What an interesting case! It's interesting how the question of bridge safety doesn't seem to be a part of this conversation. Maybe 'boats' is a less questionable material choice than tofu construction? I also couldn't help but notice the comment about the river disappearing... certainly seems like that's a bigger injustice than the diy toll bridge. Instead, the focus is all on whether the toll was fair or not. That feels like the most subjective part of the whole case, but maybe that's also why it's generating so much discussion.
I know right? I spent quite a while trying to figure out how you build a bridge out of 13 boats that you can actually safely drive cars over? I think the problem is that his bridge got dismantled before any accidents happened. And if an accident hadn't happened yet, then there's no grounds to sue about that bridge being unsafe. If it actually had collapsed on its own and killed some people, then it would make for a much less controversial case.
The focus is all on whether the toll is fair or not because that's sort of the only grounds on which he's being sentenced. If it turns out the toll is fair, then he shouldn't have even gotten a fine, much less been subject to two years of probation and a criminal record.
The river disappearing might have just not drawn a lot of attention because it seems fairly...commonplace, normal thing to happen? Like, there used to be a river walking distance from my house in my hometown, that my mom used to play when she was a little kid. And it was a fairly substantial river back then. But around the time I was born, the population of my little town exploded a LOT, so they had to hastily build some dams in order to generate power locally, and so that river disappeared. But now there's a dam. But the dam is further away and you have to drive to it. I think this sort of thing must've been happening all around China in various smaller towns.
This is very intersting, thanks for the translation. I'm curious about a few things:
1. How much influence does popular opinion have on court rulings in China? In the US it seems to carry some weight, though the amount depends on whether the trial is by jury or by judge. Do you think that the current Weibo furor will translate into pressure for the higher court to rule one way or another on this case? I guess I'm aware that public opinion seems to have done nothing to change the minds of the local officials responsible in the case of Dong Zhimin.
2. Maybe relatedly, Yashing Huang (at MIT Sloan) claims that Chinese are culturally much less likely to perform civil disobedience through protest &c -- to illustrate he compares the general compliance with draconian zero covid rules in China to ongoing protests in Iran (10 months now!) in response to the death of a single woman. Do you think this holds as a general pattern for China? Why, or what are good counterexamples?
3. What sort of reputation do local governments have in China? Are they generally seen as places that competent people go to do the virtuous work of maintaining the functioning of society, or are they seen as backwater stations to be avoided if at all possible? In the US it's very much the latter, and the corresponding talent pool local governments draw from is quite poor, so they tend to be quite dysfucnctional.
(please don't worry about responding quickly or extensively or at all really)
Popular opinion has a LOT of influence on court rulings, actually. For example, there was a court case where an 89-year-old man sued his daughter for never taking care of him. The reason he's only suing now is because he had just gotten out of jail. The reason hew as in jail is for rape. The person he raped is his daughter. He's demanding that she has to let him live in her house and pay for hospital expenses.
Now, although legally, children have an obligation to take care of their parents in China, in the case where you're a victim of your parent's actual crimes, you don't have that obligation anymore. According to the actual laws, the judge has to rule that she doesn't have to do any of that. But the old man found the news media first and sold his story as some kind of hard-working, loving father rejected by his daughter, and that story caught on much more than the truth ever did. And there was a lot of public outcry. So, in the end, the judge was "forced by public opinion" into ordering that she pay the guy 200 RMB a month.
In that case, public opinion won because what are young women really going to do, if they're forced to pay 200 extra bucks a month? For the most part, they're just going to shut up and take it. And even if every judge in China ruled this way, it wouldn't really harm society.
There was another case that happened near my hometown, where a woman took out some high interest loans, was 10K short on paying it back, and the loan sharks came to her office to rape and torture her. Her employees actually called the cops, who came by, saw that nobody had brought any weapons, and shrugged and said they couldn't do anything and left. So her son ended up grabbing a fruit knife and fighting the loan sharks, and ended up injuring three of them, one of whom died of blood loss later in the hospital. He was sentenced to life in prison.
This case also got super controversial and was discussed for a month straight on the internet. And it actually got the Chinese supreme court to take notice and take the case, where his sentence was reduced from 2nd degree murder to excessive self defense, and he only got 5 years in prison.
The reason public opinion couldn't do anything in the case of the chained woman is because I fully believe the "conspiracy theory" that she's the daughter of a soldier who died for China, and that's just too embarrassing for the CCP to admit. If they actually rescue her, they can't deny who she is anymore.
But frankly, this illegal bridge builder isn't even getting as much outrage as the chained woman. So I doubt anything's really gonna change for him.
2. Chinese people are definitely more numb to injustices, because it happens to often that it's the status quo. I remember watching this feel-good piece by CCTV News once, about how cops rescued a 2-week-old infant from the hands of a kidnapper, but the baby had been fed something to keep him pacified, and they didn't know what, but it was having a really bad effect on the baby. So they had to rush the baby to the NICU at the hospital. But at this point, they have no idea who this baby's parents are, so the hospital is like, "Okay, but who's gonna pay for this baby's ICU fees? If you don't pay the fees, we can't treat him." So the entire police station's cops had to pool their money together to pay for the ICU, which is 16K a day, when these cops make, like, 16K a year. And how they had to rush to find the baby's parents, because they can't afford to keep the baby in the ICU on just their salary.
And as far as I can tell, nobody watching this story felt any amount of outrage, like, "What do you mean, you can't even wait a couple of days for the cops to find the parents, and just treat the baby in the meantime???" I get made fun of all the time on the internet for questioning why it's okay to not give life-saving treatments to people just because they don't have money.
I think the Chinese people who feel outraged enough that they can't put up with it has found a way to leave China already (which might be harder for Iranians to do? I'm not sure). It's pretty hard to organise any kind of resistance in China, because any complaint about China is often met with, "If you don't like it, then leave."
I will note that there were a loooot more covid protests than you ever saw on the news though, and the news already covered plenty of violent covid protests. Because you know, when you're being barred in your house and you're actively starving to death, you and your whole apartment building has a lot of motive to violently resist. And it's not a situation where you can just leave.
3. Local governments are just smaller versions of federal governments. They're exactly as corrupt, exactly as selfish, except they tend to be filled with people who are a lot more incompetent and stupid, because by definition, they're people who haven't made it for the promotion to a higher position. I think the opinion is pretty much the same as the US, except people don't think the federal government is any better. It's just bigger.
re 1. Am I correct in uderstanding 200 RMB/mo to not be a lot of money? It's like 30 USD/mo, and seems to be something like less than 1/5 the average Chinese household's disposable income from a chart I found. I understand that this could be pretty different in across socio-economic status, though, and perhaps different for a single woman than for a full household.
re 2 and 3. Always interesting to see how US differs from China, and how the portrayal of China in the US differs from what you report about circumstances there.
What an interesting case! It's interesting how the question of bridge safety doesn't seem to be a part of this conversation. Maybe 'boats' is a less questionable material choice than tofu construction? I also couldn't help but notice the comment about the river disappearing... certainly seems like that's a bigger injustice than the diy toll bridge. Instead, the focus is all on whether the toll was fair or not. That feels like the most subjective part of the whole case, but maybe that's also why it's generating so much discussion.
I know right? I spent quite a while trying to figure out how you build a bridge out of 13 boats that you can actually safely drive cars over? I think the problem is that his bridge got dismantled before any accidents happened. And if an accident hadn't happened yet, then there's no grounds to sue about that bridge being unsafe. If it actually had collapsed on its own and killed some people, then it would make for a much less controversial case.
The focus is all on whether the toll is fair or not because that's sort of the only grounds on which he's being sentenced. If it turns out the toll is fair, then he shouldn't have even gotten a fine, much less been subject to two years of probation and a criminal record.
The river disappearing might have just not drawn a lot of attention because it seems fairly...commonplace, normal thing to happen? Like, there used to be a river walking distance from my house in my hometown, that my mom used to play when she was a little kid. And it was a fairly substantial river back then. But around the time I was born, the population of my little town exploded a LOT, so they had to hastily build some dams in order to generate power locally, and so that river disappeared. But now there's a dam. But the dam is further away and you have to drive to it. I think this sort of thing must've been happening all around China in various smaller towns.
villagers daily -> villagers' daily
law time -> jail time
Perciful -> Merciful
tried the cross -> tried to cross
Fixed, thanks! I have no idea how some of these even happened!
This is very intersting, thanks for the translation. I'm curious about a few things:
1. How much influence does popular opinion have on court rulings in China? In the US it seems to carry some weight, though the amount depends on whether the trial is by jury or by judge. Do you think that the current Weibo furor will translate into pressure for the higher court to rule one way or another on this case? I guess I'm aware that public opinion seems to have done nothing to change the minds of the local officials responsible in the case of Dong Zhimin.
2. Maybe relatedly, Yashing Huang (at MIT Sloan) claims that Chinese are culturally much less likely to perform civil disobedience through protest &c -- to illustrate he compares the general compliance with draconian zero covid rules in China to ongoing protests in Iran (10 months now!) in response to the death of a single woman. Do you think this holds as a general pattern for China? Why, or what are good counterexamples?
3. What sort of reputation do local governments have in China? Are they generally seen as places that competent people go to do the virtuous work of maintaining the functioning of society, or are they seen as backwater stations to be avoided if at all possible? In the US it's very much the latter, and the corresponding talent pool local governments draw from is quite poor, so they tend to be quite dysfucnctional.
(please don't worry about responding quickly or extensively or at all really)
Popular opinion has a LOT of influence on court rulings, actually. For example, there was a court case where an 89-year-old man sued his daughter for never taking care of him. The reason he's only suing now is because he had just gotten out of jail. The reason hew as in jail is for rape. The person he raped is his daughter. He's demanding that she has to let him live in her house and pay for hospital expenses.
Now, although legally, children have an obligation to take care of their parents in China, in the case where you're a victim of your parent's actual crimes, you don't have that obligation anymore. According to the actual laws, the judge has to rule that she doesn't have to do any of that. But the old man found the news media first and sold his story as some kind of hard-working, loving father rejected by his daughter, and that story caught on much more than the truth ever did. And there was a lot of public outcry. So, in the end, the judge was "forced by public opinion" into ordering that she pay the guy 200 RMB a month.
In that case, public opinion won because what are young women really going to do, if they're forced to pay 200 extra bucks a month? For the most part, they're just going to shut up and take it. And even if every judge in China ruled this way, it wouldn't really harm society.
There was another case that happened near my hometown, where a woman took out some high interest loans, was 10K short on paying it back, and the loan sharks came to her office to rape and torture her. Her employees actually called the cops, who came by, saw that nobody had brought any weapons, and shrugged and said they couldn't do anything and left. So her son ended up grabbing a fruit knife and fighting the loan sharks, and ended up injuring three of them, one of whom died of blood loss later in the hospital. He was sentenced to life in prison.
This case also got super controversial and was discussed for a month straight on the internet. And it actually got the Chinese supreme court to take notice and take the case, where his sentence was reduced from 2nd degree murder to excessive self defense, and he only got 5 years in prison.
The reason public opinion couldn't do anything in the case of the chained woman is because I fully believe the "conspiracy theory" that she's the daughter of a soldier who died for China, and that's just too embarrassing for the CCP to admit. If they actually rescue her, they can't deny who she is anymore.
But frankly, this illegal bridge builder isn't even getting as much outrage as the chained woman. So I doubt anything's really gonna change for him.
2. Chinese people are definitely more numb to injustices, because it happens to often that it's the status quo. I remember watching this feel-good piece by CCTV News once, about how cops rescued a 2-week-old infant from the hands of a kidnapper, but the baby had been fed something to keep him pacified, and they didn't know what, but it was having a really bad effect on the baby. So they had to rush the baby to the NICU at the hospital. But at this point, they have no idea who this baby's parents are, so the hospital is like, "Okay, but who's gonna pay for this baby's ICU fees? If you don't pay the fees, we can't treat him." So the entire police station's cops had to pool their money together to pay for the ICU, which is 16K a day, when these cops make, like, 16K a year. And how they had to rush to find the baby's parents, because they can't afford to keep the baby in the ICU on just their salary.
And as far as I can tell, nobody watching this story felt any amount of outrage, like, "What do you mean, you can't even wait a couple of days for the cops to find the parents, and just treat the baby in the meantime???" I get made fun of all the time on the internet for questioning why it's okay to not give life-saving treatments to people just because they don't have money.
I think the Chinese people who feel outraged enough that they can't put up with it has found a way to leave China already (which might be harder for Iranians to do? I'm not sure). It's pretty hard to organise any kind of resistance in China, because any complaint about China is often met with, "If you don't like it, then leave."
I will note that there were a loooot more covid protests than you ever saw on the news though, and the news already covered plenty of violent covid protests. Because you know, when you're being barred in your house and you're actively starving to death, you and your whole apartment building has a lot of motive to violently resist. And it's not a situation where you can just leave.
3. Local governments are just smaller versions of federal governments. They're exactly as corrupt, exactly as selfish, except they tend to be filled with people who are a lot more incompetent and stupid, because by definition, they're people who haven't made it for the promotion to a higher position. I think the opinion is pretty much the same as the US, except people don't think the federal government is any better. It's just bigger.
Thanks as always, this is really helpful context.
re 1. Am I correct in uderstanding 200 RMB/mo to not be a lot of money? It's like 30 USD/mo, and seems to be something like less than 1/5 the average Chinese household's disposable income from a chart I found. I understand that this could be pretty different in across socio-economic status, though, and perhaps different for a single woman than for a full household.
re 2 and 3. Always interesting to see how US differs from China, and how the portrayal of China in the US differs from what you report about circumstances there.