Opinion / Liu Shinan
Don't go soft on offenders who profit from crime
By Liu Shinan (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-08-23 06:09
When I read the news on the front page of yesterday's China Daily about
the punishment of a company for sending massive amounts of junk mail, I
thought my colleagues at the news desk must have made a mistake, for the
fine was a mere 5,000 yuan (US$625). I thought it must be 10 or 100 times
bigger.
That sum of money is almost nothing for a company that sends avalanches
of messages to hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions, of spam victims
for commercial purposes. I don't know how much profit the company has
amassed from this mailing game, but I am sure it will not feel agonized
in the least by the penalty, which is dwarfed by the cost it paid to send
so many messages to so many recipients in the first place.
This kind of company usually obtains its victims' e-mail addresses or
cell phone numbers by buying data from relevant sources or sending
messages randomly through technical means. Either method incurs a high
cost. So the business must be only too lucrative, given that more and
more junk mails and messages are inundating our mailboxes and cell phone
memories. According to statistics from August 2004 to April 2005, each of
the 111 million Chinese Internet users received 16.8 junk mails a week.
Penalties for the violation of laws or public codes are usually light in
this country. Take the Law on Food Safety. It rules that for "a severe
case" of violating food safety regulations, the penalty will be "between
20 yuan (US$2.50) and 30,000 yuan (US$3,797)." A case involving loss of
lives should be counted as "the most severe" that would incur the highest
fine. However, would one life be worth merely 30,000 yuan? How large
would the penalty be if several more lives are lost?
Public offences are also punished slightly. The highest fine for spitting
is only 50 yuan (US$6.20).
In a mature market economy, the normal market order and social order are
maintained through serious observation of laws, backed by due punishment
for violations. Fines are usually very high in Western countries.
Take a few examples. In Australia, putting one's feet on a train seat
could incur a fine of 100-500 Australian dollars (US$76-380); littering
on the train, 200-1,000 Australian dollars (US$152-760).
In Italy, a customer who bought a bogus brand of sunglasses for 10 euro
(US$13) was fined 3,000 euro (US$3,900).
Last month, the European Commission imposed a fine against Microsoft of
280.5 million euros (US$357 million) for the company's failure to comply
with the commission's antitrust ruling. What is more, should Microsoft
continue to fail to comply, an additional daily penalty could be as much
as 3 million euro (US$3.9 million).
China is in the process of market development and wealth accumulation.
The mentality of seeking quick profit has nurtured many market evils,
such as fraudulence, bribery, unfair competition and even mafia-like
cartels. If laws and penalties are not serious enough, there is no way to
deter crimes and offences.
Light punishments have led to serious consequences, in environment
pollution for instance. Many plants would rather accept punishment than
install costly pollution-preventing facilities. For example, a paper mill
with an annual capacity of 100,000 tons of paper will be fined no more
than 1 million yuan (US$126,000) a year; this fine could save it several
million yuan in the cost of pollution treatment.
Weak enforcement of laws usually stems from local governments' tolerance
of local enterprises' illegal acts, which usually involve local
interests. Many pollution-making plants are major contributors to local
revenue.
Nevertheless, local authorities are not always lenient in punishing rule
violators. For example, law enforcement officers are usually very harsh
when they try to "sweep away" vendors from streets. This is because the
move concerns the image of the city, which directly affects the local
officials' "administrative performance."
Email: liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 08/23/2006 page4)
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