Commentary by Peng Shuo, Up Media.
In China, where public protest and political expression are tightly controlled, one of the few officially sanctioned ways for citizens to seek redress for both private grievances and government misconduct is through the country’s petition system.
Known formally as the “letters and visits system” (信访制度), it allows individuals to appeal directly to higher levels of government when they believe local authorities have violated their rights or failed to resolve their complaints.
Petitioning has its roots in the ancient Chinese tradition of “direct appeal to the emperor,” but the modern system, created under Communist Party rule in 1951, serves a fundamentally different purpose. Rather than providing an independent legal outlet for citizens voicing complaints, it functions as a means for the Party-state to better manage dissent against the authorities.
Beijing tightens restrictions on the petition system
For decades, the petition system has served as both a channel for individual appeals and one of China’s most important outlets for expressing public discontent.
Success
You are now signed up for our newsletter
Success
Check your email to complete sign up
On June 25, the National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration issued new regulations that took effect on July 1 — the anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The key provision states that citizens who travel to Beijing to petition must possess a written response issued by a provincial-level authority regarding their complaint. Those unable to provide such documentation will not be registered and will instead be “guided back to their local jurisdiction.”
In other words, petitioners must first complete the process at the county, municipal, and provincial levels and obtain written confirmation from a provincial authority before they can approach the petition offices in Beijing. They are no longer permitted to bypass lower levels of government and appeal directly to the National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration.
However, many petitioners seek higher-level appeals precisely because they lack confidence in the willingness of local authorities to act in good faith. The new regulation all but demands that petitioners first obtain a “clearance certificate” from local authorities before they can complain to higher-level officials. But who would voluntarily issue a permit for someone to file a complaint against them? Moreover, there is a long history of local authorities refusing to issue any formal written documents in such cases.
The new regulations impose only limited consequences on officials who fail in their duties, as higher authorities may merely “suggest that accountability be pursued.” For petitioners, however, the consequences are immediate: their cases will not be registered and may be instead handed over to public security (that is, China’s police) — potentially resulting in detention, threats, or other repercussions.
In short, the June 25 revision imposes a rigid barrier to protest on ordinary citizens, while officials face only flexible recommendations. This is not a transparent accountability mechanism, but a one-way restriction.
Even more significant is another provision: petitioners who repeatedly travel to Beijing after authorities have determined that their demands have been “resolved” will no longer have their cases registered, and their petitions will no longer be included in official statistics or reports.
This is important because according to the previous rules, the number of people petitioning in Beijing from a given area would factor into the performance assessments for officials serving in that region. This created incentives for local governments to take coercive measures, such as sending police and thugs to “intercept petitioners” (截访) and operating extralegal “black jails” (黑监狱) where troublesome individuals could be detained indefinitely to prevent them from getting to the capital.
At the same time, this also represented the only leverage petitioners possessed — the ability to damage local officials’ performance records by demonstrating the number of unresolved grievances on their watch.
Now, the ordinary citizen’s final bargaining chip has effectively been taken away. With this metric erased from official assessments, whether petitioners travel to Beijing or not will have virtually no impact on local officials’ careers. Failing to resolve their problems the local level will carry little or no cost.
Deflecting discontent
The letters and visits system may appear to be a channel for seeking relief, but it is itself a distinctive institution that emerged under the CCP’s authoritarian governance model.
In a country with functioning rule of law, when people’s rights are violated, they primarily rely on an independent judiciary, media coverage, and appeal to elected representatives, rather than traveling long distances to appeal to higher levels of government and beg for intervention.
The reason mainland China has developed such a peculiar petition system is precisely because it reflects not the strength of legal institutions, but rather a substitute mechanism that has emerged after judicial remedies have failed.
Many citizens do not believe that local governments can handle their grievances fairly. As a result, they are forced to bypass local authorities and petition higher levels of government, hoping that intervention from central authorities will resolve their problems.
The petition system also means that when people’s rights are violated, their first instinct is often not to turn to the courts, but to go to petition offices. What they rely on is not judicial rulings, but a hope for administrative clemency.
Whether a Chinese citizen’s rights can ultimately be protected depends, to a great extent, on whether administrative agencies decide to accept or coordinate the matter. More importantly, the petition office authorities themselves do not possess judicial adjudication powers or enforcement authority. They generally only receive complaints and forward them to relevant departments. Their handling opinions do not carry the same legal force as a court judgment.
This is why many petitioners, even after years of repeatedly filing complaints, may still fail to see their problems resolved. The fundamental reason is that the letters and visits system is essentially a mechanism for administrative coordination, not a system of judicial remedy.
More importantly, precisely because of this structure, the CCP regime not only maintains a high degree of control over state power and civil resources, but also imposes strict restrictions on civil society organizations, religious groups, and other social organizations, limiting their ability to operate independently. As a result, civil society has difficulty forming diverse forces capable of checking government authorities and assisting vulnerable groups.
READ MORE:
- Chinese High School Students Walk Out, Force School to Reverse Summer Vacation Cut
- More Than a Million Businesses Went Dark in Northeast China for 67 Days
- Protests Erupt in Xi’an After Longtime Mall Tenant Falls to His Death Following Eviction Notice
The last pressure release valve
When administrative institutions fail and civil society is simultaneously constrained, citizens can only continue seeking help from the same administrative power structure that created the problems in the first place. This creates a deadlock in which grievances are caused by the whims of administrative power, while the only path to redressing those grievances also lies in the good graces of administrative power
Across the strait from mainland China, Taiwan also has a system for petitions, public appeals, and the Control Yuan, which performs a watchdog role in government.However, these channels serve as supplements to the judiciary, elections, and media oversight — not substitutes for them.
No Taiwanese, for example, would kneel for days outside the Control Yuan office because they do not trust the courts. This does not mean Taiwan has no social controversies; rather, it means citizens have more robust institutional mechanisms for seeking remedies.
In Taiwan, people can use elections to replace governing parties, rely on elected representatives to oversee government actions, file lawsuits through the courts, and expose misconduct through news media.
The fact that a society under Communist Party authoritarian rule requires a massive petition system as a substitute for judicial remedies itself demonstrates the failure of China’s legal institutions.
The true protection of rights has never come from the petition office, but from democratic elections, an independent judiciary, and press freedom.
The petition system has long functioned as a pressure-release valve on the CCP’s authoritarian machinery — it cannot truly remedy the problems petitioners face, but it can help relieve pressure on the regime. But now that even this valve is being tightened, Beijing may eventually find itself facing blowback when social discontent reaches a boiling point.
※ Peng Shuo (彭碩) is a Chinese engineer residing in the United States.
This article represents only the author’s personal views and does not necessarily represent the views of Vision Times. Translated from the original Chinese and republished with authorization from Up Media.
