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Article snippet: HONG KONG — Bai Shichao has a debt problem that is bigger than his paycheck — and that’s a problem for the rest of China, too. Mr. Bai, a 30-year-old Beijing deliveryman, has borrowed heavily from China’s growing ranks of online cash lenders. In a country that lacks reliable ways to tell who might be a good borrower, these lenders use artificial intelligence and oddly personal data — like tracking how fast prospective borrowers type on their phones — to determine who will pay them back. With Mr. Bai, they have failed. First he borrowed to start a business. When that went bust, he borrowed to bet on coal, rapeseed oil and sugar on China’s futures markets. Soon Mr. Bai began borrowing from one lender to pay another. Today, Mr. Bai is more than $5,000 in debt, on a paycheck of less than $600 a month. “It’s like gambling,” said Mr. Bai, a university dropout who has cycled through a series of menial jobs like security guard and waiter. “You start to gamble. Soon you get addicted to it.” With more than $100 billion worth of loans and rising worries among Chinese consumers about privacy, Beijing is moving to rein in a freewheeling, well-funded boom in online personal loans. In November, the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, stopped companies and people from starting new online cash lending platforms. In early December, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said it would crack down on unlicensed cash loan companies and put a lid on high-interest loans... Link to the full article to read more