In late April this year, hundreds of villagers in Liuyuan Village, Luwang Town, Dawu County, Hubei Province, discovered that they had unknowingly been registered for individual business licenses. Shockingly, even villagers who had passed away nearly 10 years ago were found to have been registered for business licenses.
According to reports from Xinjing News and Qilu Evening News, villagers in Liuyuan Village, Luwang Town, Dawu County, Hubei Province, recently revealed that over a hundred villagers had business licenses registered under their names without their knowledge. In some cases, a single household had been registered for up to 5 business licenses.
Mr. Wang, a villager from Liuyuan Village, stated that they only discovered the registration of their family for individual business licenses when they needed subsidies for their parents’ illnesses.
Mr. Wang’s father was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2019 and underwent surgery, resulting in severe vision impairment. He was recognized as a fourth-degree disabled person by the local authorities. When applying for medical subsidies in 2020, it was discovered that a business entity was registered under his name, rendering him ineligible for the benefits.
“We had no knowledge of this registered business license,” Mr. Wang expressed. Consequently, Mr. Wang assisted in canceling the business license. However, local authorities found that two new individual business licenses had been registered under his name, once again disqualifying him from subsidy eligibility.
When Mr. Wang’s mother suffered a sudden heart attack, he had to raise money for her emergency heart surgery. Upon attempting to apply for social welfare to support his mother, they were informed that she, too, had been registered for a business license. This situation led Mr. Wang’s family to miss out on essential subsidies.
Mr. Wang grew suspicious and conducted an online search, discovering that his family of three had been registered for a total of 5 individual business licenses.
After Mr. Wang shared his experience in the village’s WeChat group, several other villagers also found themselves unknowingly registered for business licenses.
Upon investigation, it was revealed that even Mr. Liu, a villager who had passed away nearly 10 years ago, had a registered business license that was still listed as “active” on the business system, described as an agricultural enterprise.
Villagers questioned whether their identities were being misused for illicit purposes, such as fraudulently obtaining agricultural subsidies, applying for loans, or manipulating business performance reports. Mr. Liu emphasized that misusing citizens’ personal information is illegal.
Authorities at the village and county levels denied involvement in the matter, with officials refusing media interviews. A similar scandal unfolded last month in Datong City, Shanxi Province, where local government officials inflated the number of registered market entities to create a facade of economic vitality.
Starting from April 2022, Yanggao County was assigned a “doubling of market entities” mission, with tasks cascading down from the county to towns and villages. Village officials were tasked with registering new enterprises to meet the monthly quotas, leading to the registration of over 200 companies from August 2022 to February 2024.
As the pressure to meet targets intensified, restrictions on individual registrations were relaxed, prompting village officials to register multiple business licenses under their own names to fulfill the quotas.
In mid-2023, a new task focused on improving the quality of market entities in addition to quantity, shifting the assessment criteria to include newly registered businesses. This push for market expansion was not exclusive to Shanxi Province; Yunnan Province also implemented similar measures to boost economic activity, aiming to increase the number of listed companies on prominent rankings by 2025.
While provincial governments like Yunnan implemented policies encouraging market expansion, they also faced challenges such as the recurrent enforcement of stringent lockdown measures resulting in business closures and dire consequences for residents.