A Couple Was Fined 66,000 Chinese RMB($9,600) for Selling 5 Catties of Celery in Shaanxi, China

Welcome to Sound of Hope News, I'm Golden Li. Stories of Chinese Communist Party officials taking advantage of its citizens are commonplace. One such incident was exposed recently in Bazhou in the northern Chinese province Hebei, which imposed unreasonable fines on its citizens. After complaints by netizens, China's state council sent staff to conduct an unannounced inspection in Bazhou city. They found that the municipal government office had assigned large-scale arbitrary fines and charges in the 15 townships under its jurisdiction in order to make up for unreasonable expenditures. A total of 67 million Chinese RMB were fined within 67 days. In the end, many authorities, including the municipal party committee secretary, were held accountable. Another incident happened in Yunlin, in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. A local couple surnamed Luo ran a vegetable, grain and oil store. In October of last year, they bought 9 pounds of celery. The local market supervision department took 2.5 pounds for sampling inspection. A month later, the couple received an inspection report that the batch of celery had failed the inspection. The self-employed couple were fined 66,000 Chinese RMB because they could not provide the supplier's license certificate and receipts. The fine was over 3,000 times the value of the celery. The couple lamented helplessly, how many tons of celery do we need to sell in order to earn more than 66,000 RMB? Official media said that this incident was found by an inspection team of the state council. Chinese netizens question whether the inspection team alone could solve this kind of far-reaching problem when local authorities are more interested in making money off of its citizens under the guise of enforcing the law.