07/08/23 - Illegal Bridge-Building Edition!

[By coincidence, weibo today is completely occupied by one legal case, so I guess you’re getting nothing but illegal bridge content today!]

Luo Xiang (an extremely famous law professor in China who uploads his lectures to the internet) posted a video explaining a case which happened recently. “You might’ve seen this on the news recently, that a villager in Jilin Province, Huang, was convicted of Disturbing the Peace for building a bridge. According to the media, Huang grew up around Yaoer River. This river made the villagers’ daily commute incredibly inconvenient. Huang had 5 brothers, and his family has always worked in the ferry business, taking people across the river. In 2014, Huang welded together 13 of his boats to create a permanent floating bridge.

In 2018, the local Water Resource Bureau forced him to take down the bridge because it was illegally built, and sentenced him to fines. After he took down the bridge, Huang thought this whole thing was over. But in February, 2019, he was arrested by the local police station for Disturbing the Peace. His brothers and other family members were also arrested. Around July of 2019, the local prosecutor took him to court with the charge of Disturbing the Peace. And on the 31st of December of the same year, the local court ruled that he and 17 members of his family were all guilty, and they’ve been sentenced to 2 years prison time to 3 months in jail, depending on their individual circumstances. But everyone was able to get probation. That sentence has already ended by now.

The judgement from the court says that Huang charged tolls for people and cars using his bridge, 5 RMB for small cars, 10 RMB for trucks and buses, and stopped traffic in order to extract tolls, earning a total of 52,950 RMB. The court believes this behaviour to be forcibly taking others’ property, causing a bad influence on society, destroying social order to a severe degree, fitting the standards for the crime of Disturbing the Peace.

There are four behaviours that fall under the crime Disturbing the Peace. The first type is random fighting. The second is chasing after people, stopping people from leaving, and insulting and intimidating behaviour. The third is forcibly taking or destroying or occupying public or private property. The fourth is causing an incident in a public space, causing severe break down in order.

So in this case, the court believes Huang’s behaviour falls under the third category. So what is forcibly taking money? It’s when you are forced against your will to hand your money to somebody. But according to new reports, in that 52,950 RMB that Huang made, the person that he charged the most frequently is fellow villager Li. Li paid a total of 20,000. According to interviews with Huang and Li, after the court returned this 20K to Li, Li once again gave it back to Huang, because Li believes that Huang’s bridge really brought a tremendous convenience to the village.

And Huang also claims that he spent over 130,000 RMB of his own money on welding the boats together and building a bridge out of them. The only reason he charged a toll is to make back that cost. He claims to never have taken any money by force. The villagers all voluntarily wanted to pay. He never stopped anyone from crossing the bridge if they didn’t pay. The media also reported that Li and other villagers from both banks of the river, including the mayors of the villages, all gave statements that Huang’s claims are true.

If what they are saying is true, then the toll was voluntary. Then it can’t possibly fall under the category of forcibly taking other’s property. There’s no force. How can there be a crime in voluntarily given fees?

Objectively speaking, forcibly taking or destroying public or private property also has to occur at a scale which disturbs societal order. If a bridge fulfilled the people’s desires, then not only did it not disturb societal order, it reinforced it. No matter how you look at it, it’s not a crime.

Because crimes have to be something which infringed upon somebody’s rights. If a behaviour does not infringe on anyone’s rights, and in fact lowers the risks that people’s rights will be infringed upon, then it’s not a dangerous behaviour. It’s a helpful behaviour.

So if Zhang San (the most generic of Chinese names, famous used by this professor in all his examples) sees a giant rock falling from the sky, about to land on the head of Li Si (also famously generic name frequently used in this professor’s examples), so he pushes Li Si as hard as he can, and the giant rock didn’t land on Li Si’s head. But he does fall to the ground quite hard and broke his leg. In this case, Zhang San was not doing something bad. He’s doing a good thing. He lowered the risk that Li Si’s life or rights will be in danger. So this shouldn’t count as assault legally speaking.

The Treatise on the Response of the Tao says, “Building bridges and roads is the highest form of goodness.” And acts of goodness shouldn’t be illegal.

According to Farmer’s Daily News, after this bridge was taken down, the need for the people to commute was never solved. From the time that the bridge was taken down in 2018, to when the media began writing about this story, the local government has not made any plans to build a bridge. The villagers find it very inconvenient to go anywhere. Now that the bridge is gone, some farmers need to go 70 kilometres out of their way in order to travel to the other bank of the river to farm their fields or get produce. A 10 minute journey is now over three hours long.

China’s Water Law’s 65th line says that it is illegal to build bridges without approval from the Water Bureau, and any bridges built illegally has to stop construction immediately when ordered to, and immediately apply for the necessary license. If you delay in applying for the license or fail to obtain one, then you must take down the bridge in the deadlines that you are given. And if you fail to take down the bridge in time, then it will be forcibly dismantled by the government, and you will be responsible for the costs associated. And you will face a fine between 10K to 100K.

So obviously, although the law considers building a bridge without license to be illegal behaviour, the most severe punishment it provides is restricted to fines and administrative penalties. There is no grounds for criminal punishments or jail time. And people are allowed to apply for a license after the fact. They are not required to always dismantle the bridge. In cases where the bridge is vital to the people’s need to commute especially, you should not go about recklessly dismantling bridges.

This is because in the Administrative Penalties Law, the 33rd line requires that in the case of minor illegal action that is immediately corrected, which has not caused severe consequences, administrative penalties should not be applied. So even if you believe that he does not have the paperwork necessary to build this bridge, so long as he has not caused any negative outcomes, then he should not be subject to any administrative penalties, let alone criminal punishments.

The I-Ching says, “A family which collects goodness will surely have plenty to celebrate.” So the law should not make a family which collects goodness suffer this kind of blow back. Otherwise, you will be going against people’s sense of morality and the world’s common sense.

So after his sentencing, Huang appealed, which was denied by the courts. So this year, on the 26th of June, Huang once again appealed to a higher court. According to news reports, the court was supposed to handle his case starting on the 29th, and they’re currently in the middle of hearing his case.

There is a famous couplet in the Wu Hou Shrine (which celebrates Liu Bei, Zhuge Liang, and other Shu Three Kingdoms people). The first line reads, “If you can attack the heart, then all your enemies will disappear—from ancient times we’ve known that soldiers do not love to fight.” The second line reads, “If you do not read context, then strict or loose punishments are all wrong—we must think carefully when ruling Shu.”

Knowing that soldiers do not want to fight, focus your tactics on targeting the heart, in order to break an army apart without ever crossing arms with them. That is the highest form of war. Although laws cannot be overly forgiving, you cannot hand out the strictest form of punishment all the time either. Merciful judgements make for empty jails make for few criminals is something everyone in the legal profession should keep close to their hearts.”

Comments link to a screenshot of a supposed local, saying, “I dunno, let the bullets fly for a while.”

The screenshot reads, “That river dries up all the time after 2000. It only has any water around June or July, when there’s lots of rain. That’s the only time a bridge would be useful. Any other time, cars can find a place where the river bed is relatively flat and just drive across.

But after he built a bridge, he dug up all the places a car could pass over, so that everyone had to use his bridge instead. Everybody hated him locally.

I’ve crossed that bridge lots of times, and never once got to do it for free. And every time I cross the bridge, there are lots of other cars on it. So the official claim of how much he made is probably a severe underestimation. Locals think he’s probably making at least 1K RMB per day off of this bridge. So when they ordered him to dismantle the bridge, he didn’t want to. And when they came to forcibly dismantle the bridge, he tried to fight them to stop them. It’s not wrong at all to sentence him with Disturbing the Peace.”

Below this screenshot, someone else comments, “The guy who built the bridge was a teacher who’s been teaching for 30 years. His friend tried to cross the river through water and drowned. After the bridge was taken down, somebody else drowned in that river trying to cross it. I watched the video. There’s very fast water in that river, and it’s a lot bigger than the river in my hometown. But my hometown’s river has a bridge on it every couple hundred metres apart, and lots of people have built bridges over it for themselves.”

Beijing Headling News is also covering this case. Their report is not that different from the account given by Luo Xiang up there, so I won’t repeat it.

The comment section here says, “You finished a 10 million RMB project for 130K RMB? Is that the kind of thing you expect to get away with?”

“10 million? Please, you couldn’t get this project for anything under 100 million.”

“Disturbing the Peace is just a blank cheque for the government.”

“To cut to the chase, he insulted the authority of the local government, he revealed their ineptitude and uncaring nature, and now they’re embarrassed and mad.”