The petition predicament is systemic
 

In his government work report, Premier Wen Jiabao pointed out, "We will adhere to the system whereby leading cadres, especially principal ones, handle people's letters and receive people's visits in order to serve the people and resolve conflicts. "  These words immediately became a focal point of media attention, as some media even came from far away or sent telegrams to inquire about it.  My answer is, the system of leading cadres, especially principle ones,  receiving people's visits as a starting point is good.  It is a hope that leading cadres everywhere can take the responsibility to resolve the individual problems of the people themselves in order to construct a harmonious society.  However, in reality, this result is not necessarily ideal because a system of leading cadres receiving petitioners is at odds with the principles of a modern state's management of authority.  One of the most important rules of a modern state is each person performs his own duty and each person takes responsibility.  With these rules, principal leading cadres should not deal with all problems themselves, in fact, one could even say, primary leading cadres do not have the authority to deal with specific disputes.  Only if each person does his own work can each person take responsibility.  If principal leaders can gesticulate and interfere on affairs that lower departments are responsible for whenever they feel like it, the final result is that no one will take responsibility.

 

In order to explain this reasoning, let's imagine for a minute that the premier himself received petitioners.  Of course, based on his power and prestige, he might be able to resolve some individual disputes, guarantee some people's legal rights, and win a good reputation among his beloved people.  However, a direct consequence would be that more people would come to Beijing to have the premier solve their problems, and even if Wen Jiabao did nothing else, he would still not be able to receive all of the petitioners.  More seriously, he would not be able to write out instructions for resolving all of the problems brought by petitioners, and some problems would not necessarily be resolved even if he does write out instructions.  The masses would hope to look for someone of an even higher office; when you are sick, you look for a doctor with a high reputation, by the same logic, when you want to petition, of course you want to look for a person of a high office.  Many masses of people come to Beijing to petition; why do they persist for years?  They hope that one day Heaven will open his eyes, that they'll receive instructions from the Secretary-General or premier in order to resolve their problems.

 

Why, if the premier himself received petitioners, could he by and large not be able to resolve petitioners' disputes, even possibly making them worse?  In my opinion, this cannot be separated from the basic shortcomings in China's petition system.

 

 

I call the origin of the systemic difficulties that China's current petition activities face the "petitioners dilemma," and I look at petition activities from many aspects to understand and elucidate the dilemma.  In my opinion, whether it is in terms of goals or tactics, petitioners', petition office officials', grassroots governments', and the central government's understanding of and use of the petition system are not entirely the same.  In many ways, petitioning means taking part in a game of using different aspects of state power and realizing interests.  It is each party pursuing the maximization of his or her own interest on the system's platform.

 

The central government faces predicaments in many areas, which the scholar Li Hongbo has vividly analyzed.  He said, "In the game of petitions, states often find themselves in a more or less damaging predicament: as the formulator of the rules of the game and arbiter, even if the state wants to guarantee unimpeded flow of information in order to resist the bureaucratization of local government, they don't have the power to deal with the occasional surges on a large scale that come to Beijing to petition and collectively petition, causing shocks in society.  The state not only wants to maintain a rosy image for the people but also wants to prevent disturbances, not only wants to strictly suppress the illegal image of local governments but also has to, to a certain extent, uphold local government officials' pursuit of their interests so as to give them incentives to actively implement central government orders."  So, how can the country meet this embarrassing predicament?  If you look at this from the perspective of the central government's political motivation for establishing the petition system and from its historical evolutionary process, then at the beginning of CCP rule in China, the petition system advocated by the state's highest policy-makers not only had the function of deepening political power and legalization, neutralizing intense social conflicts, implementing policy, and realizing social mobilization, but it also could achieve non-standard control of officials.

     

However, the central government quickly realized that an important consequence of this non-standard control is that problems congregate at the center.  As early as 1963, the CCP Central Committee and State Council in "Notice concerning the strengthening of work on petitions" acknowledged: "If so many people come to Beijing to request the resolution of various individual problems, this adds many difficulties to the work of central government organs."  Because of this, the central government required that provincial, municipal, and autonomous region level party and people's congress committees to strengthen their leadership on petition work, "striving to resolve the individual problems of the people."  "Local government organizations at all levels should earnestly deal with petition cases and respond with the results as scheduled.  Unresolved cases assigned to the Central Committee and State Council should be dealt with in a timely manner, reporting on the results of the handling of the problem to the Central Committee and State Council usually within three months.  For complicated cases that are difficult to investigate thoroughly and can't be resolved in time, a reason should be stated clearly and a date for resolution should be proposed."  Additionally, Party Supervisory Commissions at all levels should "often supervise and investigate the work of party and people's congress committees of all levels in dealing with petitions."  After this, the investigation system for petitions became more and more specific and stricter.  That is to say, the central government tried to, through putting pressure on local party and government; eliminate the system effect of having a large number of people come to Beijing seeking solutions, in order to guarantee the realization of the systemic goals of petitions.

 

Then, local governments, in order to protect their own political interests, adopted various methods to eliminate the pressure on the central government, causing the systemic goal of petitions to become distorted and finally causing the pressure to shift back to the center.  In the view of local party and government, the center requiring local governments to resolve grassroots problems most directly means to, in any way possible, not allow the masses to petition in Beijing.  Because of this, each level of local government has no choice but to make petition quantity the most important indicator, as each level puts pressure on the level below.  Additionally, in order to do well on these indicators, local governments everywhere try to reduce the number of petitions that get registered in Beijing, through methods including de-registering petitions.  That is to say that the center, in putting pressure on localities, possibly had the original intent of urging local governments, including the county government, to conscientiously resolve the problems of petitioners and uphold justice, thereby easing the people's anger, promoting a harmonious society or, at least, reducing disharmony.  However, in facing central government pressure, local governments often aren't resolving problems but instead are intercepting petitioners, de-registering petitions, detaining people, charging fines, employing re-education through labor and criminal punishments, punishing family members, and using other control tactics to suppress petitioners.

     

Or course we are not saying that local governments utterly don't want to resolve the problems, because there are many problems that local governments truly can't solve and many which any government would not be able to resolve.  However, local government suppression of petitioners often incites greater indignation.  Some petitioners originally had no reasonable reason to petition, but once being attacked by the local government, such as through re-education through labor, then this re-education through labor became the rational reason for them to petition.  The best example of the center's intentions being at odds with the effects of its policies is "canceling from accounts."  The center set up and maintains the petition system with its original intentions possibly including using the power of the masses as a precaution against corruption, but the objective outcome of strengthening petition work is precisely the opposite.  Some local governments even use taxpayers' money to bribe people, including higher levels within the petition bureau, in order to request that they decrease the number of petitions registered.

 

What especially warrants attention is that the masses of petitioners can entirely recognize the difficulties produced by the local and central government not being in agreement.  Objectively speaking, many of their problems are caused by lower levels of government not acting or dealing with things improperly, but some arise because the central government's policy does not fit reality.  In their eyes, making use of these difficulties and pressure to protect their own interests or gain benefit outside the system is also a logical choice.  Because of this, the more local governments obstruct the people from petitioning in Beijing, the more motivation the people have to petition in Beijing.  Many petitions believe a behavioral logic; that is, whatever they consider their opponent – the local government – fears, they do just that.  Their psychological train of thought is like this: the county government doesn't let people petition in Beijing?  That means the county government fears us going to Beijing, so in order to force the county government to resolve the problem, I will of course go to Beijing.  Once the masses break through the locality's defensive perimeter, they not only continue to Beijing to petition but they also utilize all types of  "abnormal petition methods."  For example, they might sit in the embassy district, protest outside the central government compound, or they might even jump into the Jinshui River (at Tiananmen Square), light themselves on fire, or adopt other extreme tactics, creating an incident that brings about political pressure.  However, the consequences of this are that local governments employ even harsher measures towards the petitioning masses and the central government, for its own safety, has no choice but to tolerate localities' illegal actions.  This also has to shake all of society's, including the petitioners', trust in the petition system, which demonstrates that maybe the petition system isn't so effective.  Petitioners themselves also do not necessarily believe that the petition system has much use, but at least in some localities, the pressure from the center changes the petition system from "useless" to "harmful."  In this way, the petition system has changed from an instrument to reduce pressure to one that adds it.

     

 

My analysis has already exposed the serious deficiencies of the petition system.  In my view, the main origin of these deficiencies lies in the logic and rules of operating in the petition system and also derives from the same origin as centralized power in China's political system.  The greatest manifestation of the aggregation of power is the petition responsibility investigation system, which is built on a system of pressure.  I believe that we need to understand the importance of instituting petition system of reform from the perspective of the construction of state authority and the high level of security for current rulers.  Furthermore, from the view point of the modernization of the political system, we need to re-establish the functional goal of petitions and the petition system.   Specifically, we can think about how to safely and through a serious of steps institute reform of the petition system from three aspects: administrative, legal, and political.

 

First, a short-term, temporary administrative solution is to put less pressure on all levels of party and government departments and relax restrictions on petitioning citizens so as to decrease the scope and impact of petitions and uphold social stability.  Specifically, the central government should decrease pressure on local party and government leaders, not create a ranked list of the number of petitions for different localities, eliminate the petition responsibility investigation system, and not require local governments to meet petitioners in Beijing.  The central government petition department should not refuse to deal with petitioners and send them back to the provinces or limit the level citizens petitioning.  Local public security organs should deal with public order cases that arise because of petitions according to the law.  In my opinion, through weakening the function of using petitions to gain  relief of one's rights and reducing the people's expectations of petitions, we can quickly put an end to some petition cases, decreasing the number that come to Beijing.  Additionally, reducing the pressure on local governments will also reduce the pressure on Beijing, uphold the political authority of local governments, also strengthening and solidifying the center's political authority.

 

Second, a medium-term legal solution is to strengthen all levels of judicial organs so that they can accept citizens' lawsuits and appeals and have the responsibility and ability to deal with cases, so that they can bear the current overload of cases that the petition department has.  Specifically, upper level courts and prosecutorial offices can send people to lower levels to set up a mechanism for dealing with lawsuits and appeals.  The scope for hearing legal cases should be widened and for cases that are related to the lives of the people, the court should consider reducing or eliminating the fee.  The media and society's power of oversight over judicial organs should be strengthened in order to overcome judicial corruption, and judicial organs should reply within a set amount of time after receiving lawsuits and appeals.  Judicial departments should legally investigate cases of petitioner abuse.  Societal organizations and intermediary agencies should provide legal assistance for filing lawsuits and appeals.  Funding for the judiciary should be increased, and the important people and funds for courts and prosecutorial offices as established by the system should be managed and guaranteed by upper level courts and offices.  Through establishing the authority of state judicial organs, we can guide the resolution of social conflicts to standard judicial channels, gradually reducing petitions and the non-institutional political behavior of citizens that accompany petitions.

 

Third, a long-term permanent cure is getting rid of the petition institution in government departments at all levels, concentrating petitions at peoples congresses, and through the people's congress deputies oversee the work of the government and the courts and systemically establish an organization for expressing the people's interests.  Specifically, people's congress deputies should be organized to investigate and supervise the handling of important petition cases from their district.  People's congress deputies of all levels should have their contact information made public, and a petition website should be established, where petition materials about important problems can be published, allowing the people to comment.  The advantages of this include: first, it gives deputies at all levels, in all districts a new specific duty.  They have the "privilege of speech" and the right to investigate provided by the law, and they also have the duty to investigate the problem of response to petitions.  They also have the duty, on the basis of the investigation, to inquire at the government departments or courts that are the object of the petition until a motion is put forward for the dismissal of leading cadres who have engaged in serious misconduct, neglected their duties, and are even suspected of crimes.  This way, not only does it allow petition work to gain power, but at the same time it gives petition work the accountability it should have, namely the quality of being responsible to the people. 

     

Secondly, it takes the petition resources, which are scattered among different functional departments, combines them and gives them to the people's congress system, providing it with a large amount of material, human, and political resources.  This constructs the conditions for the gradual move towards the position of people's deputy becoming a full-time job and the resultant gradual increase in substance of creative resources and job duties.  Thirdly, after giving peoples congresses the responsibility for petitions, a set of united and scientific petition registration system and search system, which would not only be able to accurately calculate petition amount but also could save a large amount of social resources.  It could overcome the current huge waste of resources and loss of political trust caused by citizens blindly filing complaints, repeat filing, and filing from many sides.  Fourth, most critical for the direction of Chinese political reform is the existence of all types of organizations for conveying society's interests.  Only if all levels of society have organizations where their interests can be expressed can we bring about a modern society where competing interests are balanced and in harmony.