 6,049 former defendants who have balked at paying court-ordered compensation by garnishing wages, freezing bank accounts and old fashioned public shaming, local media reported Thursday.

Shanghai Higher People's Court launched a campaign in November 2011 that aimed to force thousands of former defendants who owed compensation to pay up.

Shanghai Higher People's Court reported that the local court system has taken action against 171 percent more of these deadbeat defendants than it had in the 12 months before the campaign started, the Oriental Morning Post reported Thursday.

To accomplish this task, the court not only garnished wages and tapped bank accounts, but also publicized the defendants' transgressions in their own neighborhoods, said Zhang Guanqun, press officer with Shanghai Higher People's Court. Local courts have posted their names on court websites and put up notices in their neighborhoods to pressure them into paying.

The court employed these methods for people who lacked stable incomes. "For people with a job, we can get their employers to help us take the money out of their salaries. We can also freeze their bank accounts and take the money to pay the court-ordered compensation," Zhang told the Global Times.

The public notices can help the courts find former defendants who might be hiding money from the authorities. "If we find evidence that these people are still living in a way that shows they can actually pay the compensation they owe, we can charge them with refusing to comply with a court order, which can be punished with 15 days in jail," Zhang said.

In the campaign's first year, the courts detained 18 deadbeat defendants for refusing to comply with court rulings.

Zhang did not reveal the total number of deadbeat defendants in the city or how much money they owed. As of April, they had identified 12,006 people who had refused to pay court-ordered compensation.

Shanghai Higher People's Court has also stopped 1,164 people from leaving the country so they can't avoid paying what they owe, the news report said.

China lacks a comprehensive consumer credit tracking system, which would help prevent people from shirking their debts, said Gao Ming, a lawyer from Shanghai Wanfang Law Firm.

"Because it will take time to set up a credit system, local courts need to impose tougher sentences on these deadbeat defendants to protect their authority," Gao told the Global Times.