“We’ll talk about your problems when we get back!” vs. “Insolent troublemakers! Daring to go over my head…” (
Xinhua)
Petitions for redress (also called “letters and visits”) have been in the news more than usual recently. After Peking University professor Sun Dongdong suggested that the vast majority of persistent petitioners were mentally disturbed (a statement he later backed away from), op-eds about the ills of the petition system and the plight of petitioners.
But the reaction to Sun’s remarks are only one part of a larger conversation about petitions going on in the mainland media this month. The cover feature of the current issue of Window of the South is devoted to ideas stability and features an article on the petition problems by Yu Jianrong, director of the Rural Development Institute at CASS (translated at CEG). And last week, Xinhua’s opinion magazine China Comment included an article by a small-town official that illustrated the difficulties that towns and villages encounter in the pursuit of a “zero tolerance” policy on petitions.
A petition official’s successful track record can be completely wiped out if even one petitioner makes it to Beijing, so the local Letters and Visits departments end up devoting huge amounts of money and energy to containing troublemakers rather than addressing larger problems. The article was widely republished on online news portals under sensational headlines such as Sina’s “Town official exposes the inside story: tens of thousands spent to intercept a single petitioner.”
Below the China Comment article is a reaction by Yu Jianrong that ran in The Beijing News.
Editor’s note: The following are the true experiences of a town official involved in petition work, and these experiences are ongoing. The actions of China’s base-level government officials are given a variety of interpretations by petitioners, upper-level government agencies, and the news media. Yet when you truly engage them, you can understand their hidden frustration and troubles. The present status of low-level petitions officials reflects a systemic illness and encourages a mentality that this is “business as usual.” This is a matter deserves our close attention!
An official’s thoughts on “petition interception”
I’ve worked in small towns for over ten years, and in petitions for more than six. In the more than a decade I’ve worked in several towns, I’ve made my way from an ordinary office worker to the township’s vice-secretary in charge of petition work. And ever since I began managing petitions, I have been constantly on edge, picking my way across thin ice.
Li Shuifu (not his real name) is a well-known long-time petitioner. He’s unmarried and unemployed. When he was 17 years old he and his father started petitioning because of “persecution,” and he has petitioned at practically every major annual meeting (such as the city, province, and central government legislative sessions) for more than thirty years. Whenever he reaches Beijing, the provincial capital, or the nearby city, the township government must send someone to either receive him or block his visit. Each time, we have to send at least two people round trip to the provincial capital or Beijing at the cost of three to five thousand yuan at the very least, and sometimes more than ten thousand.
In recent years, to guarantee that there are no slip-ups, the township sends five officials to watch Li Shuifu twenty-four hours a day whenever the national legislative sessions and other events come around: eating, drinking, sleeping, and going to the toilet with him for more than a fortnight. If there are multiple sensitive periods in a single year, then it costs tens of thousands of yuan to keep a handle on just that one individual. If there’s a slip-up, then we have to intercept him at the train station or the bus station, and if we are unable to, then we have to pick him up in Beijing at the expense of huge quantities of human, material, and financial resources.
Once, when a leader came to the city on an inspection tour, Li Shuifu and other “unstable elements” had to be kept under surveillance at the direction of our superiors. The government of the township where he lived arranged for two people to go to commence observation of his home three days before hand. When we went over, Li was not at home, sending the workers into a panic. Searching all over, they eventually learned that his father had been hospitalized, so they workers immediately rushed to the hospital and waited nearby. Two observers stood on a rooftop in the mid-day heat, the harsh rays of the sun beating down on their skin. A report about Li’s movements had to be made to the leadership every two hours, and they became restless at times when he fell asleep in the room and disappeared from view. Yet they did not want to startle him, so they had to ask someone from the hospital to take a peek inside the room for them before they could relax. The uneasiness lasted for several days before the leader completed the inspection tour and the “shadow” work could end.
In addition to individual cases of petitioners like Li Shuifu, there are also group petitions in our township — private teachers who have not been promoted from probationary status or displaced households upset with their compensation — who need someone to keep an eye on them during every major sensitive period. Any slip-up means that we have to chase after them to intercept them before they reach the provincial capital or Beijing. And if we can’t stop them — in the event they do in fact reach the capital or Beijing — then we have to to “cancel” their registration with the petition registration agency by any means possible (meaning that their petition is not recorded by higher-level departments) to ensure that our “zero tolerance” is not overturned.
“Zero tolerance” beleaguers base-level committees and governments
For quite some time, village-level officials have poured money and manpower into petition departments to ensure the stability of petition work, and for the past few years, petition departments have become an exhaust pipe for the public and a release valve for society. Ever since the implementation of the “zero tolerance” system for petitions, upper-level petition offices have become incredibly popular destinations, creating nothing but headaches for base-level committees and governments. Granted, some petitions are indeed motivated by malpractice or capriciousness on the part of particular officials or government agencies. Some government employees of mediocre political quality may end up inflaming the public’s dissatisfaction by turning people away without an explanation, drawing out for months what could be resolved in a day, or even handling things rudely and unjustly, leading to petition cases.
What is difficult to handle is when individuals at particular upper-level departments behave capriciously, causing the parties involved to appeal to ever higher levels, becoming less connected to reality until an unresolved small problem develops over the years into a large problem and ultimately brings about petitions that go above the normal administrative hierarchy. Petition work follows the principle of assigning responsibility to specific levels and requiring the originator to resolve the issue, yet there are no practical measures for dealing with upper-level agencies and government departments that are irresponsible and which do not take care of their own matters. Fearful of the might of “zero tolerance,” many towns have no way to deal with petitioners besides putting manpower and material and financial resources to work catching and stopping them. Sometimes, larger considerations mean that honest people suffer while people who make a fuss are rewarded.
The hardest cases to resolve are thorny group petitions. In one village, two families get into a terrible fight every time village committee terms are up. If one side takes power, the other side assembles to nitpick and find fault, digging up problems from the Cultural Revolution period, or land contract issues from more than a decade ago. They fight ceaselessly over problems left over from times past, and because this means we have to handle their petitions every day, many other administrative tasks are unable to move forward.
Who is the victim of “zero tolerance”?
by Yu Jianrong / TBN
A rural petition officer who recently revealed the “inside story” of petition work said that in order to keep tight control on the total number of petitions, to prevent group and cross-level petitions, and to ensure that their mission of zero petitions is not negated by a single case, they put long-time petitioners under surveillance during legislative sessions and other sensitive periods. If there are any slip-ups in “receiving” or “intercepting” petitioners, they then attempt to cancel their registration at the higher-level petition office by any possible means. The official complained, “Ever since I began managing petitions, I have been constantly on edge, picking my way across thin ice.” Writing from experience, the official sketches a picture of a local government “hard at work” under these pressures, and illustrates just how large of a cost this exacts. The manpower and material and financial resources that local governments spend in this area consume their time and make it impossible for normal administrative work to go forward. And underlying their complaints is the sense that local governments and officials are actually the victims of the zero tolerance policy.
Yet if you look at the situation from the perspective of a petitioner, you can see how insubstantial the results of “zero tolerance” really are. Only a minority of petitioners can be placated with money, and the local government’s countermeasures against the persistent infringe even further on their rights. Setting aside the surveillance they are subject to during sensitive periods, when petitioners have tried every strategy to escape local containment and have gone broke struggling to reach Beijing or the provincial capital, they’re blocked by interceptors before they can even enter the door of the petition office. Even worse, they may be beaten and deprived of their liberty as a result. Denied an explanation, they may be driven into a downward spiral of depression. In other words, while the zero tolerance policy on petitions may compel local governments to resolve some of their petition issues, the unreasonable methods to which they resort in order to avoid having their record nullified infringe on the rights of the majority of petitioners.
More seriously, the distortion of problems generated in the course of enforcement of the zero tolerance policy is harmful to social equality and justice, harmful to the country’s judicial authority, and harmful to the stability and development of the state. Government agencies have adopted the oppressive zero tolerance policy to go after petitioners largely because of the prominence of the petition issue, and because they believe that hard work on the part of specific agencies can help resolve those problems. However, the prospective goal cannot actually be achieved. In reality, the petition issue is becoming increasingly complicated and serious. “Zero tolerance” does not directly confront the deeper social causes of the petition issue; it merely results in a superficial reduction in petition numbers to satisfy inspection-oriented target that is completely divorced from reality. To achieve good track records and avoid responsibility, some low-level governments therefore have a natural tendency to cope with problems by selecting the methods that are the most expedient: when they do not buy off, stall, or cheat petitioners, they beat and harass them. Such superficial solutions that seek an instant pay-off leave more serious problems in their wake.
Precisely for this reason, I oppose “zero tolerance” policies and similar rules of oppressive power that underestimate the complexity and long-term nature of the issues and do not factor into their initial design the lower-level government’s possible “countermeasures.” In my opinion, in the short-term, party and government agencies at all levels really ought to reduce pressures and relax restrictions on petitioners, and not require local governments to come to Beijing to receive petitioners. Higher-level government departments should not simply order their subordinate departments to carry out a zero-tolerance policy on petitions, for specific problems require specific analysis. And there should not be any special limitations on the petition office hierarchy. For the mid- to long-term, policies should seek to improve the justice system and strengthen the legislature’s oversight functions in order to rework the mechanism for allocating benefits to various groups in society.
Complaints about the petition system have been going on for years. Yu Jianrong wrote essentially the same article for Phoenix Weekly last year (translated on China Elections and Governance), and back in 2005, the mainland media carried reports about revisions to petition regulations that would supposedly better protect petitioners’ rights.
From a January 2005 report currently available on the website of the Chinese Embassy in the US:
In an interview with Xinhua, officials of the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council and the State Bureau for Letters and Calls on Monday acknowledged that problems exist in the current work of handling petitions, such as inadequate channels, lack of supervision, and officials whose malpractice led to petitions escaping responsibility.
To guarantee the citizens’ legitimate right to make petitions, the revised regulation stipulates in the chapter of general principle that “No organization or individual is allowed to retaliate petitioners; the offender will be held to account for his deed.”
…
Zhou Zhanshun, former director of the State Bureau for Letters and Calls once said more than 80 percent petitions in China were reasonable and more than 80 percent of them could be solved by local governments but they failed to do so.
Links and Sources
Who’s the real victim of “zero tolerance” for petitions?
Petitions for redress (also called “letters and visits”) have been in the news more than usual recently. After Peking University professor Sun Dongdong suggested that the vast majority of persistent petitioners were mentally disturbed (a statement he later backed away from), op-eds about the ills of the petition system and the plight of petitioners.
But the reaction to Sun’s remarks are only one part of a larger conversation about petitions going on in the mainland media this month. The cover feature of the current issue of Window of the South is devoted to ideas stability and features an article on the petition problems by Yu Jianrong, director of the Rural Development Institute at CASS (translated at CEG). And last week, Xinhua’s opinion magazine China Comment included an article by a small-town official that illustrated the difficulties that towns and villages encounter in the pursuit of a “zero tolerance” policy on petitions.
A petition official’s successful track record can be completely wiped out if even one petitioner makes it to Beijing, so the local Letters and Visits departments end up devoting huge amounts of money and energy to containing troublemakers rather than addressing larger problems. The article was widely republished on online news portals under sensational headlines such as Sina’s “Town official exposes the inside story: tens of thousands spent to intercept a single petitioner.”
Below the China Comment article is a reaction by Yu Jianrong that ran in The Beijing News.
A town official explains the high cost of petitioning
China Comment
Editor’s note: The following are the true experiences of a town official involved in petition work, and these experiences are ongoing. The actions of China’s base-level government officials are given a variety of interpretations by petitioners, upper-level government agencies, and the news media. Yet when you truly engage them, you can understand their hidden frustration and troubles. The present status of low-level petitions officials reflects a systemic illness and encourages a mentality that this is “business as usual.” This is a matter deserves our close attention!
An official’s thoughts on “petition interception”
I’ve worked in small towns for over ten years, and in petitions for more than six. In the more than a decade I’ve worked in several towns, I’ve made my way from an ordinary office worker to the township’s vice-secretary in charge of petition work. And ever since I began managing petitions, I have been constantly on edge, picking my way across thin ice.
Li Shuifu (not his real name) is a well-known long-time petitioner. He’s unmarried and unemployed. When he was 17 years old he and his father started petitioning because of “persecution,” and he has petitioned at practically every major annual meeting (such as the city, province, and central government legislative sessions) for more than thirty years. Whenever he reaches Beijing, the provincial capital, or the nearby city, the township government must send someone to either receive him or block his visit. Each time, we have to send at least two people round trip to the provincial capital or Beijing at the cost of three to five thousand yuan at the very least, and sometimes more than ten thousand.
In recent years, to guarantee that there are no slip-ups, the township sends five officials to watch Li Shuifu twenty-four hours a day whenever the national legislative sessions and other events come around: eating, drinking, sleeping, and going to the toilet with him for more than a fortnight. If there are multiple sensitive periods in a single year, then it costs tens of thousands of yuan to keep a handle on just that one individual. If there’s a slip-up, then we have to intercept him at the train station or the bus station, and if we are unable to, then we have to pick him up in Beijing at the expense of huge quantities of human, material, and financial resources.
Once, when a leader came to the city on an inspection tour, Li Shuifu and other “unstable elements” had to be kept under surveillance at the direction of our superiors. The government of the township where he lived arranged for two people to go to commence observation of his home three days before hand. When we went over, Li was not at home, sending the workers into a panic. Searching all over, they eventually learned that his father had been hospitalized, so they workers immediately rushed to the hospital and waited nearby. Two observers stood on a rooftop in the mid-day heat, the harsh rays of the sun beating down on their skin. A report about Li’s movements had to be made to the leadership every two hours, and they became restless at times when he fell asleep in the room and disappeared from view. Yet they did not want to startle him, so they had to ask someone from the hospital to take a peek inside the room for them before they could relax. The uneasiness lasted for several days before the leader completed the inspection tour and the “shadow” work could end.
In addition to individual cases of petitioners like Li Shuifu, there are also group petitions in our township — private teachers who have not been promoted from probationary status or displaced households upset with their compensation — who need someone to keep an eye on them during every major sensitive period. Any slip-up means that we have to chase after them to intercept them before they reach the provincial capital or Beijing. And if we can’t stop them — in the event they do in fact reach the capital or Beijing — then we have to to “cancel” their registration with the petition registration agency by any means possible (meaning that their petition is not recorded by higher-level departments) to ensure that our “zero tolerance” is not overturned.
“Zero tolerance” beleaguers base-level committees and governments
For quite some time, village-level officials have poured money and manpower into petition departments to ensure the stability of petition work, and for the past few years, petition departments have become an exhaust pipe for the public and a release valve for society. Ever since the implementation of the “zero tolerance” system for petitions, upper-level petition offices have become incredibly popular destinations, creating nothing but headaches for base-level committees and governments. Granted, some petitions are indeed motivated by malpractice or capriciousness on the part of particular officials or government agencies. Some government employees of mediocre political quality may end up inflaming the public’s dissatisfaction by turning people away without an explanation, drawing out for months what could be resolved in a day, or even handling things rudely and unjustly, leading to petition cases.
What is difficult to handle is when individuals at particular upper-level departments behave capriciously, causing the parties involved to appeal to ever higher levels, becoming less connected to reality until an unresolved small problem develops over the years into a large problem and ultimately brings about petitions that go above the normal administrative hierarchy. Petition work follows the principle of assigning responsibility to specific levels and requiring the originator to resolve the issue, yet there are no practical measures for dealing with upper-level agencies and government departments that are irresponsible and which do not take care of their own matters. Fearful of the might of “zero tolerance,” many towns have no way to deal with petitioners besides putting manpower and material and financial resources to work catching and stopping them. Sometimes, larger considerations mean that honest people suffer while people who make a fuss are rewarded.
The hardest cases to resolve are thorny group petitions. In one village, two families get into a terrible fight every time village committee terms are up. If one side takes power, the other side assembles to nitpick and find fault, digging up problems from the Cultural Revolution period, or land contract issues from more than a decade ago. They fight ceaselessly over problems left over from times past, and because this means we have to handle their petitions every day, many other administrative tasks are unable to move forward.
Who is the victim of “zero tolerance”?
by Yu Jianrong / TBN
A rural petition officer who recently revealed the “inside story” of petition work said that in order to keep tight control on the total number of petitions, to prevent group and cross-level petitions, and to ensure that their mission of zero petitions is not negated by a single case, they put long-time petitioners under surveillance during legislative sessions and other sensitive periods. If there are any slip-ups in “receiving” or “intercepting” petitioners, they then attempt to cancel their registration at the higher-level petition office by any possible means. The official complained, “Ever since I began managing petitions, I have been constantly on edge, picking my way across thin ice.” Writing from experience, the official sketches a picture of a local government “hard at work” under these pressures, and illustrates just how large of a cost this exacts. The manpower and material and financial resources that local governments spend in this area consume their time and make it impossible for normal administrative work to go forward. And underlying their complaints is the sense that local governments and officials are actually the victims of the zero tolerance policy.
Yet if you look at the situation from the perspective of a petitioner, you can see how insubstantial the results of “zero tolerance” really are. Only a minority of petitioners can be placated with money, and the local government’s countermeasures against the persistent infringe even further on their rights. Setting aside the surveillance they are subject to during sensitive periods, when petitioners have tried every strategy to escape local containment and have gone broke struggling to reach Beijing or the provincial capital, they’re blocked by interceptors before they can even enter the door of the petition office. Even worse, they may be beaten and deprived of their liberty as a result. Denied an explanation, they may be driven into a downward spiral of depression. In other words, while the zero tolerance policy on petitions may compel local governments to resolve some of their petition issues, the unreasonable methods to which they resort in order to avoid having their record nullified infringe on the rights of the majority of petitioners.
More seriously, the distortion of problems generated in the course of enforcement of the zero tolerance policy is harmful to social equality and justice, harmful to the country’s judicial authority, and harmful to the stability and development of the state. Government agencies have adopted the oppressive zero tolerance policy to go after petitioners largely because of the prominence of the petition issue, and because they believe that hard work on the part of specific agencies can help resolve those problems. However, the prospective goal cannot actually be achieved. In reality, the petition issue is becoming increasingly complicated and serious. “Zero tolerance” does not directly confront the deeper social causes of the petition issue; it merely results in a superficial reduction in petition numbers to satisfy inspection-oriented target that is completely divorced from reality. To achieve good track records and avoid responsibility, some low-level governments therefore have a natural tendency to cope with problems by selecting the methods that are the most expedient: when they do not buy off, stall, or cheat petitioners, they beat and harass them. Such superficial solutions that seek an instant pay-off leave more serious problems in their wake.
Precisely for this reason, I oppose “zero tolerance” policies and similar rules of oppressive power that underestimate the complexity and long-term nature of the issues and do not factor into their initial design the lower-level government’s possible “countermeasures.” In my opinion, in the short-term, party and government agencies at all levels really ought to reduce pressures and relax restrictions on petitioners, and not require local governments to come to Beijing to receive petitioners. Higher-level government departments should not simply order their subordinate departments to carry out a zero-tolerance policy on petitions, for specific problems require specific analysis. And there should not be any special limitations on the petition office hierarchy. For the mid- to long-term, policies should seek to improve the justice system and strengthen the legislature’s oversight functions in order to rework the mechanism for allocating benefits to various groups in society.
Complaints about the petition system have been going on for years. Yu Jianrong wrote essentially the same article for Phoenix Weekly last year (translated on China Elections and Governance), and back in 2005, the mainland media carried reports about revisions to petition regulations that would supposedly better protect petitioners’ rights.
From a January 2005 report currently available on the website of the Chinese Embassy in the US: