China publishes contact details of provincial petition authorities

BEIJING - China's State Bureau for Letters and Calls Tuesday published the names and contacts of the spokespersons for 32 provincial-level petition authorities.

On the bureau website (gjxfj.gov.cn) users can obtain the names, titles, telephone numbers and fax numbers of the spokespersons.

The contacts are only used for answering calls or faxes from media. The public can petition through letters, official websites, messaging app WeChat and other mobile phone apps, as well as visiting the bureaus.

This is the third consecutive year for the bureau to release the information of spokespersons at provincial-level bureaus before the annual sessions of the country's top legislative and political advisory bodies.

Publicizing the information is an important move for the country to make petitioning channels more transparent.

The bureau started receiving petitions via the Internet in July 2013, though some local bureaus allowed petitioning through mobile apps from 2012.

This year, the bureau said it would smoothen petitioning channels and handle online petitions publicly.