You You is not Fan Bingbing — Comment on the Taobao shop owner sentenced to ten years for Hong Kong daigou

[2] Taobao store owner You Mou purchased high-end clothing worth 11.4 million yuan from Hong Kong, bringing it into the country via express delivery, hiring "parallel traders" to smuggle it, and carrying it personally, then selling it on her online store, evading over 3 million yuan in taxes. After two trials, the Guangdong Provincial High Court sentenced You Mou to ten years in prison and a fine of 5.5 million yuan.

[3] Judgment document in You Mou's "daigou" case (image source: internet)

[4] After this case was exposed, major online media and self-media outlets reported it, with headlines mostly focusing on "Taobao store owner," "daigou," and "tax evasion," implying that Fan Bingbing evaded hundreds of millions in taxes but was only fined, while You Mou was sentenced to ten years for daigou tax evasion, which was too harsh, or even that she shouldn't have been sentenced at all—almost directly writing the headline as "The petty thief is hanged, the usurper is made a prince."

[5] Under the current criminal law system, You Mou is not Fan Bingbing. You Mou was sentenced to ten years indeed for tax evasion, but she evaded a special tax—customs duties. The authority You Mou confronted also differs from Fan Bingbing's case. The tax bureau Fan Bingbing deceived is unarmed and must seek police protection when facing violent tax resistance. The customs authority overseeing tariffs has traditionally been a paramilitary organization with guns—during the Nationalist government era, the tax police corps responsible for anti-smuggling tasks had equipment and combat effectiveness surpassing first-class regular forces. As a violent institution alongside police, armed police, and the military, customs has always been treated specially in law, and penalties for provoking such institutions are legally severe—the crime of obstructing official duties stipulates heavier punishment for violently attacking police officers performing their duties; cohabiting with the spouse of active military or armed police personnel leads to imprisonment; and during flood relief, the military has used guns to force boat owners to surrender vessels for sinking to block breaches.

[6] Fan Bingbing's "tax evasion" case (image source: internet)

In this case, "smuggling" can be described as a special form of "violating national borders," and "national borders" can be likened to a country's underwear. If you strip the country of its underwear, there will naturally be a stricter special law, "the crime of smuggling ordinary goods," to deal with you. The criminal law stipulates: if the amount of tax evaded through smuggled goods is particularly huge (evading taxes of 2.5 million yuan or more), the penalty is fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years or life imprisonment, and a fine of not less than one time but not more than five times the evaded tax, or confiscation of property. You Mou evaded customs supervision and evaded tariffs. The facts are clear, and the charge is correctly determined. Her sentence is at the lower limit, and the fine has not yet reached the lower limit (should be 6 million yuan), which is already a lenient punishment.

Cartoon: Cracking down on smuggling (Image source: internet)

It should be pointed out that "cross-border purchasing on behalf of others" is not illegal; what is illegal is the act of evading customs supervision, which objectively results in tax evasion. Whether you pass through customs by wearing ten dresses, or by filling in false cargo information on parcels, or whether the goods you are trying to evade are legally tradable clothing and food, or illegal, prohibited drugs and weapons, they all constitute smuggling. From this perspective, smuggling is merely a means of tax evasion, and the state punishes this means, with the amount of tax evasion serving only as a yardstick for sentencing. Therefore, although the state has not legislated that cross-border drug trafficking requires paying tariffs, there is the crime of smuggling drugs in criminal law.

The army of "parallel traders" that once swept through Hong Kong (Image source: internet)

Therefore, You Mou is not Fan Mou (Fan Bingbing). One evaded over 3 million yuan in taxes, the other evaded over 800 million yuan; one received a severe sentence of ten years, the other settled by paying back taxes. This seems unfair in terms of reason and emotion. Unjust? Or fair? [1] It is indeed the result of the legal system!