Mutual Aid Is a Very Special Undertaking

The first special point: with an ordinary project, if it doesn't work out you just stop—close it and start a new one, losing a bit of money at most. But mutual aid, once opened, cannot be closed. It must take long-term responsibility for the people on the platform—if someone helped others, then when they themselves need help the platform is gone, does that still count as good deeds rewarded? As long as anyone remains on it, it must keep operating. So what mutual aid should care about more is sustainability; it must advance steadily and cautiously, and must not hold users hostage.

The second special point: a large headcount does not necessarily have absolute value.

To be sustainable over the long term, mutual aid must maintain a reasonable and acceptable level of contributions. Achieving that is truly not easy, because people have the psychology of adverse selection and free-riding, along with factors like age structure and growth speed. So whether the system can help overcome adverse selection and sustain a sound development strategy is crucial. If at any one time a very high proportion of risk users on the platform undermines its mathematical basis, then clearly it cannot develop steadily and contributions will fluctuate—and this will become a burden the platform cannot bear in the future. That is only one aspect; a large headcount's demands on the platform's service capacity and its rising costs are another risk.

The third special point: the vast majority of people keep paying in money but never get money back.

The experience of a mutual aid product is simply terrible—aside from paying out money, users get no sense of having bought a product or service. So is this business of keeping users paying forever going to be simple? It will certainly not be simple.

On the question of headcount, the Commune has given it considerable thought. Although many enthusiastic members keep arguing that the Commune is falling behind and should grow faster, we hold a different view. Historically we have closed registration several times and raised various barriers to joining (today KangAi Commune has almost the highest barriers in the entire industry), precisely out of the three considerations above, in the hope of being sustainable and worthy of our members. It is not that we don't want to take on greater social responsibility, but that we believe—before a model has been tested by time, large-scale growth may not be responsible to users. As for mutual aid under China's conditions, I don't think anyone is qualified to claim to understand it without twenty years of stable operation.