Illustration: Peter C. Espina /GT

Karl Marx once wrote, "With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent will produce eagerness, 50 percent positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime which it will not scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged."

When it comes to Chinese society, it doesn't even take 100 percent profit to get people to trample on basic decency. Take the recent scandal over nude pictures as IOUs on social media platforms. It is reported that many Chinese students, especially female students, have been giving nude photos to lenders to secure loans through social media. With a clear photo of a naked borrower holding his or her ID card, he or she can get 15,000 yuan ($2,282) credit with a maximum of 36 months in installment payments.

However, the loans come with huge interest rates of up to 30 percent a week. If the student cannot pay the extortionate vig on the illegal loan, the lender will put his or her nude photo online.

The credit varies based on the borrower's education background and appearance. An undergraduate who studies at a first-class university is expected to get larger loans than those who do not. For girl borrowers, those with better looks, whose photos may spread faster and cause them more embarrassment, can also secure more loans than the ones with ordinary looks.

Obviously, the profit-driven lenders have a keen insight into the need for cash and lack of common sense among college students. Perhaps the lesson these students have really learnt from growing up in today's society is that trading your body for money is the way to get ahead. Some of them might be raising money out of real need, but others are risking their future for nothing more than the appeal of consumer goods or an attempt to keep up with their richer peers.

But the collateral on offer isn't something with real value like property or jewels, but the logic that with the sense of shame and the imposed notion of chastity our society has formed around women's bodies, the creepy and exploitative predators behind them can force women into submission.

It is hard to say which comes first, the college students' demand for money or nude pictures as IOUs. The relationship between supply and demand is like that between chickens and eggs. Which comes first is an eternal argument. But to end this vicious circle, the authorities should take the responsibility for regulating the market and private lending behavior. After all, the public, especially college students, are in a financially weak position, while the lenders have other, more decent ways to use their money.

At the same time, college students should place themselves in a proper position. Using their naked photos as mortgage for money is the last thing they should be learning from their education.

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. wangwenwen@globaltimes.com.cn