Running KangAi Commune Keeps Getting Harder—Proving Our Own Innocence Is the Most Exhausting Part

In the blink of an eye, KangAi Commune has operated solidly for fifteen years. To outsiders, a platform that has run for fifteen years must surely be mature and stable in every respect, and should be smooth sailing to operate. But only through firsthand experience do we know clearly that the actual difficulty of operating keeps growing, far beyond what we originally imagined. Fifteen years of accumulation have brought experience, and also more and more real dilemmas that are hard to resolve.

Many people cannot understand how, after so many years, it only gets harder. The core problem, really, is that our industry has from the very beginning never had a mature, smooth operating environment; we have been crossing the river by feeling the stones the whole way.

The biggest difficulty is that many regulatory authorities are still unfamiliar with our industry. Online mutual aid is unlike mature industries such as insurance and finance; its model is quite special. Every time we liaise on work or communicate on compliance matters, there is no ready base of understanding. Whether handling routine matters or explaining the operating model and the public-interest nature, almost every time we must explain slowly from scratch and repeat ourselves. This repeated communication and explanation consumes a great deal of time and energy and keeps making the daily operating burden heavier.

Second, the industry as a whole has no mature standards or reference criteria. In our day-to-day adjustments to rules, refinements of risk control, and improvements to service, there is no precedent to refer to. We can only feel our way along bit by bit, testing as we go. Often, the plans we polish carefully and the work we advance cautiously end up running into every kind of obstacle because of the gaps in industry rules; hitting walls everywhere is the norm. The whole road has been one of trial and setbacks.

Finally—and this is the hardest hurdle for the whole industry to surmount—public trust keeps falling. When the major mainstream platforms in the industry shut down and exited one after another, it directly hit people's trust in online mutual aid. Since then, public doubts about the industry have deepened, and we smaller platforms that stayed and kept operating compliantly have been tarred with the same brush of suspicion and viewed with prejudice.

We have long been trapped in the black hole of proving our own innocence. Our original intent has not changed in fifteen years; we have operated compliantly and honestly and provided mutual aid to members down to earth, yet day after day we must explain to the outside world and prove that we are reliable and sincere. Compared with all the difficulties of operating, the suspicion and distrust from the outside are what make us feel most powerless.

Through fifteen years of perseverance we have seen countless instances of warmth brought by mutual aid, and weathered wave after wave of storms in the industry. We thought that after years of deep cultivation everything would grow steadier and smoother, yet the road has turned out difficult every step of the way. The path ahead is still full of challenges, but we have never thought of giving up. We only hope that this pure goodwill of mutual aid can be understood by more people.