The Political Economy of Overloading Fines
Recently, a piece of news on China’s annual road fine amount of 270 billion yuan has been spreading on the Internet, and has become the focus of public attention. How is the 270 billion calculated? According to an investigation carried out by one of the media in Beijing, it indicates that the fines occupy about one tenth of the train freight. According to the data provided by China Logistics Information Center, in 2011 China’s train transportation fees were 2700 billion yuan, so it is estimated that there are fines nearly amounting to 270 billion yuan.
Of course, 270 billion yuan is a very huge figure. Why are there so many fines? A direct reason is that relevant departments do not administer justice and they treat fines as a tool of creating income. Viewing from what has been disclosed by CCTV, such kind of situation really exists. According to the Notice of the State Council on Forbidding Random Establishment of Stations and Passes on Roads and Random Fining and Collection of Fees promulgated in 1994, only public security departments may set inspection stations on roads, but now, besides traffic police, the road administration and transportation administration departments under the traffic departments may all check vehicles on roads. And according to the fine receipts provided by drivers, besides receipts from the departments of public security, transportation administration, road administration, overranging stations, urban management etc., there are even departments of forestry, health and salt industry, sometimes for the fine decisions, there are even no official seals, but just hand written decisions for taking effect.
It is unquestionable that these behaviors above are all against the current regulations of laws and have seriously violated the lawful rights and interests of an administrative counterpart. Then, why do these drivers accept the fines and do not argue strongly on just grounds? One reason is the costs for safeguarding legal rights. If the owner of a vehicle wants to safeguard legal rights, the only way is to put forward appeals of right to relevant administrative agencies through administrative reviews and administrative lawsuits. But the result is very serious: the vehicle must be detained, and this will lose time and will lead to various indirect losses, and may also cause retaliatory fine, while if a driver accepts the fine, he may always continue to drive the vehicle on the road. Just on the basis of such a consideration, when most vehicle owners receive illegal fines, they often take the punishment and let it be. And relevant institutions and individuals just utilize the point, so the fine behaviors have become more and more serious, and finally they have caused the annual astronomical figure of 270 billion yuan.
Just because of this, experts point out that the key is to cut off the interest link between the basic level law-enforcing departments and fines. According to the law regulations, all the fees and fine income shall be handed over to the higher financial authorities, and the two lines of revenue and expenditure should be separated. At the same time, it is forbidden to assign tasks of penalty and confiscatory income to the law-enforcing departments, and the local finance shall not return the fines to the law-enforcing departments in any form. But in fact, these regulations have not been carried out and executed in some places. Otherwise, the law-enforcing departments will not be so enthusiastic in fining. How to cut it off? The feasible way is to receive social supervision through making the penalty and confiscatory income known to the public.
But are these practices effective? It is very doubtful. It is true that the open solution has solved the fine amount problem of all departments, but it lacks the controlling force for the personal fined of these departments. If the penalty and confiscatory income all belongs to departmental behaviors, and receipts are issued by law, the situation is quite simple. But whether the reports of CCTV or news from other media all indicate that, currently many fines do not look like fines, but belong to a kind of protection fee: there is no receipt or the execution of fines does not follow the laws and regulations. If the situations are like it everywhere, it means that the measures of open penalty and confiscatory income do not have much deterrent force for the internal work staff in these departments. It’s a very simple truth: from now on, all fines will turn from departmental behaviors into personal behaviors, and this may lead to the situation that the phenomenon of random fine will be more common.
It’s necessary for us to carry out self-examination for the root of such administrative penalty. From the reports of media, at present most penalties aim at trucks, seldom aim at manned passenger cars and sedan cars. Why do the fine objects all aim at trucks? Is it because these departments are more kind for individuals? It’s obviously not. The direct reason is that individuals are hard to break rules and regulations. While overload often occurs for trucks, just because of overload, it makes trucks “be the meat on somebody’s chopping block”.
Why does overload occur for trucks? The direct factor is driven by economic benefits. On the NPC and CPPCC in 2011, Huang Xihua, a NPC delegate, mentioned in her bill that: the traffic administrative department of Datong City of Shanxi once carried out an experiment. They used a Hongyan brand 16 ton camion and loaded goods according to regulations, transporting from Datong to Tianjin, all the way there was no illegal behavior for the truck, but after it reached Tianjin, there was still a loss of more than 3,200 yuan for the truck. Therefore, after weighing the advantages and disadvantages, all big trucks choose to overload goods.
Just because drivers overload goods first, the power of relevant departments may be realized. In this process, the departmental organized profit-making behaviors even appear, and the so called “overload monthly tickets” occur: in Huaibin County of Hehan Province, from 2011, it has publicly arranged pass monthly tickets. In the fixed time at the beginning of each month, fines are collected in a centralized way for trucks. For triaxial trucks, a fine of 5,200 yuan was collected each month in a unified way. After that, within a certain loading scope, fines would not be collected separately, and the law-enforcing departments would check the tickets and let the trucks pass. And according to the Implementation Scheme on Carrying out the Control Work on Vehicles’ Overranging and Overloading in the Whole Country promulgated in 2004, the total weight of a truck and goods of a two-axle truck shall not exceed 20 tons, and for a triaxial truck, the total weight of a truck and goods shall not exceed 30 tons. But for those trucks that have paid for overloading monthly tickets, the relevant quotas would become 35 tons and 45 tons respectively.
Compared with those working staff who privately collect fine, these monthly ticket type fines may be endurable: because there are explicit expectations, the behaviors of the government may be predictable, and the truck owners may also benefit from such kind of overloading behavior. If all the fines for overloading may be handed over to finance and be used for maintaining roads, such a kind of fines gives us little cause for criticism: then the essence of the fine is only “a road maintaining fee”, is not a real fine, and it may be regarded as finding a good way of treating “no profits can be generated without overloading”.
But the problem just lies in here: not all fines have been brought into finance, and most fines have flown into the pockets of departments or individuals, not into financial accounts. In other words, the fines that have been gained according to public power and law-enforcing power have finally turned into personal benefits, but not for public benefits. Why the fines will be brought into individuals’ pockets? The profit driving is one side, but it may not ask the essence of the question.
From the reports on the media, the phenomenon of random fining mainly occurs in the less-developed areas of the mid-west area, and there are rarely reports on overloading fines in the eastern areas. Why does such a phenomenon only centralize in the mid-west areas? This may be a more fundamental reason. For that, my explanation is that in those less-developed areas, due to the stable and ensured income, a civil servant has become a profession that people chase severely. The result is always that the administrative institutions expand, and their funds cannot make ends meet. How can the formerly favorite jobs not be able to give play to benefits? Therefore it is a very natural practice to turn the power into cash, so there are various fines aiming at overloading.
But in those economically developed areas, the common people have a wide range of selecting jobs, so their desire for the profession of civil servants is not so strong, so comparing with the less-developed areas, the phenomena of overstaffing in organizations is not so serious — or we may say though there is overstaffing in organizations, there are sufficient financial safeguards. These institutions and individuals do not have such a strong inspiration to bring themselves additional risks through random fining.
If the fining is regarded as the operation costs of an enterprise, it is simpler. The operation cost of enterprises in economically less-developed areas is generally much higher than that of the advanced areas. The fiscal number of people that units and enterprises in these areas need to support is much higher than that of the advanced areas. In this sense, the solution for solving overload fining is to abolish redundant personnel in institutions so as to reduce administrative costs; and the fundamental method is to develop economy, so that there will be better professions than civil servants. If the local economy has no fundamental changes, then after the job cut occurs today, there will be employment in another way tomorrow, and the phenomenon of random fining will continue to be a problem.
Originally published on China Times | 2012-12-26
