Over the past few years, China has increasingly relied on real estate-backed loans from pawn stores. Pawn shops in the country provided $43 billion worth of loans in 2017 while the number of these stores has doubled since 2010 to more than 8,500, Bloomberg reported. Crucially, more than half the loans in 2017 were backed by real estate. Borrowers for these loans are not required to disclose how the money will be used, according to […]