Legal Digest (Issue No. 7)

Author: Sun Guodong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-11-01
Features: One day in the first half of the year, not long after the outbreak of SARS in Beijing, I suddenly received a call from a friend. His story shocked me greatly. It turned out that he had an economic dispute with someone, and instead of hiring a lawyer or resorting to the law, the other party had gathered a group of social individuals to come to his door to collect debts. These people were bold and reckless, not only forcibly confiscating his identity documents and personal property but also keeping him under house arrest for ten days, forcing him to repay a disputed debt. During this time, he negotiated with the other party and called the police multiple times, but nothing helped. Later, he managed to sneak out to meet a lawyer. The lawyer said he could "settle" the matter for 100,000 yuan, requiring an upfront payment. This deal didn’t go through—not because of the money, but because he couldn’t trust the lawyer. Before coming to me, he had sought help everywhere but hit a wall at every turn. Finally, he sincerely asked me: Is there any open, legal, and effective system in China that citizens can turn to when they suffer unlawful harm? This question made me feel a bit awkward. The "open and legal" methods I could tell him about he had already tried, but none of them were "effective" in the real world. Despite this, I still advised him to resolve the issue through the law and even tried to help him find another lawyer through a mutual acquaintance. This time, the deal almost went through. The failure was still not about money (coincidentally, the lawyer again demanded 100,000 yuan but didn’t insist on an upfront payment), but rather the lawyer’s working style, which made it seem that the lawyer was more interested in money than in protecting the client’s interests. Many years ago, I wrote two articles discussing courtiers, arguing that the ancients had a largely negative view of courtiers, and this wasn’t just the prejudice of scholars, but was related to the nature of this specific social group and their upbringing and