On November 11, 2025, a topic labeled “Woman unable to withdraw deposits from Construction Bank after nearly 30 years” briefly entered the top ten trending topics on Weibo.
Recently, Ms. Gu from Shanghai filed a complaint against the Construction Bank’s Huangpu branch, as she was unable to cash out two fixed-term deposit certificates from 1997 for three months.
Ms. Gu stated that on August 11 and September 9, 1997, she deposited a three-year housing savings account at the Huangpu branch of China Construction Bank in Shanghai, with an agreement for automatic renewal after the three-year term, with each deposit amounting to 3000 yuan. Calculating the interest accrued over the years, it amounted to over 2000 yuan.
In June of this year, she went to the Huangpu branch of the Construction Bank to withdraw money. At that time, the counter staff informed her that due to the longer time span of the deposit certificates, they needed to verify the information in the backend before releasing the funds. Ms. Gu cooperated with the bank’s procedures and agreed to wait for the bank’s notification before attempting to withdraw the funds. However, after waiting for three months, she did not receive any communication from the bank.
The branch staff explained that there was an error in the process due to the inclusion of a rare Chinese character in Ms. Gu’s name that the system did not recognize. As a result, all deposit certificates were marked with a different character and manually revised, leading to difficulties in locating the original certificates.
According to a report by Shanghai’s KNEWS news on KNEWS, Ms. Gu mentioned that all other deposit certificates from the same period were successfully paid out, casting doubt on the bank’s explanation.
A lawyer pointed out that according to the Commercial Bank Law, banks are required to honor deposits upon presentation. If a depositor holds genuine deposit certificates and the bank cannot prove them to be falsified, they must honor the withdrawal. Following journalists’ inquiries, Construction Bank acknowledged it was a system issue and was in the process of retrieving the original documents, but as of now, the matter remains unresolved, and Ms. Gu is still waiting for her deposits and interests.
The incident has raised concerns about deposit security and the handling of such cases by Construction Bank, leading to widespread criticism.
Netizens expressed their opinions, highlighting the delay in retrieving the original documents as a significant problem. They emphasized that technical upgrades should not be used as excuses and that internal bank issues should not shift the burden onto customers. They called for regulatory authorities to intervene to prevent customers from bearing the consequences unfairly.
Many reiterated the importance of banks guaranteeing the security and timely access to deposits, as delays and technical issues eroded consumer trust in financial institutions.
Such incidents not only impact individuals’ financial security but also raise questions about the overall trust and reliability of domestic banks.