Beijing — It seemed like a gift from heaven in a country where very little is free. When security guard Xu Ting went to an ATM in southern Guangzhou on a Friday night in the spring of 2006 and withdrew $140, he noticed that it only deducted 14 cents from his account. Over the next eight hours, he made 170 more withdrawals, pocketing upward of $24,000.

Over the next several months, he lost some of the money to a thief on a train, tried to start up a company that failed and gambled most of the rest on thousands of lottery tickets that turned out to be losers. With little left, he got a job.

Then a routine police ID check led to his arrest.

His disappointment at how little the windfall had changed his life was nothing compared to what happened next. He was ordered imprisoned for life by a Chinese court late last year. The crime: bank robbery.

Xu's case has attracted widespread attention in China, fanning public ire at the judiciary, the banking industry and corrupt officials who get away with far greater crimes than ordinary people who can't catch a break.

Fearful of the growing anger over perceived injustice and China's widening rich-poor gap, the government late last week held a re-trial for Xu, a rarity in a country where the state is presumed always to be right. A verdict could be announced as early as the end of the week.

For Xu's father, the initial court decision suggests China's laws have not kept up with societal changes or common sense, a view some legal experts share.

“My son is not a bad kid, but it's such a money society,” said Xu Cailang, his father. “I don't know much about the law, but I think this sentence is totally unreasonable. Ninety percent of people in China would have taken the money.”

That figure may be conservative. In an Internet survey in late December, just 7 percent of 19,437 respondents said they would stop withdrawing money and promptly report the mistake to the bank.

“We are not saints,” said an anonymous posting on popular Web site Tencent.com.

Xu's father, 50, says his son can hardly be expected to follow the sort of mores he did growing up in the 1950s. When Chairman Mao led the nation, most people were scrupulously honest and society shared a common sense of purpose.

“The difference between then and today is like heaven and earth,” he said. “Now everything depends on connections and graft. It's a slippery slope.”

In the past decade, credit and debit card usage has exploded in China with anger toward banks fanned by poor bank service in the state-run sector.

Supporters say Xu's bank is partly to blame for not maintaining its ATM. They also note that the bank never actually suffered a loss, since the $24,000 was refunded by the ATM manufacturer. “The analogy in Xu's case might be to someone finding money on the street and not turning it in,” said Wu Yichun, Xu's lawyer. “This should be a civil, not a criminal, case.”

Others slam China's banks for cheating their customers without penalty even as Xu receives a life sentence. Internet postings criticize financial institutions that refuse to reimburse customers after their ATMs spit out counterfeit bills or blank “test” paper. In one case cited online, a Mr. Chen from Beijing discovered $14 from the ATM he was using was fake. The bank refused a refund on the grounds he didn't have evidence it came from their machine.

In another case, a man surnamed Huang from Chongqing, who declined to give his first name, had a similar experience with $30. Eventually he became so infuriated with the bank's unresponsive attitude that he attacked and damaged the machine.

Others claim “ATM phobia” after the Xu case, fearful a machine will spit out more than expected and land them in trouble as well.

In recent months, the anger about banks has become more pronounced. Foreign banks have started building a presence here after international trade rules forced China to open the market, and the differences are not going unnoticed.

Until now, Chinese consumers had little choice but to go to a state-run bank. One survey released last year on Dahe News found 79.5 percent of Guangdong residents would opt for a foreign bank over its domestic counterparts.

While growing frustration with banking services and ATMs appears widespread, perhaps most worrisome for Beijing are the awkward questions being raised about justice in this nominally socialist society. Internet users were quick to compare Xu's life sentence to the often lenient penalties given to officials on the take, a contrast that doesn't thrill the Communist Party.

“Compared with Xu Ting, the corrupt officials deserve a thousand deaths,” said an anonymous comment on Tianya Club, a social networking site. “China's judicial system allows officials to set a fire while forbidding ordinary people to light a lamp.”

Every few years, China has a case in which public outrage prompts the government to reverse course, leading to social change.

In 2003, migrant worker Sun Zhigang was beaten to death by police, resulting in fewer restrictions on people moving within the country. In 2005 convicted murderer She Xianglin was found innocent after 11 years in jail, spurring death penalty reform.

Xu Ting's lawyers hope his case can help bring more common sense to China's theft statutes.

The judiciary has defended its decision even with the re-trial. “Xu Ting's case is totally in line with the judicial procedure,” said Lu Botao, chief of the Guangdong Supreme Court. “People shouldn't get too emotional.”

Xu Ting, who grew up in Linfen, a small city in northern Shanxi province, has adapted successfully to his life in prison, according to his lawyer, but is cautiously hopeful for a reduced sentence.

Wu, his lawyer, said he can't comment on Xu's fundamental honesty, although he isn't an “eel-like person.” Withdrawing cash 170 times consecutively, however, suggests he doesn't think much about consequences, Wu added.

Xu told reporters at his retrial last week that he stopped when the machine ran out of money, according to local media. He planned to go back a few hours later for more after the machine was refilled, but slept through his alarm clock. It was daylight by then, and he decided to stop at $24,000.

He quit his job, bought a $100 cell phone, used $600 to pay off debts and gave $280 to his grandmother.

When the bank discovered the loss and started calling him, Xu fled to his home province. On the train, someone stole $7,000 he had in his coat, his father said, sending him on a downward spiral.

His boss called and tried to convince him to turn himself in, but Xu declined, his father said, explaining that he wanted to make the debt whole first. He invested $14,000 in an Internet cafe with a partner, which failed, then bought the thousands of lottery tickets before an ID check led to his arrest at a train station.

“He's a little naive,” his father said. “And he's unlucky.”

Justice should be impartial, but things don't work that way in China, Xu's father said, suggesting that the court might have come to a different decision if Xu or his family were rich and had connections.

“Our family is like a little drop of water to the big sea that is the nation,” he added. “But if this case helps China improve its legal system, that would at least be something.”

Article UID=fcefacc4-5809-414a-9eb4-50020be7e7c8