KangAi Commune's Goal of a Century Commune Will Not Waver

When we set the goal of a Century Commune, we had already taken all kinds of situations into account. The goal will not change for any reason.

Critical-illness mutual aid is a new thing, and new things often mean chaos at the outset; people's correct and fairly complete understanding of them necessarily requires a long time or painful experience.

The P2P industry can offer us a lot of lessons. P2P platforms that rushed into the market in a stampede, after a short boom, left nothing but a mess. That process certainly had a bad side, but on the other hand it was a negative-lesson education in financial risk awareness for the whole public.

Likewise, will mutual aid have to go through such a painful educational process? Hard to say—there is a high probability it will.

Looking at mutual aid's development in recent years—from more than a hundred mutual aid platforms down to the few there are now—it may already be in the middle of that process. Over these years, KangAi Commune has kept to a steady and cautious path, doing all it can to avoid repeating the P2P industry's fate of an explosion followed by a mess. But at the same time we must endure the negatives that come with doing so.

When people lack a correct awareness of mutual aid, doing this brings misunderstanding and loss of members, and leaves us easily overtaken. (KangAi Commune, for instance, has the longest waiting period—one year.) Evaluating everything by headcount is a hallmark of the internet, but what does headcount mean for the mutual aid industry? Is it necessarily positive? Not necessarily.

As a member put it: if more people means lower contributions, would it mean that if all Chinese people joined, no one would have to pay anything? Obviously not.

A series of measures is indispensable, and these measures may all have the opposite effect and may not be understood for now. This is the difficulty of running mutual aid. When nobody understands the industry, a platform can easily produce a scheme that everyone cheers wildly for, yet it may well be swept away a few years later. I believe some platform will certainly die of this.

But over these few years, we at KangAi Commune must strive to survive it, and only then can we be recognized anew. This will inevitably be a very difficult stretch of time.

Our situation now is much better than years ago (at least we are not short of operating funds). We got through that stage, so in today's more favorable circumstances, how could we give up?

Obviously we won't! So members can be entirely reassured. Anyone who knows about the founding of KangAi Commune and its history will know these words are no empty talk. Let us wait and see.