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IP and Law
Administrative fees or protection money?Posted by Joel Martinsen, April 4, 2007 6:14 PM
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Chengguan violence was last year's big concern; this year it seems to be "protection money." Even as Shanghai relaxes restrictions on street-side stalls, conflict between chengguan and vendors continues in other areas. Gansu's Xidu Business News reported on Monday that chengguan in Lanzhou had been ignoring the city's zoning laws and allowing vendors to set up their stalls in restricted areas so long as they paid a monthly fine as an "administration fee." One of the paper's reporters went undercover as a vendor and had this exchange with the chengguan:
The report also quoted other chengguan who claimed that they were under orders from higher-ups to collect a certain amount of fines every month. The paper reported today that the city had declared the fine-for-protection system void and ordered all of the vendors cleared out (the photo shows a number of chengguan keeping order); Xidu Business News declares this a win for the supervisory role of the media, and predicts that the swift response of the chengguan has earned them the respect of the common people. Their swift response is understandable - with term "protection money" being thrown around and many commentators comparing the chengguan to organized crime, it's not the best situation for an branch of government that's trying to justify its continued existence. This is only the latest in a string of reports about law enforcement taking payoffs in exchange for allowing violators to continue doing business. In February, the quality inspection office in Jiujiang County, Jiangxi, was found to be collecting an annual "technical service fee" in lieu of doing actual inspections. Once again, "protection fee" was the name given to the practice by locals. In response to that report, the blogger who goes by the name Ten Years Chopping Timber wrote an op-ed for The Beijing News (here, taken from an expanded version posted on his blog):
The piece ends with a reference to Bai Juyi, whose poem "The Elderly Charcoal Seller" (卖炭翁) paints a picture of Tang Dynasty chengguan harrassing a poor vendor from out of town. In March, a forum post by Tu Guowen also cited the poem. Inspired by a report of watermelon sellers forced to sell their produce for a few fen on the yuan after being turned away at the Zhengzhou city limits, Tu recast Bai's poem as "The Elderly Watermelon Seller." Finally, a post by John Kennedy at GVO features a photo series of chengguan chasing down a watermelon seller. Links and Sources
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Comments on Administrative fees or protection money?
The libertarians have interesting views on where taxation stops and extortion starts - they see no great difference. There's a piece by Tibor Machan at the Ludwig von Mises institute which is pretty typical of the genre.
I'm sure they'd have a field day with chengguan!