Another brick in the (Great) wall…

Those nations worrying about how to pay if and when China decides to call in their debt, they now have a very viable answer: bricks. After all, that seems to be acceptable currency in China these days.

This month, 30 migrant workers in a kiln in south-eastern China who were collectively owed arrears of 90,000 yuan have been paid with 290,000 bricks with the permission of the local labour authority. That means each got enough bricks to build a house; but considering their villages are thousands of kilometres from their workplace, how they are expected cart them back there is unclear.

They are obviously supposed to sell the bricks and pocket the money, but that begs the question why the kiln owner did not do exactly that and pay their arrears in cash.


Curiously, in 2016, a Chinese-owned brick company in Zimbabwe did precisely the same thing when it came to paying the arrears of 100 local workers. Worse still, the Chinese firm’s move also struck other Zimbabwean businesses as a good alternative for back pay and at least three did so. No wonder that country’s parliament came down on them like, well, a ton of bricks. But could Russia be the real inspiration for China? After all, in 2015, a building materials factory in Russia’s Tula region also fell back on bricks to pay 900,000 roubles ($13,000) worth of wage arrears.