TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Zhao Lianhai was recently convicted in a Beijing court of attempting to use a “popular issue” to incite a mob and disrupt the social order.

What did he do? Zhao’s son was one of 300,000 children that were sickened by chemically-tainted milk powder—his son suffers from kidney stones, other children urinated blood and at least six children died—and so he led a campaign for justice against the company responsible and proper compensation for resulting medical expenses. In China, there is no proper court system to bring civil charges against companies, and so publicly pressuring the central government (read: the Communist Party) is the only means of seeking restitution. And so he did.

Susan Jakes writes:

But, after Zhao and other parents protested that the government’s compensation plan was inadequate to cover the cost of their children’s ongoing medical care, they began to receive threats from local police. Zhao’s Web sites were repeatedly shut down, and the group’s lawyers received phone calls from authorities urging them to drop the case. In late 2009, Zhao was officially arrested; he has been in police custody ever since.

Zhao’s campaign had been based on the widespread belief in China that while local officials or individual businesspeople may engage in venal or criminal activities, the central government, once informed of the truth, will see to it that justice is done.

The company responsible, the Sanlu Dairy Group, was protected by local government and party officials in 2008 from these charges because the company was good for their local economy and they were benefiting from them being based there.

When the state is directing the economy, overlap between the two necessarily happens, to the detriment of individuals.