Shenzhen Administrative Litigation Attorney Representation – Administrative Penalty Dispute Cases

This article is dedicated to commemorating the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the Administrative Procedure Law and its first major revision! Part One: "Tycoon" Guo, So-and-So, and His "Sea Palace" 6. A Dream Come True Having solved the technical difficulties and also resolved the legal identity issue through alternative means, Guo began to roll up his sleeves and pull out all the stops, making grand plans to realize his vision in the beautiful Dongshan Bay waters. The enormous investment of manpower, material resources, and capital goes without saying. More importantly, Guo devoted himself wholeheartedly to his dream, forgetting to eat and sleep, expending every ounce of his energy. Throughout the design and construction of the floating island, he continuously infused his own artistic inspiration, because what he sought to create was not merely a technical marvel, but also an artistic masterpiece. One detail suffices to prove the painstaking effort Guo invested: in order to embody the characteristics of a Chinese-style courtyard in the floating marine structure and create the effect of a green homeland at sea, Guo experimented with planting over a hundred different species before finally selecting more than a dozen ideal wind-resistant ornamental plants for the floating island. Hard work pays off, and the results of Guo's years of unremitting efforts were nothing short of perfect: on the technical front, the floating island performed exceptionally well in resisting typhoons and corrosion; on the artistic front, the floating island and its superstructure displayed the symmetry and balance of architectural aesthetics, and with the use of lightweight materials paired with Balinese-style decorations, the overall floating structure achieved an unprecedented visual appeal (Figures 18-23). Figure 18: Aerial view of the overall architecture of Guo's floating island (Source: Internet) Figure 19: The floating island architecture at dusk (Source: Internet) Figure 20: Balinese-style decorative details of the floating island architecture (Source: Internet) Figure 21: Pool decorative details reflecting Guo's artistic attention (Source: Internet) Figure 22: The spring garden effect created by the dozen-plus wind-resistant ornamental plants Guo selected from over a hundred species (Source: Internet) Figure 23: Interior decoration style of the floating island architecture (Source: Internet) Looking back now at the floating island architecture that Guo painstakingly designed and built over many years, objectively speaking, as a new creation, it was too perfect and too luxurious. But perfection was not Guo's fault; it was the natural outpouring of the artistic temperament and sentiment inherent in Guo, a quality that had already been made unmistakably evident in the entrance decoration design of his first influential commercial real estate project—the Fashion Underground Street on Taiyuan Street in Shenyang! Nor was luxury Guo's sin. The luxury in this decorative design was related to Guo's original business plan of positioning the project in the high-end tourism sector, and this positioning itself was in accordance with economic laws. As we can see, in the course of the development of the modern market economy, all goods and services were luxury items at their inception. For example, the flush toilet that every household now has was a luxury item even in the developed Western countries over a hundred years ago, and the mobile phone that everyone now carries—one or even several per person—was just fifteen or so years ago only the "big brick phone" in the hands of the wealthy! Producers and providers of innovative goods and services must charge high prices to compensate for the enormous costs and risks they bear for their innovative activities, and the high profits in turn attract imitators and competitors, driving continuous technological advancement, quality improvement, and price reduction in innovative products and services, which eventually become ordinary consumer goods, and society as a whole reaps the benefits. Unfortunately, due to the severe disparity between rich and poor, social injustice, and polarization brought about by corruption and monopoly, contemporary Chinese society is saturated with a strong atmosphere of hostility toward the wealthy. In the eyes of those who resent the rich, perfection itself may be a kind of error, and luxury is even more likely to be a sin! After years of arduous exploration and investment of over a hundred million yuan, the floating island architecture was completed to near perfection and could well be described as luxurious. But Guo did not rush to officially open it to the general public to recoup his investment and earn profits. If we were now to project our own petty thoughts onto a noble man, perhaps Guo was acting out of "self-interest" at the time. The floating island was a technical marvel and artistic masterpiece condensed from years of his painstaking efforts, the optimal convergence of his artistic sensibility and entrepreneurial spirit, and a spiritual home he had created for himself after achieving success as an entrepreneur, where he could revisit his artistic dreams. Guo had once considered developing the floating island into a venue exclusively for gatherings and networking among elite figures; he had even come up with a grand and sophisticated name for it—"Jiangshan Club"—but this idea was never formally put into practice. Therefore, for a long time after the completion of the floating island architecture, aside from serving as his temporary refuge from the mundane world, Guo also enjoyed bringing close friends from his circles to gather there in his leisure time, to talk about ideals and life, to share business opportunities, and to exchange creative ideas. We can imagine life on the floating island: azure waters and blue skies, tides rising and falling, green trees and red flowers, birds in flight and fish leaping; one could savor delicacies from the sea, or admire masterpieces of great artists; greeting the red sun rising from the blue sea in the morning, bidding farewell to the setting sun dyeing the clouds crimson at dusk; all who converse and laugh are learned scholars, none who come and go are unlettered men. For someone born with an artist's soul, what more could one ask of life? But Guo was, after all, also an entrepreneur, and he acted this way out of a certain "economic rationality": since his floating island project was unique both domestically and globally, and although it had weathered several storms and withstood several strong typhoons, the test period had been too short. If it were to be fully opened to the public, a public safety incident would be an unbearable burden for both himself and the Fashion Enterprise Group he had founded. The peach tree and the plum tree do not speak, yet a path is worn beneath them. Even with this low-key, informal mode of operation, Guo's floating island project exerted a strong radiating effect on the Dongshan Bay waters. In particular, because of the bold creativity and unique artistic charm of the floating island, it became increasingly well known among local residents. Through word of mouth, more and more tourists were attracted to Dongshan Bay to see the floating island, boosting local popularity, and hotels and restaurants in the Dongshan Bay area gradually saw thriving business—all of which drove the growth of the local economy. On the other hand, just as flowers blooming inside the wall send their fragrance beyond it, Guo's high-end marine tourism model for the floating island also attracted the attention of government departments from other regions in China eager to develop marine tourism economies, and inspection visits to learn from his experience occurred from time to time. Moreover, later on, when he became embroiled in a storm of public opinion, came under siege and attack, and faced the disadvantageous situation of being forcibly demolished by the Shenzhen local government, many marine tourism attractions and local governments extended olive branches to Guo's floating island: "Why not just tow it over here and park it!" But that is a story for later; let us set it aside for now. The perfection and luxury, combined with the non-open operating model, cast a veil of mystery over Guo's floating island architecture in the minds of ordinary people. In a social environment saturated with hostility toward the wealthy, this veil of mystery inevitably reflected wealth and power, and also corruption, in people's eyes. On the other hand, Guo, as the island master of the floating island, with his consistent artistic temperament and his extraordinary, free-spirited, untamable style of conduct, had long been estranged and disconnected from officialdom, the media, and the general public, making him an easy target of envy, jealousy, and hatred. All of this planted the seeds of disaster for what was to come: the floating island would be sensationalized and embellished by meddlesome media reporters, branded as a "private club," and stigmatized with the name "Sea Palace"—suddenly becoming notorious, gaining ill repute that spread far and wide, and becoming a target of universal condemnation. Extended Topic: A Rational View of the Merits and Faults of "Private Clubs" During the period when this book was being conceived and written, the new central leadership collective with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core was vigorously promoting frugality, carrying out the Party's mass line education practice campaign, and fighting corruption with an iron fist. The entire political landscape and social atmosphere of China were taking on a completely new look. In this process, "private clubs" unfortunately became a completely negative concept, synonymous with the corruption of power-money transactions. Of course, the encroachment by private clubs upon public resources such as parks, sites of historical and scenic interest, and even revolutionary memorial sites is indeed improper and infuriating.