Society
Petitioners travel miles to be heard at sessions
By QIAN YANFENG and MA CHAO (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-13 08:04
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BEIJING - When deputies and members of the annual sessions of the nation's top legislature and political advisory body gathered in Beijing to deliberate draft laws and raise proposals, petitioners from the grassroots level followed them all the way to the nation's capital to voice their concerns. They are hoping that their complaints will be heard and addressed.
Li Jincheng is one of them. The 55-year-old farmer traveled all the way from his village in Henan province to Beijing to petition higher officials, accusing local authorities of illegally confiscating his land.
In China, many people believe that the practice of xinfang - which literally means appeal through letters and calls, otherwise known as petitioning - is more effective than litigation in correcting injustice.
The logic is that they can talk directly to government officials instead of relying on judicial proceedings that they think are either futile or corrupt. Many people have thus ventured thousands of kilometers to the capital city in search of redress, where they hope they could directly get help from the central authorities.
"The Chinese believe more in people power than in the legal system. They tend to think that if officials sympathize with them, they have a better chance of having their problems solved," Shen Xiangqin, director of a local letters and calls bureau in Jiangsu province and also an NPC deputy, told China Daily.
That is why the number of petitions across the country has been growing rapidly in recent years, fueled by both mounting social problems and insufficient trust in China's legal system, she said.
Shen, who has worked in the letters and calls bureau in the city of Suqian for 13 years, submitted a proposal to the NPC, suggesting petitioning legislation to grant more power to the letters and calls bureaus and at the same time, standardize petitioning practices.
Currently, only one regulation issued by the State Council in 2005 governs xinfang practices, which is far from enough, Shen said.
Statistics showed that while more than 10 million petitions (some may have been filed more than once) were launched across the country in 2009, only 1.7 million have been redressed.
"The capacity of the letters and calls bureaus would invariably fall short of public expectation as they have limited power in redressing public plights," said Shen, adding that the main function of the bureaus is only to collect public complaints and deliver them to higher officials.
"So it all depends on whether you have both the experience and human resources to collect the complaints so that higher officials can address those problems. If not, it can be quite difficult," she said.
The xinfang system, which dates back to China's imperial past but was formally introduced in the 1950s, was never intended to serve as a cure-all, Shen said. People need to be educated to learn how to appeal through legal means, she said.
A large number of the petitions she receives are disagreements with a court's verdict, which, as a matter of law, need to be appealed through legal means, she said.
Xu Ming, Party secretary of Wujiang, another city in Jiangsu province, agreed. He also raised a proposal calling for legislation on petitioning, in which he said the letters and calls bureau, as a part of the government, should not intervene in judicial proceedings.
Meanwhile, he also urged courts to lower litigation costs to make it more accessible for the poor. He also urged an increase of legal aid and mediation to reduce social conflicts and give people alternative means for protecting their rights other than xinfang.
Ying Yong, president of the Shanghai High People's Court, said petitioning is an important tool for power supervision and ensuring citizens' rights to expression, and needs to be protected. But it cannot extend its influence into the legal system.
In a country where people lack sufficient confidence in the legal system, getting their complaints heard still seems the easiest way out, Ying said.
"It's no use trying to sue the local officials," said the disgruntled farmer Li. "I'd rather make petitions and get media attention, which might help me get what I want."
