In 2011, a 17-year-old in China sold his kidney because he couldn’t afford Apple’s coveted new tech gadgets. Sadly, he is now on dialysis after his remaining kidney became infected and failed. The man’s story may be unusual, but it highlights pervasive problems plaguing China’s booming economy: a skewed sense of the value of things and lack of knowledge about how to manage money.
These problems point to a deeper, underlying cultural reticence to discuss money and wealth. “In China, people are ashamed to talk about money,” says Nini Mao, who started Very FQ Educational Technology Corp., a financial literacy education company, in 2015. This reluctance, along with the financial illiteracy that has resulted, has far-reaching consequences. Every year in China, millions of families fall victim to financial crimes and loan frauds. Lack of financial literacy education—either in schools or by families—threatens family happiness, dampens economic growth, and worsens poverty.