Source: China Daily

12-14-2008 15:18

By Zhang Ran (China Daily)

In 2002, 20-year-old Xie Ning took part in an international study exchange program as a student from Peking University to study in Europe. He also decided to take the chance to travel across the continent during summer vacation.

It was his first time abroad. But to his disappointment, he found all the hotels including economic youth hostels required a credit card to make reservations. At that time, he did not have a credit card and did not even know what a visa card looked like. It was the busy travel season, and without any reservations, Xie had to stay in railway stations for two nights, and sometimes pay the hefty price of $150 for a one-night hotel room.

"It was a very awkward traveling experience," Xie recalls. "For the first time I realized one can do nothing without a little card in a modern world. But back in China, it was something merely owned by the affluent or white-collars."

There are many Chinese young people who now have two or three credit cards in their pockets, yet shared stories as Xie's a few years ago.

It was not until 2003 that China started to witness a credit card boom. Though the number of credit cards in the mainland has doubled each year for the last five years, for a quite long time the credit card's development was slow and sluggish.