Reuters, Beijing In China's version of Squid Game, scammers take advantage of people who are struggling financially in a faltering economy by offering them prize money, debt restructuring, and other scams that don't always live up to expectations.
Chinese athletes participating in "self-discipline" contests do not risk their lives if they lose, in contrast to the dystopian South Korean TV series, which returns to the small screen on Thursday for a second season.

However, judges have discovered that some isolation challenge participants are being defrauded. These players spend hundreds of dollars to stay in a room for days while according to rules in the hopes of winning up to 1 million yuan ($140,000). Regulators are also alerting the public to suspicious debt relief claims.

As the second-largest economy in the world slows down, isolation challenges—which are frequently promoted on Douyin, the Chinese name for TikTok—have become more and more popular this year. In the three months leading up to September, it grew at the slowest rate in over a year, prompting authorities to promise new initiatives to raise household incomes, among other things.

The lengthy lists of regulations in the challenges include prohibitions on touching the alarm clock more than twice a day and toilet breaks that last no more than fifteen minutes.

When they fail to make it through their first day due to violations captured on security cameras, which they contest, many athletes complain.

The contract was deemed unjust and "violated public order and good morals" by a court in the eastern province of Shandong in October, which ordered an organizer to reimburse 5,400 yuan ($740) in sign-up fees to a player with the last name Sun.

By surviving a 30-day isolation challenge with regulations prohibiting smoking, using electronics, drinking alcohol, and interacting with anyone outside the room, Sun was attempting to win 250,000 yuan.
The challenge's organizers claimed that Sun had violated the rule against players hiding their faces by covering them with a pillow on the third day.

ByteDance, the company that owns Douyin, and the Cyberspace Administration of China, which controls the nation's internet, did not reply to Reuters' requests for comment.

The public was cautioned on Tuesday by the National Financial Regulatory Administration (NFRA) not to trust "debt intermediaries" that promise to assist people improve their credit profiles or restructure their borrowings.

These intermediaries advertise their services on social media, via text messages, leaflets, and phone calls, saying they can help get new loans or give short-term funding. However, the regulator cautioned that the services are expensive.
The state-backed National Business Daily said that intermediaries impose "service fees" of up to 12% of the loan amount.

The NFRA said that borrowers' personal information may potentially be sold or leaked, and that another scam involves demanding exorbitant fees to supposedly assist debtors in repairing their credit reports.
In November, the total amount of household loans in China was 82.47 trillion yuan ($11.3 trillion). according to central bank data.

($1 = 7.2988 Chinese yuan renminbi)