In Retrospect, Starting KangAi Commune Really Was a Case of Risking One's Neck

Recently, because of a user complaint, the relevant authorities summoned me for a talk, with several departments present. But many of those present did not understand the online mutual aid model, and during the conversation one official raised the question of "fundraising."

In fact, whether it might be deemed illegal fundraising has been the greatest legal risk hanging over KangAi Commune's head since the very beginning. This is also why we did not dare register a company and operate formally until the project website had been online for some time. What gave us the courage to keep going back then were mainly two things:

One was a very plain thought: we are helping seriously ill patients, our starting point is saving people—surely that cannot count as illegal.

The other was a very important event: a 2012 report in the Guangzhou Daily, reposted by more than 50 influential media outlets, about the Anti-Cancer Commune. The report interviewed a lawyer who offered an interpretation: illegal fundraising is divided into the crime of illegally absorbing public deposits and the crime of fundraising fraud. The former centers on disrupting financial order by absorbing public deposits and promising repayment of principal with interest; the latter is raising funds by fraudulent means with the intent to illegally possess them. At the time, the Anti-Cancer Commune had no operating capital and did not aim for profit, so it did not involve illegal fundraising.

It was precisely on the strength of the definitive view offered by that report that we registered a company and formally began operating KangAi Commune.

In the blink of an eye more than a decade has passed; the online mutual aid industry has surged and churned, with many platforms coming and going. Yet to this day we still occasionally have to face doubts of the "illegal fundraising" kind, and I cannot help but feel deeply moved. For this reason, we have set out to organize the KangAi Commune White Paper on Legality to lay out the matter comprehensively.

It was only when gathering materials that I discovered how rich the research on online mutual aid has become—academic papers, judicial precedents, and professional commentary are all readily available. These materials gave us strong confidence, but at the same time they left me deeply shaken: in the early days of the venture, there were no such ready materials to draw on. Had this point been used to hold us accountable back then, we would have had almost no means of defense.

So I feel deeply grateful. It was precisely the understanding and tolerance society extended to innovation at that stage that allowed a whole series of innovative businesses—Xianghubao, Didi, and many others—to emerge and develop, and allowed the Anti-Cancer Commune to survive to this day. Detached from the larger context of the era, none of this would have been possible. I am also grateful to the experts who have studied online mutual aid and offered professional interpretations, to the courts, to the scholars, and to all who have shown tolerance and understanding.