Kang'ai Commune's Public-Interest Dilemma: Now It Can Only Be a Business Model

Kang'ai Commune has always considered itself to have a strong public-interest character.

In its early years we received support from the charitable sector, and we were given some highly authoritative and prestigious public-interest awards. Later, we tried to have a charitable foundation manage our funds and to register as a private non-enterprise unit, hoping to gradually dilute the company's role and set Kang'ai Commune on a more public path.

But after talking with civil affairs departments in several regions, we found that the existing public-interest system is extremely cautious about the online mutual-aid model. We were also summoned for talks, and having a charitable foundation manage mutual-aid funds was not accepted.

These experiences forced us to think again: what exactly is Kang'ai Commune?

It is not traditional charity. Members are not simply donating money to others; they take on responsibilities for one another under shared rules. Nor is it commercial insurance: there is no insurer underwriting it, and it does not rely on capital accumulation or investment operations. It is closer to a group of ordinary people sharing risk with one another according to rules they all accept.

Such a model has a public-interest and public character, yet it is hard to find an exactly corresponding status within the existing system.

But it has also become clearer and clearer to us that we cannot simply conclude from this that "status does not matter."

In reality, most people have no time to study an organization's complex governance and funding mechanisms. Official recognition, organizational nature and the regulatory system are themselves important foundations on which society builds trust. No matter how well we conduct ourselves, we cannot fully replace the credibility that institutional status provides.

This is precisely the real public-interest dilemma Kang'ai Commune faces: we want to become more public, yet within the public-interest category there is for now no mature institutional path we can take.

So we can only first do well what is within our power — make the funds more transparent, make the rules fairer, give members the right to deliberate, adjudicate and amend the covenant, and make Kang'ai Commune less and less dependent on unilateral decisions by the company.

At the same time, we still hope that in the future there will be more institutional space suited to mutual aid among ordinary people.

Internal governance answers "who we actually are"; institutional recognition answers "who society believes we are."

True publicness may require both.