The son of a Chinese billionaire who infamously bought two luxury Apple Watch Editions for his pet dog has been placed on the country’s official list of financially discredited individuals.
A court decision means that he can no longer fly first class, go on expensive vacations, or buy luxury products. Unless he’s bought new Apple Watches in the meantime, that should severely curtail his pet’s future time-keeping abilities!
31-year-old Wang Sicong is the son of real-estate magnate Wang Jianlin. Jianlin has a net worth of around $12.6 billion dollars. Sicong made waves in 2015 when he bought his pooch the ultra-expensive Apple Watch Editions, worth upward of $10,000 each.
“I have new watches!” Sicong’s dog “wrote” on Chinese microblogging site Weibo at the time. “I’m supposed to have four watches since I have four long legs. But that seems too uncouth, so I kept it down to two, which totally fits my status. Do you have one?”
Unfortunately for Sicong, his big spending ways seem to have caught up with him. He recent failed to obey a court order ordering one of his businesses to pay $530,000 to a business rivals. In a separate case, he was listed as owing $21.5 million by a court in Beijing.
As a result, he has been placed on a debtor’s order which stops him from buying anything considered luxuries. This includes flying first class, buying luxury goods, taking high-speed trains, staying in high-end hotels, clubbing, playing golf, buying properties, and more.
China’s discredited individuals act
China introduced its “discredited individuals” list in 2013. This was shortly before China’s State Council introduced its social credit system plan. This proposal aims to influence citizens by penalizing bad behaviour and rewarding good deeds. In addition to the aforementioned list of buying bans, in some instances people on the list also have a special ringtone put on their phones to mark them out.
“It’s even worse than doing time because at least there’s a limit to a prison sentence,” one person previously described the scheme. “Being on the list means that as long as you can’t clear your debts in full, your name will always be there.”
Currently there are around 13 million people on the discredited individual list. Recently, I wrote about how Smartisan Technology CEO Luo Yonghao has also been put on the list. Yonghao, as the CEO of a a struggling Chinese smartphone maker, has been a vocal critic of Apple in the past. He was put on the credit blacklist due to his owing money.
Source: Daily Mail
