"This is the way dripping water wears through rock," Hao said with a grin. "I have shown people that they have to land successive blows on an unfair system before it collapses."

Hao has already earned himself national fame as a "troublemaker." Doing a Google search of Hao Jinsong's name in Chinese characters produces 29,000 entries, including a bylined article, his personal profile and an editorial on his action in People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.

Although he has filed all the lawsuits in his own name as a consumer, their public-interest nature has been widely acknowledged. At the end of last year, his litigation over railway taxation receipts was ranked as one of the 10 most significant lawsuits of the year by www.chinacourt.org, a website of the Supreme Court. In citing the reasons for his nomination, Hao was praised for "his resolve in fighting social injustices and safeguarding rights through the law." In another survey sponsored by Beijing-based Legal Daily and the All China Lawyers Association, the same lawsuit was ranked among the top 10 influential lawsuits in China in 2005.

Opposing views

Despite the encouraging attitude of the judicial system and media, some people in the legal field take a dim view of his actions. Yang Tao, a staff member of the prosecutor's office of Ganzhou in central Jiangxi Province, wrote an editorial in March 2005 questioning the meaning of initiating litigation for tiny compensation (at that time, the largest amount Hao sought was 100 yuan.) The article said that if Hao's example were copied infinitely in the country, China's overloaded judicial system would be bombarded and paralyzed by such cases.

Wu Ge, Director of the Constitution and Human Rights Committee of the All China Lawyers Association, told Beijing Review that Hao's moves have evolved into legal activism that has a mostly symbolic meaning and very little practical value. But Wu also said he admires Hao's courage in fighting against unfair systems as an individual.

Zhou Ze, an associate law professor at the China Youth University of Political Sciences, holds the view that Hao's experiences are not replicable since very few people can afford the time and energy to fight for nominal compensation. "It is unrealistic to place too much expectation on public litigation and it is obvious that the oft-charged monopoly sectors have done little to reverse their course and improve their services," he told Beijing Review.

Zhou, who formerly was a legal reporter, understood the role of the media in the process of public interest litigation differently from Hao. While Hao believes the intensive reporting about these lawsuits is an important-if not the only-way to combine the forces of the media and the law to push society forward, Zhou holds that too much praise by the media has misled citizens into thinking that it is unconditionally worthwhile to litigate for "self-esteem" and to demonstrate their legal awareness. Zhou said that under such circumstances, the media are doing nothing but kicking up a fuss.

Still other people accuse Hao of merely pursuing personal fame. But he is quite forgiving of such criticism and to some extent pleased by it. "By making their judgment after reading reports, at least they have been thinking, and thinking is what we need most for the time being," he said. He added that he views these critics as much better than people who are indifferent about society, those who read the newspaper only for the sports news. "Citizens' rights are quietly lost through this kind of numbness," he said.