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CHINA’S CITIZEN COMPLAINT SYSTEM: 

PROSPECTS FOR ACCOUNTABILITY 

ROUNDTABLE 

BEFORE THE

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE 

COMMISSION ON CHINA 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

DECEMBER 4, 2009 

Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov 

(II) 

CO N T E N T S 

Page 

Opening statement of Douglas Grob, Cochairman’s Senior Staff Member, Congressional-Executive Commission on China ...................................................... 1 

Brettell, Anna, Senior Advisor, Congressional-Executive Commission on 

China ..................................................................................................................... 2 

Minzner, Carl, Assistant Professor of Law, Washington University in St. 

Louis, School of Law ............................................................................................ 3 

Li, Xiaorong, Research Scholar, the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, 

University of Maryland, College Park ................................................................ 7 

Davis, Sara (Meg), Founder and Executive Director, Asia Catalyst ................... 10 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS

Minzner, Carl ........................................................................................................... 26 

Li, Xiaorong .............................................................................................................. 31 

Davis, Sara (Meg) .................................................................................................... 38 

(1) 

CHINA’S CITIZEN COMPLAINT SYSTEM: 

PROSPECTS FOR ACCOUNTABILITY 

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2009 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE

COMMISSION ON CHINA, Washington, DC. 

The roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:02 p.m., 

in room 628, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Douglas Grob, Cochairman’s Senior Staff Member, presiding. 

Also present: Charlotte Oldham-Moore, Staff Director; Anna 

Brettell, Senior Advisor; and Andrea Worden, Senior Advisor. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF DOUGLAS GROB, COCHAIRMAN’S 

SENIOR STAFF MEMBER, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Mr. GROB. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you very 

much for attending our CECC roundtable on ‘‘China’s Citizen Complaint System: Prospects for Accountability.’’ 

My name is Douglas Grob. I am Cochairman Sandy Levin’s 

Senior Staff Member on the Commission staff, and on behalf of 

Congressman Levin, I would like to welcome you here and thank 

you very much for your attendance. 

I am very pleased to appear here with this very distinguished 

panel. We will be discussing today China’s citizen complaint system, sometimes called the petitioning system, or in Chinese, the 

xinfang system—xinfang meaning letters and visits. This system 

has imperial roots. It has long been an avenue outside the judicial 

system for citizens in China to present their grievances to authorities. 

China has an extensive system of xinfang offices and personnel 

at all levels of government. Citizens petition on a wide range of 

issues—everything from minor disputes to the most egregious alleged abuses of power. 

The xinfang system is one of the most widely misunderstood systems in China. Even a casual reading of Western reporting will reveal a wide range of portrayals of exactly what this system is. It 

is very easy to come away with a range of perceptions—or 

misperceptions—including that it’s part of the formal legal system, 

that it exists side-by-side with the legal system, that it is independent of the legal system, that it is highly relevant to the legal 

system, or, that it is irrelevant to the legal system. 

So today we hope to lend some clarity to these issues and to increase our understanding of whether xinfang is, in fact, an avenue 

for appeal, whether it is a mechanism for resolving disputes, 

2 

whether xinfang offices function with any formal investigatory 

power, or whether they are simply an agency referring disputes 

along the appropriate institutional path, performing some sort of a 

sorting function. To that end, we are extremely fortunate today to 

have one of the foremost scholars who has contributed perhaps 

more than anybody else in recent years to the enhancement of the 

clarity with which we understand the xinfang system in China, and 

we will be introducing Professor Minzner in just a moment. 

Petitioners in China report widespread official disregard of complaints. They report human rights abuses. Authorities reportedly 

have harassed petitioners. There have been cases where petitioners 

have been sentenced to reeducation through labor and detention in 

‘‘black jails’’—extralegal detention centers—or detained in psychiatric institutions. And so we are also very fortunate to have another foremost expert, Meg Davis, on the panel to help us put a 

human face on some of these petitioner cases. 

Finally, the reason why it is so critically important that we hold 

this roundtable today is that the xinfang system has come to the 

fore in recent years in part because authorities have reported increasing numbers of citizen complaints related to a wave of local 

department-level rules issued by authorities in many locales in 

China regarding so-called ‘‘abnormal petitioning.’’ It is believed 

that the new rules may be part of an effort to curb the number of 

petitioners generally, or part of an effort to curb the number of petitioners traveling to Beijing to seek redress that they may not 

have been able to find at the local level. We are very fortunate then 

to have also with us Professor Li Xiaorong, who can help us understand the contours of the petitioning population in China, why citizens continue to petition in the face of a very challenging environment for bringing grievances before the government, and who will 

outline the forms of official retaliation that have been documented 

against petitioners, including forms of extralegal detention. 

So now, in order to get started, it is my very high privilege to 

introduce to you Dr. Anna Brettell, sitting to my right, Senior Advisor on the Commission staff and our staff specialist in this area, 

to present our witnesses to you. 

STATEMENT OF ANNA BRETTELL, SENIOR ADVISOR, 

CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA 

Ms. BRETTELL. Thank you very much, Doug. 

First, I’ll introduce Carl Minzner, who is an Associate Professor 

of Law at Washington University in St. Louis in the School of Law. 

He specializes in Chinese law and politics. Before joining the law 

faculty, he served as Senior Counsel for the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and was an International Affairs Fellow 

at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

He also served as a Euro-China Legal Education Fellow at Xibei 

Institute of Politics and Law in Xi’an. He previously practiced intellectual property law in the San Francisco Bay area, and clerked for 

Judge Raymond Clevenger, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal 

Circuit. He received a joint J.D./MIA degree from Columbia Law 

and the School of International and Public Affairs, and a BA in 

International Relations from Stanford University. 

3 

His published works include ‘‘Riots and Cover-Ups: Counterproductive Control of Local Agents in China,’’ and ‘‘Xinfang: An Alternative to Formal Chinese Legal Institutions.’’ 

Next, we have Li Xiaorong. Professor Li has been a research 

scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy of the University of Maryland since 1993, where she specializes in political 

and moral philosophy, ethics with a focus on human rights, cultural diversity, pluralism, and ethics of globalization. She has 

taught a graduate seminar on Philosophy, Politics, and Public Policy at the university. 

She has published materials on numerous subjects, including 

human rights and cultural relativism, international justice, reproductive rights, and gender issues in developing countries. She’s the 

author of ‘‘Ethics, Human Rights and Culture,’’ a book published by 

PalGrave Macmillan, and many other academic articles. 

Her research projects have won support from the National Endowment for Humanities, the McArthur Foundation, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton. 

Dr. Sara (Meg) Davis is the founder and executive director of 

Asia Catalyst, a nonprofit organization with an office in New York 

that partners with activists in Asia to launch innovative and selfsustaining programs and organizations that advance human rights, 

social justice, and environmental protection. 

Dr. Davis is a writer and a human rights advocate who has conducted research and advocacy on HIV/AIDS and human rights, police abuse, housing rights, environmental rights, and the rule of 

law in China, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, and Indonesia. 

She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania and held 

post-doctoral fellowships at Yale and UCLA. As a China researcher 

for Human Rights Watch, she published reports and conducted 

global advocacy. Her book, ‘‘Song and Silence: Ethic Revival on China’s Southwest Borders,’’ which was published by Columbia University Press in 2006, draws on research in both China and Burma. 

Her articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal-Asia, the 

National Herald Tribune, the South China Morning Post, and Modern China. 

So without further ado, I will turn the floor over to Professor 

Minzner. 

STATEMENT OF CARL MINZNER, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF 

LAW, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS SCHOOL OF LAW 

Mr. MINZNER. Thanks to Anna for organizing, and thanks to the 

CECC for holding, today’s roundtable on citizen petitioning in 

China and the state institutions that respond to these petitions, 

particularly the xinfang, or letters and visits, system. 

As Anna mentioned, my written and oral statements today are 

highly abbreviated versions of two articles that I wrote in 2006 and 

2009. 

I’m going to try to accomplish four things in the brief time allotted to me today. 

First, I’m going to describe the nature of xinfang institutions and 

citizen petitioning in China. Second, I’m going to argue that Chinese citizens resort to these institutions and practices because the 

existing political and legal systems leave them no better option, 

4 

and because incentives within the system make it a rational choice 

for some petitioners. Third, I’m going to point out that the interplay between existing xinfang institutions and citizen petitioning 

practices generates a wide range of negative consequences for Chinese citizens and society at large. These include disuse or atrophy 

of formal legal institutions, an escalating cycle of social destabilization, and a wide range of abuses against petitioners. Fourth, I’m 

going to argue that political liberalization may be necessary to resolve the underlying problems I just mentioned and to support the 

development of the rule of law in China. 

So let’s start with the first issue. What are xinfang institutions, 

and what is citizen petitioning? Well, since the 1950s, letters and 

visits offices, or xinfang offices, have served as a channel for citizens in the People’s Republic of China [PRC] to seek assistance in 

resolving specific grievances, to appeal government decisions, and 

to engage in a limited form of political participation. Xinfang institutions are found throughout the Chinese bureaucracy, including 

the Communist Party, local people’s congresses, courts, government, police, and so on. 

However, the focus of xinfang institutions is not on resolving all 

grievances equally, according to law. Rather, its primary focus is 

on triggering the intervention of higher level Party and government 

officials in handling and resolving precisely those disputes that 

pose an imminent threat to social order—say, 200 laid-off workers 

showing up in front of the local township government offices and 

staging a sit-down protest. 

The actual institutional authority of xinfang institutions themselves to resolve specific grievances is actually quite weak. Most 

commonly, xinfang bureaus simply refer individual petitions to 

other government agencies for action. Occasionally they may send 

out some of their own personnel to conduct additional investigations of particular problems. In a very few rare cases, xinfang offices may be successful in prompting intervention of a core Party 

or government official in resolving a particular dispute. 

Now, what is citizen petitioning? Well, petitioning consists of efforts by citizens to try to prompt the discretionary intervention of 

these higher level Party authorities in resolving their disputes. 

Chinese citizens employ a wide range of strategies to do this. Individual petitioning can be as simple as one disgruntled individual 

going from bureau door to bureau door, day after day, week after 

week, month after month, decade after decade, in an effort to locate 

a Party or government official who might be able to weigh in on 

their particular dispute. 

These types of individual petitioning efforts are rarely successful. 

In one study, Yu Jianrong, a scholar in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found that less than 0.2 percent of such individual petitions are actually addressed. Many such petitioners spend years 

or decades in a futile search for justice. 

In contrast, collective or mass petitions have a much stronger political cast to them. These can involve organized demonstrations, 

speeches, and marches of hundreds or thousands of individuals 

seeking to present their grievances to officials. 

5 

Xinfang institutions remain a popular channel for injured citizens to try to prompt elite involvement in the resolution of their 

particular grievances. 

In 2003 alone, petitions to Party and government xinfang bureaus at the county level and higher totaled about 11.5 million, 

about twice the number of cases handled by the Chinese courts. 

You see a similar situation within Chinese legal institutions themselves—huge numbers of petitions within courts and procuratorates. 

Now, that is a brief introduction to the xinfang system and to 

citizen petitioning. Let’s move to the second question: why might 

citizens resort to petitioning rather than formal legal channels or 

alternative political channels for the resolution of their grievances? 

One answer: it is not clear that other alternatives are any better. 

Particularly at the local level in China, political power is highly 

concentrated in the hands of a few officials, namely the township 

and county Party secretary. If you are a petitioner seeking redress 

for a local government action, such as the seizure of your land, it’s 

not necessarily clear that going through the regular machinery of 

government, including the local courts that are subject to their networks of influence, necessarily generates a better outcome for you 

as opposed to, say, trying to show up on the doorstep of the individual township or county Party secretary, or perhaps better yet, 

somebody who outranks him or her in the Party chain of command. 

But in addition to a lack of other alternatives, there are actually 

incentives within the system that effectively encourage, sometimes 

perversely, citizens to resort to the petitioning of higher level officials as a means to resolve their grievances. 

Local Chinese officials don’t face a range of meaningful bottomup electoral or independent judicial checks on their behavior. They 

do face a range of top-down checks. Specifically, they face a round 

of top-down targets that govern their career performance. These 

are called cadre responsibility systems (mubiao guanli zeren 

zhuijiu zhi), and other names in Chinese. 

Higher level Party authorities use cadre responsibility systems to 

set specific targets for local officials. These include targets in fields 

such as birth control, economic development, and social order. Success in meeting these targets results in a range of positive career 

awards: bonuses, your career being fast-tracked, et cetera. Failure 

results in a range of negative outcomes: fines, adverse notations in 

your personnel file, et cetera. Naturally, this means that local 

Party officials are highly motivated to meet these targets. Social 

order targets are commonly phrased in terms of petitions, particularly mass petitions. 

For example, in Anhui Province, local officials receive a warning 

for mass petitions of 50 or more petitioners who go to the provincial capital, or 20 or more who go to Beijing. They receive a suspension for mass petitions over 100 or more petitioners who go to the 

provincial capital, or 30 or more who go to Beijing. Other responsibility systems resemble these: applying increasingly severe punishments for larger or more frequent petitions directed at higher 

levels of government. 

Naturally, one effect of this is that it encourages local Party officials to be extremely attentive to controlling expressions of social 

6 

discontent. As Meg will discuss, local Party officials use thugs and 

kidnapping to intimidate or forestall petitioners who seek to make 

their way to higher levels of government, precisely because they 

fear the adverse consequences of such petitioning for their own careers. 

However, the existence of responsibility systems also gives citizens a tool to try to pressure the intervention of local Party secretaries in resolving their disputes. If you’re a disgruntled petitioner, 

the threat of organizing or actually carrying out a mass petition 

can be a direct tool to try to apply pressure on local Party officials 

to take, or not take, some kind of action. After all, unlike, say, a 

court decision, this touches on something that’s directly linked to 

his official performance and career. 

Okay. So that’s what petitioning is, and that’s why Chinese citizens might resort to it. 

Now let’s move to the third question, which is: what are the effects of the incentives created by the xinfang system? Well, one 

thing it does is to incentivize individuals, in some cases, to recast 

legally cognizable grievances in larger, more politically mobilized 

terms. Let me give one example. 

In 2006, 70 migrant workers in Yingzhou City in Anhui Province 

were upset, dissatisfied with a provincial High People’s Court decision that had denied them back wages. What did they do? They 

went to the local provincial Party headquarters and surrounded it. 

The next day, the very next day, provincial Party leaders met and 

arranged compensation on terms that technically violated the decision of the provincial High People’s Court decision, rendering an 

outcome, favorable to the petitioners. 

That, of course, only happens in sort of a very small number of 

cases. But that is exactly the kind of dynamic that fuels the growth 

in mass incidents, precisely because you’ve got a lack of other legal 

and political avenues for redress, and you’ve got this avenue—the 

threat of a mass petition or protest, that has a large potential payoff—it might get some group of petitioners what they’re seeking. 

This drives the growth of mass incidents. In fact, statistics suggest that that’s exactly what you’re seeing. Many of the mass 

incidents that are growing in China are linked toward this dynamic—citizens trying to find some way to apply pressure to local 

officials because they don’t have any other institutional options. 

Of course, at the same time, this same dynamic also gives local 

officials a vested interest in suppressing petitioning activity, sometimes through violence, rather than in addressing underlying 

causes of the problems. What is the result of this? First, this is 

breeding extremism and desperation on the part of most petitioners. Second, it also appears to be leading to the disuse or atrophy of formal legal institutions. You’re seeing a declining use in 

administrative legal channels as petitioners are choosing alternative routes, such as street protests, to resolve their grievances. 

Last, you’re seeing a loss of authority in courts and legal institutions. Frank He, out of Hong Kong, has a great article noting cases 

in which courts in southern China are simply paying off petitioners 

out of their own budgets, trying to get petitioners off the streets 

through any means necessary rather than deciding their cases, preVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:48 May 14, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\55540.TXT DEIDRE
7 

cisely because they face such direct pressure to do absolutely anything to resolve petitions in the short term. 

Now, the question is: where does this lead you? To me, it doesn’t 

appear to be laying groundwork for gradual institutional change in 

China. Rather, it seems to me to be creating a breeding ground for 

increased social instability. 

So, let’s move on to the last question: how to address these problems. At base, the xinfang problem is an institutional problem—a 

problem of legal and political institutions. It reflects a lacks of alternative, functional outlets for the political demands of Chinese 

citizens to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. And 

it reflects a lack of alternative, independent channels for Chinese 

citizens efforts to get redress for their grievances. 

This is exactly the conclusion of Chinese experts themselves—including institutions as varied as the Chinese Academy of Social 

Sciences [CASS]—China’s top academic think tank, and 

Gongmeng—an independent-minded, non-governmental organization that was just shut down by the Chinese authorities last summer. As Chinese organizations such as these have pointed out, 

responding to these problems requires effective and meaningful legislative and judicial reform. This is not just my personal opinion— 

this is what Chinese organizations such as Gongmeng and CASS 

are themselves saying. 

Local Chinese legislatures—that is to say, local People’s Congresses [LPCs]—need to be given a greater role in supervising government action. LPCs need to be made more representative—via 

meaningful electoral reforms. And the Chinese judiciary needs to 

be given greater independence and authority in checking government action. 

Only then can the demands of Chinese citizens for increased participation in the official decisions that affect their lives and citizen 

efforts to obtain redress for their grievances be channeled out of 

the xinfang system and into the gradual creation of other, better 

institutions. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you, Mr. Minzner. 

So now we’ll move to Professor Li Xiaorong. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Minzner appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF LI XIAORONG, RESEARCH SCHOLAR, THE INSTITUTE FOR PHILOSOPHY AND PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND-COLLEGE PARK 

Ms. LI. Thank you, CECC directors and staff, particularly Anna, 

for arranging this talk. 

This day, December 4, is a Chinese observation day for pufa 

[popularize laws] and propaganda for the law day. Petitioners have 

turned this day into a day for redressing grievances. Today in Beijing, large groups of petitioners from Shanghai and all other places 

are being rounded up and sent to Majialou, the processing station 

for petitioners. So, it is all fitting. 

In 2007, I devised the group China Human Rights Defenders 

[CHRD] to do an investigation for petitioning and black jails, so my 

talk today is largely based on this report, which is documented in 

‘‘Silencing Complaints.’’ Copies are available. Also, I put some copVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:48 May 14, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\55540.TXT DEIDRE
8 

ies of the CHRD book outside. Some of the questions I want to talk 

about have been covered by Professor Minzner, so that makes it 

easy. I just want to go in the fashion of questions and answers to 

make it more digestible for you. 

So, how big a population are we talking about here? It is difficult 

to estimate the number of petitioners in China due to a shortage 

of accurate official statistics. A 2004 article in the Southern Weekend reported that, ‘‘According to official statistics, there were over 

10 million petitioning cases in China last year.’’ So, that is six 

years ago, and the number has grown, precisely due to the fact that 

there are more grievances. But the number is likely to be bigger, 

also because there are many petitioners who are not registered. For 

example, those who were intercepted before they reached the letters and visits offices. 

Why do petitioners petition? Professor Minzner has covered that, 

so I will skip. 

What are petitioners? Petitioners are mostly women and some 

children, and a lot of elderly people, and disabled. In recent years, 

because more rights violations are related to official corruption and 

the negative impact of economic development, more young and educated people have joined. 

Petitioners who reach Beijing are often veteran petitioners who 

have been petitioning for many years. They first reached the locallevel governments where their grievances were not redressed and 

they were persecuted, so they go further to Beijing. 

Why do petitioners persist? Professor Minzner also covered this. 

I just want to make a small correction. It is a slow-building phenomenon, because when the petitioners first go to the local office, 

they’re persecuted. They go to Beijing, and they are persecuted further. They become organized. When they get organized, this scares 

the government. Then the organizers get very harsh punishments. 

When did interceptions become so intensified and perverse? 

Large-scale and systematic interception of petitioners is relatively 

new, partly because of abolishing of repatriation centers, custody 

and repatriation centers. Interception also does not exist legally 

and publicly in China, but evidence points to a rapidly expanding 

operation, extensive in scope. 

Since 2004–2005, because the number of petitioners has kept 

growing, interception has become a major area of responsibility for 

various local governments and many departments at different levels are involved. Local CCP organs and the government agencies 

mobilize substantial resources to intercept petitioners. 

What are frequently used means of interception? There are 

many, but here are the main ones: harassment of petitioners’ families who stayed home, civilians; kidnapping, assault, murder, and 

arbitrary detention. I want to say a few words about murder, because it’s a serious charge and I’d better be able to back myself up. 

At the start of 2005, six bodies were found when the moat near 

the state council and National People’s Congress was cleaned. Petitioning materials, well-preserved in plastic bags, were found on the 

bodies. There were documented cases of petitioners who died as a 

result of torture. Shanghai petitioners Duan Huimin and Chen 

Xiaoming were allegedly tortured to death at a detention center 

after they’d been caught for petitioning in 2007. 

9 

Three months ago, Hebei petitioner Liu Fengqin died in a local 

reeducation through labor camp after she was sent there for repeatedly petitioning in Beijing. Then in October, Shandong petitioner Li Shulian died in a local black jail after she was intercepted 

in Beijing and sent back to detention. Police claimed that she committed suicide, but so far both families have been silenced and 

threatened after the investigations. 

There are various forms of detention. I’ll just go very quickly 

through the list: reeducation through labor camps, psychiatric facilities, black jails, and law education classes, xuefaban or 

xuexiban, and finally, imprisonment. 

Why do authorities abuse petitioners to such an extent? Professor Minzner has covered that ground. I just want to quickly 

mention a few: evading accountability. Local governments don’t 

want their scandals to be exposed at the national level. 

Second, priority of maintaining a measure of harmony by the 

central government. They do not have the ability to handle the 

growing number of petitioners, so they issue ordinances, including 

the recent one calling petitioning illegal. 

Third, profit-driven motives. As Professor Minzner has explained, 

there’s a point deduction system. When the petitioner is caught in 

Beijing, the local government has to pay by reducing their budgets 

or by a fine. Then they also use petitioners to do an exchange of 

bribes. At the national level, xinfang zhan, when they register a 

petitioner, they will call the local government’s offices in Beijing, 

saying, come to pay and get your petitioner and I will erase the 

registration. So this creates a lot of incentives for local governments to get the petitioners back and put them in black jails to 

punish them so they don’t petition again. 

Number four, there’s a political phobia against any organized 

mass mobilization. When the petitioners become organized and 

they form associations, this really scares the government. 

Finally, the vagueness of language in the regulation, the xinfang 

tiaoli, creates a lot of space for police and officials to abuse petitioners. I just want to mention one. It’s called the self-review system. Under this system, when the petitioner who is complaining 

about local officials’ misconduct is caught in Beijing, they are sent 

back to exactly the same officials to be handled, and you can imagine the consequences. 

What to do? I have two minutes. I’ll just run down the list: reform the incentive systems that encourage interception; abolish the 

reform through labor camp system and all other extra-judicial 

detention facilities, including black jails; hold officials criminally 

accountable; make complaint procedures partial, amending discriminatory regulations in the xinfang tiaoli; strengthen judicial 

independence and other alternative channels to lodge complaints. 

For the international community, the United Nations, the E.U., 

the U.S. Government, and the bank systems that support rule of 

law programs in China, they should continue to raise their concerns about the petitioners and the persecution of petitioners, and 

the press should continue to cover stories. The French Channel 24, 

BBC did documentaries about the black jails. They should all demand the closing of black jails. 

Thank you. 

10 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Thank you very much, Ms. Li. 

Dr. Davis? 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Li appears in the appendix.] 

STATEMENT OF SARA (MEG) DAVIS, FOUNDER AND 

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ASIA CATALYST 

Ms. DAVIS. Thank you very much. 

So, following on Professor Minzner and Professor Li’s very eloquent explanations of the petitioning system, I’d like to share some 

case studies to give you a sense of the human face behind what 

you’ve heard, as well as some of the challenges that impede reform. 

My organization, Asia Catalyst, works with civil society in China 

and Southeast Asia, especially with AIDS activists. But before 

founding Asia Catalyst a few years ago, I worked for three years 

as the China researcher for Human Rights Watch, where I conducted field research and wrote book-length reports, including one 

on petitioners titled, ‘‘We Could Disappear At Any Time.’’ 

I no longer represent Human Rights Watch, which recently published a new report on petitioners and the black jails, which 

Xiaorong has just mentioned. For reasons I’ll get into, though, I expect that many of the people I interviewed in 2005 are still in Beijing or in their hometowns petitioning. 

On a personal level, I remain haunted by the voices that I heard 

back then and by the vision they shared of a vicious cycle with no 

easy way out, and I’m grateful to Anna and the CECC for the opportunity to reflect on what they said, once again. 

So we’ve heard a little about the petitioning laws and the system 

that they manage, but who are the petitioners? One of the things 

that makes them so compelling to talk to is that, as a rule, they’re 

not political activists. They’re not dissidents. They are, for the most 

part, ordinary people, many of them staunch believers in Socialist 

ideals and in the achievements of the Chinese Communist Party, 

but who have suffered terrible injustices. 

Many of them have little idea of what the term ‘‘human rights’’ 

might even mean, except that it might mean, in the words of one 

Beijing man I spoke to, that ‘‘an official’s son should be given the 

same treatment as my son.’’ Though they don’t have a clear sense 

of what human rights might mean, I would still consider them to 

be the cutting edge of the human rights movement in China, these 

rural and urban poor who are lining the streets in front of petitioning offices around the country. 

So in 2005, I went to Beijing for a month with two interns to 

gather testimony from petitioners about police abuse for this report 

from Human Rights Watch. As I know that my visibility as a representative of that organization made me a risky person to talk to 

in China, we took a number of precautions in the field and in the 

end we were able to interview 34 people. 

Most of the petitioners we met were living on the streets of Beijing or in very rudimentary boarding houses. They were selling 

newspapers, gathering cans for recycling to survive. Quite a few 

were living off of scraps that they dug out of the garbage. We 

would order a few dishes of food as compensation for their time and 

talk to them in the back room of a restaurant. Mostly—that encouragement would wave off our warnings about the risks of talkVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:48 May 14, 2010 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\55540.TXT DEIDRE
11 

ing to us and they’d pull out sheaves of paper, piles of forms and 

judgments, and stamped receipts as evidence of their cases. 

The range of individuals was quite great, from a middle-class 

shopowner with a stiff perm and an embroidered sweater who represented 1,500 investors who’d been bilked by a fraudulent investment scam, to an unwashed farmer woman who arrived at the 

restaurant toting a cloth backpack that had all her worldly belongings in it. 

The petitioners who spoke to us had often begun their epic journeys with a harrowing incident in their hometowns. Several people 

had lost sons or brothers to police abuse; a few describe challenging 

local officials on corruption and being nearly killed in retaliation. 

One mild-mannered man I met with his young son described an 

attack by thugs who he believed were hired by a local official. He 

said, ‘‘At 7 p.m. on January 31, 2002, five or six people went to my 

house. They brought an iron hammer. They came in and said nothing. They weren’t from our village; I’d never seen them before. 

They were thugs. First, they hit my wife and my younger brother’s 

wife in the head with an iron hammer. They were coming for me, 

but they didn’t know what they were dealing with. My brother hit 

one attacker over the head with a chair, and then when the chair 

broke, he beat him to death with the chair leg. The kids were crying; they were terrified.’’ 

There were several of these allegations about attempted assassinations by officials. Ma, a Henan man, was actually a second-generation petitioner. His father began petitioning in the Mao era over 

a land claim and persisted with his case for 19 years. Ma said that 

officials had assassinated his father in retaliation. ‘‘They killed him 

with a hoe. They hit him in the back of the head. They also hit my 

mother and my sister. My sister fought back and killed the 

attacker, so she was sentenced to five years in prison. This was all 

arranged by the village deputy Party secretary. I thought this was 

not fair treatment for my sister, so I’ve been petitioning for many 

years.’’ 

Other people I spoke with about forced evictions from their 

homes and cities, or forced land expropriation in the countryside. 

At Asia Catalyst, we also monitor cases in which petitioners from 

Henan and Hebei are demanding compensation for their infection 

with HIV through unsafe blood transfusions in hospitals. There 

have been quite a few of those. 

In many cases, people who began petitioning about one local 

abuse then became a victim to retaliation for their petitioning. As 

they moved up the system, appealing from the township, to the 

county, to the provincial level, and then on to Beijing, becoming the 

veterans that Xiaorong referred to, abuse would pile on abuse. So 

a petite and shy woman of 39 told us, ‘‘I was married by force to 

a man I had known for one week in 2000. I tried to leave my husband and he wouldn’t let me. The day after, two people came home 

with him. They ripped my clothes off and raped me. It was my husband and two of our neighbors. I complained and the police detained him for a few days, then they let him go. I think he paid 

a bribe.’’ 

The gang rape, in her case, was the original abuse. As she petitioned higher up the system, the retaliation began. ‘‘For making 

12 

false accusations against my husband, I was sentenced to one year 

in prison,’’ she said. The court concluded that the rape in the context of marriage, even gang rape, was consensual. In the local prison, conditions were brutal; 10 women shared a cell. The authorities 

shackled her hands and feet for days at a time for minor infractions, and at one point she was shackled day and night for seven 

days. 

But as soon as she was released, she came back to Beijing to petition. Like many petitioners, she clung to her faith in senior leaders and that they would intercede in her case. One of the persistent 

fears of petitioners like this woman was of being detained by retrievers, some of whom were out-of-uniform police, others just 

thugs hired by provincial authorities. 

The job of retrievers is to find any petitioners from their province, kidnap the petitioners, and bring them back to the petitioners’ 

hometown. In some cases, the petitioner is then imprisoned in a 

local detention facility, in other cases they’re released, in which 

case they often just come right back to Beijing on the next bus. 

One petitioner gave us a photograph he had taken of the retrievers lined up across the street from one of the petitions offices in 

Beijing, perched on small folding stools or leaning on trees like 

hawks ready to pounce. Abuses by these retrievers are common. 

One elderly couple I interviewed described being ambushed by retrievers who heard her and her husband’s accent on the street, 

guessed which province they were from, and attacked them. 

She said, ‘‘Thirty to forty people surrounded us and asked us 

where we were from. Before we even opened our mouths, they 

started to hit us. Over 20 people began hitting my husband. They 

stomped his body here,’’ indicating the left ribs, ‘‘they knocked me 

down too. Every time I tried to get up, they kicked me back down. 

This happened three or four times. It was raining and my poncho 

was soaked with water.’’ 

When we did these interviews in 2005, petitioners spoke with 

fear about the building known as the Majialou, where they are interrogated, threatened, and sometimes beaten by retrievers. I 

noted, in preparing for this roundtable, that the recent report by 

Human Rights Watch also refers to the Majialou, except that it’s 

shifted. In 2005, the Majialou was a detention facility, according to 

people I interviewed. 

In 2009, it has now become a kind of sorting facility in which 

people are sent off to black jails. The black jails are often rooms 

that are appended to hotels that represent the provincial governments in Beijing. So this shift in the function of the Majialou facility may be one indicator of the rise in the number of petitioners 

in Beijing, that they had to expand their detention system. 

While China Human Rights Defenders and Human Rights Watch 

both report that some petitioners are kept in these black jails for 

extended periods, for the most part the facilities seem to be way 

stations that are used to collect and threaten petitioners before 

sending them back to their home province. 

Out of the 34 people we interviewed, I only met 1 man who had 

successfully obtained a letter from the Supreme Court in response 

to his petition, the holy grail sought by all petitioners. When we 

expressed amazement of this, he shouted at us in frustration: ‘‘I 

13 

have over 20 of these letters. They all say the same thing. I asked 

the head of the court Petitions Office, ‘What use are your letters? ’ 

And he said to me directly, ‘They’re no use.’ ’’ 

Under the circumstances, it’s remarkable that most of the petitioners I interviewed in 2005 continue to petition and most likely 

are still petitioning today even as we speak. All the petitioners we 

interviewed had come to Beijing numerous times, despite surviving 

beatings, torture, and detention. ‘‘I can’t not petition,’’ said one 

woman who had suffered weeks of torture in a detention center 

that left her permanently on crutches. ‘‘I don’t fear anything,’’ said 

others. ‘‘What else can they do to me that they haven’t done already? ’’ 

It’s this reckless disregard for personal safety, this obsessive desperation in pushing their long, handwritten letters on anyone who 

seems remotely able to help, and the fact that they live in filth and 

poverty on the streets, that leads many mainstream Chinese people, including many in the government who have to listen to their 

complaints, to conclude that the majority of petitioners are mentally unbalanced. Having spent some time with them, I can’t completely disagree. Many are unbalanced. Whether they began that 

way, though, is another question. 

If we examine the choices that are available to them, the choice 

to seek redress is a turning point in their lives that gradually shuts 

down over life paths. Over time, petitioners are driven deeper and 

deeper into a maze from which there is no exit. If an official steals 

your land, or worse, actually attempts to kill you and you decide 

to fight back, how do you go home? Retaliation would be a constant 

threat. 

In another country, having tried and failed to find redress, a victim could give up, choose to move to a new town, start a new life. 

But China’s restrictive household registration, or hukou system, 

makes that close to impossible. Without a local household registration card, a new resident cannot get a job, go to a hospital, or send 

their children to school. 

So once having started to petition, petitioners increasingly become focused on this receding goal that some senior official is going 

to take pity on them and intercede in their case. They become 

locked in a tragic cycle of petitioning, suffering more abuses and 

petitioning about those as well, that ultimately destroys the individuals, and often their families, and almost never results in justice. 

But the petitioners may not be the only ones locked in a maze 

with no exit. As Carl’s work on the incentive system, this cadre responsibility system, shows, the Communist Party is also now in a 

parallel and potentially equally dangerous cycle that pivots on the 

absence of accountability at every level of the system. A system 

that governs through absolute allegiance must be able to protect its 

own or risk disloyalty and disintegration in the ranks. 

This logic leads to a system that requires local officials not to investigate abuses against colleagues, but to cover them up with new 

abuses. The end result has become an ever-widening pool of dislocated victims with nothing to lose, who in turn require ever more 

brutal measures to suppress. 

14 

There is only one way out of this maze: China needs senior officials with the courage to institute sweeping reform of the legal and 

petitioning systems, reforms that result in equal access to justice 

for all Chinese citizens. Without it, the current system and its 

supplicants will continue on their parallel cycles and the state that 

appears so strong from the outside will face increasingly destabilizing pressure from within. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Davis appears in the appendix.] 

Mr. GROB. Well, thank you very much to all three of you for your 

very clear and informative presentations. 

We’re going to turn in a minute to the Q&A portion of our program, where we’ll turn to members of the audience to ask questions of our panelists and engage in a discussion of the questions 

raised. 

Before we do that, however, I just wanted to recognize in the audience Ms. Shen Ting, who is the director of the Chinese League 

of Victims, which is an NGO of some 80,000 mainland petitioners 

that registered in Hong Kong in December 2008. A former petitioner herself, Ms. Shen is a Shanghai native, living in Hong Kong, 

and she is not permitted to return to mainland China because of 

her petitioning and organizing activities. 

She and the League of Victims have been publicizing petitioner 

grievances related to land confiscation and other issues in Shanghai in relation to the upcoming Shanghai World Expo that will 

take place from May to October 2010 in Shanghai. I wonder if you 

would like to take a minute or two to explain to the audience some 

of your activities. I don’t think we have a roving microphone, so 

please just come up here. 

Ms. SHEN [through translator, Mr. Hongfuan Li]. Thank you to 

the commission for giving me this chance to speak a few words. I 

speak here to represent the Chinese victims, especially the Shanghai Expo refugees, to speak to the world. The authorities in the 

Shanghai government have relocated thousands of citizens from 

their homes for the construction of the expo buildings, with the 

claim that a new civilized China is on the rise again. However, behind this cover, there are the cries and the tragedies. My organization has compiled and published a new book. It’s called ‘‘The 

Shanghai Expo World Shame: The Victims of Shanghai World Expo 

Cry for SOS.’’ I tried to expose the monumental scandals behind 

the Shanghai Expo. I am asking the U.S. Congress and human 

rights organizations to please, pay some attention to the stories of 

the Shanghai Expo refugees. Please pay special attention to these 

refugees and help them. 

Thank you. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much for your remarks. We’re honored to have you here. 

We’d like to begin now with the question and answer part of our 

program. I’d like to open up the floor to questions from the audience. If you have a question, please raise your hand and speak 

loudly and clearly. I’d like to begin, first, with Andrea Worden, who 

is Senior Advisor on the staff of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, to pose the first question. 

15 

Ms. WORDEN. Thank you all. I would love to hear your thoughts 

about the extent to which individual petitioners and groups of petitioners are organizing across localities and across issue areas to 

share strategies, to support each other, and also the extent to 

which petitioners as a group are perhaps starting to recognize the 

rights that they have as petitioners? Are they starting to form a 

kind of collective identity? 

Mr. GROB. So the question is asking the panelists to please comment on the extent to which individual petitioners and groups of 

petitioners in China are organizing, either across locales or across 

issues, or both, and whether or not, as a group, they are recognizing the rights that they have as petitioners in forming some sort 

of collective identity. 

Would any of our panelists like to kick off that answer? 

Xiaorong? 

Ms. LI. Well, Shanghai is a good example. That’s another good 

example for cross-locales. They’re very organized. That explains 

why the persecution of the first eviction victims—they petitioned, 

they turned into petitioners—is so harsh in Shanghai. Several 

deaths occurred, and also recently there were quite a few detentions and imprisonments. Duan Chinfau was recently imprisoned 

in an RTL center. Jerjing Di was briefly detained and then the lawyer who helped them, Zheng Enchong, has been under house arrest 

after he served prison time. And Feng Zhenghu now is at the 

Tokyo Airport, not allowed to return, and he’s a legal advisor and 

organizer of the Shanghai petitioners. Then we have Shen Ting 

here. 

But the cross-locale organizations occur mostly in Beijing. The 

best-known organizer is Liu Jie, who is a woman in her mid-50s. 

She just came out of a reform through labor [RTL] camp, where she 

was sent for a year and a half, seriously tortured. There are a few 

others, like Wang Guilan, Liu Xueli, and Zheng Dajing, all people 

who are from different provinces. Wang Guilan from Hubei, Zheng 

Dajing from Hebei, and I believe, Liu Xueli, is from Henan. So they 

were organizing in Beijing to help themselves to support, to find 

legal devices to file their cases, and to get the news on the Internet, 

to talk to reporters. 

Before the 2007 People’s Congress session in Beijing—collected 

more than 10,000 signatures to support overall political reform, 

with law reform and a call for human rights protections of the petitioners. It was a very strong statement for that. She went to the 

RTL prison, and a few people who helped her were also sent back 

to their provinces and put in black jails or RTL. 

That effort was crushed. Since then, it has been very difficult for 

organizing. This is what I meant when I said that the regulations 

are so discriminatory. They discriminate against organizers and 

discriminate against the people who are vocal, outspoken, charismatic, and who have turned from petitioners petitioning and defending their own personal rights into human rights defenders, 

defending the rights of others, and came to recognize the universality of human rights and started to work beyond the narrow 

interests of their own. This is what I meant. 

There are several articles in the regulations, some visits and letters, that discriminate against such people. For example, Article 

16 

18, binding people from petitioning in groups. Any one single case 

can only be filed by one person. It cannot be two people. Any case 

that involves more than two people has to find a representative. In 

cases that involve hundreds and thousands of people, you cannot 

have more than five representatives. So, this is all very well 

planned against any kind of organizing. 

In Article 20, we have all these crimes that are designed to punish 

people who try to exercise their right to expression, free expression 

and association and assembly. For example, the crime of illegally 

assembling in front of government offices. When you petition, you 

have to line up in front of the visits and letters office. How else can 

you do it? So when you line up, you’re assembling and that can be 

a crime and gives the police authority to arrest you. 

So there are things like that that really should be taken out of 

that regulation. Did I answer all your questions? The bottom line 

is, right now, any kind of organizing efforts among the petitioners 

are harshly punished. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much. 

Meg, did you have something to add? 

Ms. DAVIS. Briefly, on HIV/AIDS, I’ve seen mobilizing by petitioners across localities, but within one issue. Those are cases of 

people who are infected with HIV through hospital blood transfusions. In Henan Province, and sometimes in other localities, 

they’re not able, or are not allowed, to file suit in the courts and 

have no other form of recourse except to petition. So in some cases 

they have worked together to mobilize in order to get compensation 

and that’s been effective for some people. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much. 

Mr. MINZNER. And I’d just reiterate what Xiaorong said. First, 

Chinese authorities come down like a ton of bricks on anybody 

who’s actually organizing petitioners. Second, particularly in rural 

areas, Chinese petitioners are pretty smart. In response to Chinese 

authorities’ efforts to decapitate petitioning movements by targeting clear leaders, petitioners go underground. That’s to say, if 

people are trying to put together some sort of petitioning movement, people will sometimes organize and try keep their identities 

vague—make it less clear who the real organizer is. So it’s just sort 

of an arms race, between government repression on the one hand, 

and petitioners who are trying to find alternative strategies to mobilize. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much. 

Questions? 

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT. [Off microphone.] 

Mr. GROB. Thank you. So the question is, is there, at the end of 

the day, a way to reform the xinfang system so that it operates in 

accordance with international human rights standards? 

Mr. MINZNER. That’s the $10 million question. The reason why 

this is so hard is that it is tied to the core of the entire Chinese 

system, which is to say, it is wrapped up with all of the authoritarian controls over the political system and the problems that 

exist in the legal system. I would like to think that there’s some 

easy way to go about reform, but I just don’t see it. 

You have to have somebody in China at the top who is willing 

to take the step of moving down the road of opening up alternative 

17 

legal and political institutions to give ordinary people more voice 

in the system, giving people more opportunity to participate in the 

decisions that affect their lives. If you don’t take these reforms, I 

don’t know how you’d change the problematic dynamics at work. 

But this requires real fundamental pressure for institutional 

change—somebody at the top in China willing to go in that direction. And at the moment I don’t see anyone who’s got the ability 

or the will to push for that kind of sweeping reform. 

Then the second question is: what can people on the outside do? 

One, I agree with one thing Xiaorong pointed out—the value of people on the outside highlighting the problems. Two, I also think 

there’s a different tone that I sometimes find helpful when I try to 

talk to Chinese interlocutors on this issue. I find, particularly in 

the United States, when we address Chinese human rights or domestic political issues in China, we veer between either ignoring 

them entirely or moralizing and saying, China bad, China bad, 

China bad. 

Perhaps adopting a slightly different tone and trying to concretely lay out the extent to which Chinese authorities’ own authoritarian political controls are undermining their own efforts to 

obtain social stability—that might be productive. That might be the 

right tone for foreign governments to adopt—trying to reason with 

Chinese authorities about why reforms in these areas are in their 

own interests. Because, at the end of the day, it has to be somebody in China who is willing to undertake the necessary reform, 

and outsiders need to find a way to emphasize that it is actually 

in China’s own interests to do so. 

Three, there are a range of opportunities for Sino-U.S. collaboration on these issues. Even if there is resistance among some Chinese officials to institutional reform, there are others who are 

interested in working on these issues. Many of the key issues that 

many foreign NGOs and some Chinese authorities are interested 

in—legal reform, civil society—are all wrapped up in addressing 

the problems that are associated with the xinfang system. So, there 

should be a lot of range for collaborative work, even if there’s still 

a lot of resistance in China on the issue of fundamental reform. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you. 

Did you want to add something? 

Ms. LI. Well, I just wanted to say, the fundamental solution is 

to reform China’s judicial system. But before that happens, the 

xinfang zhidu may not be a totally bad thing to have. The thing 

is, when they have the xinfang system, why do they have to torture 

people and arbitrarily detain people and do all these things in violation of basic human rights? So there is room for improvement in 

the international institutions to step in. 

This year, in February, the U.N. Universal Periodic Review 

recommendations asked questions about arbitrary detention of petitioners and torture questioning, and also black jails. Also, last 

November the U.N. Committee Against Torture reviewed China’s 

report and also raised the question of the black jails and the persecution of petitioners. In a way, the international human rights organizations put a spotlight on it. So unfortunately there is no one 

solution to the petition problem. 

18 

The problem—the same old problem—is China’s political system, 

repression against the freedom of expression, freedom of association, and torture. They’re the same old issues that the International Human Rights Committee has been working on. So, the 

pressure just has to be kept on. 

Ms. DAVIS. I really agree with everything that Carl and Xiaorong 

have said, so I would only add one other thing that I think could 

help a little bit, which is building up civil society and building up 

the capacity of local NGOs, which can provide another avenue and 

another venue for people to resolve or seek redress at a local level. 

But I think, like all of us, when you look at this question it kind 

of creates a sense of despair, because the only way forward is for 

very senior officials to decide that they’re going to cede some control, and why would they do that? 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much. 

A question in the back here. I should just also add, this session— 

I should have mentioned this earlier—we’re creating a transcript 

from this session, so if you would like to identify yourself when you 

ask your question, please do. If you prefer not to identify yourself, 

that’s fine as well. 

Please. 

Ms. SIMON. My name is Karla Simon and I teach law at Catholic 

University of America. I wanted to ask a question and I wanted to 

make a comment about what they just said. 

What is the significance of the—actually—publishing this new 

work? I mean, to me, that’s very striking. I just wondered what our 

panelists think about that. 

With regard to what Meg said—what she said about local NGOs 

being organized and actually expressing themselves a little bit 

more—two things on that point. Just so you all know, I’m a scholar 

of civil society in China and I have testified before this commission 

before. But the point is, local NGOs are, in fact, now facing a registration system that’s a little bit different. It’s called the ‘‘documentation system,’’ which is a new way NGOs will register. The 

new system may be a very good and—for local NGOs to get more 

involved in this and provide avenues for citizen participation. 

Ms. BRETTELL. Just to explain a little bit about the question. 

Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokespeople have denied the existence of black jails during the Universal Periodic Review, when 

they spoke in front of the United Nations. Also, I think even recently, in April 2009, a spokesman from the Ministry denied that 

there were black jails in China. 

But a couple of weeks ago there was an article in a magazine 

called Outlook, which is a magazine that’s associated with the government. This article was actually quite astonishing in describing 

the phenomena of black jails, and giving quite a few details about 

them. This was the first time that a government-associated newspaper—maybe even any mainland newspaper—had acknowledged 

the existence of black jails. So, that’s what your question is addressing, right? 

Ms. SIMON. Correct. 

Mr. MINZNER. I can take a stab at that. Yes, it’s definitely a positive development when you see Chinese domestic media and domestic interest groups interested in these issues. These are the 

19 

folks who should be talking about what the future of China should 

be and how these issues should be addressed. So, it’s definitely 

positive. 

China itself is not a monolith—there are different groups and 

people within and outside the government who are aware of these 

issues and bring them to light from time to time. Think back, for 

example, to the Sun Zhigang incident in 2003, where a crusading 

media outlet exposed problems associated with the custody and repatriation system. You definitely see the spotlight brought on particular problems, such as petitioning, by different groups in China. 

However, the important question is: does it translate into sustained pressure within the system for serious institutional change 

to address the underlying problem? I hope that that will be the 

case. But this is a very tough problem, tied up with deep institutional problems in the Chinese political system. So while it’s a positive development, I’ll wait to see what the actual results are. 

Ms. LI. What’s interesting, is the article never mentioned hei 

jianyu, the black jail. It only says ‘‘heise chanye lian’’ [grey enterprise chain]. It is the same, this phenomenon, for interception of 

petitioners. It’s turned into a profit-driven chain of enterprising officials. It is significant in that Liaowang is tightly controlled by 

Xinhua, so why do they allow it to go forward? Maybe, like Carl 

said, it’s one of those spotlights where there’s a small opening, so 

it’s hopeful. 

Mr. GROB. Great. Other questions? Yes. Charlotte? 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. This is for Professor Minzner—millions of 

people continue to petition. Do you have any examples where, recently, the petitioning system worked as we all agree it should? 

Mr. MINZNER. If your definition of what ‘‘works’’ is petitioners 

getting something that they want, here are two concrete examples. 

The first is the one I described from Yingzhou, where you actually 

have citizens staging a mass petition that forces a concession from 

local officials. It’s a dangerous gamble. The petitioners are potentially subject to repression, but in some situations the threat of 

social disruptive behavior might end up getting the officials to concede and back off. That may not necessarily be a good outcome 

from the standpoint of institution building or judicial authority, but 

at least for the petitioners, they’re getting some of what they want. 

Let me give you another example of where the petition system 

works for one particular individual. In 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao 

was visiting Sichuan on an inspection tour. Xiong Deming, a rural 

woman, managed to complain personally to him about her husband’s unpaid back wages. 

The very next day, the husband received his wages and the event 

was plastered all over the state media outlets. Now that gives 

Xiong Deming what she wants, but the particular effect that it creates, the impression that it gives among citizens at large, is that 

if I just manage to make it to Beijing and if I can meet with Wen 

Jiabao personally, I’m going to get what I want. Again, I’m not sure 

this is really a positive thing from the standpoint of building stable 

institutions in China. 

So those are the two types of examples that I can give where the 

petitioning process generates positive results for particular people. 

20 

But I’m very hesistant to say that these indicate that the system 

is working institutionally, in terms of the big picture. 

Ms. OLDHAM-MOORE. Please give me examples. 

Mr. MINZNER. The low utility of the xinfang system from the perspective of petitioners may make more sense if you step back and 

think of the roles that the system is playing for Chinese officials. 

From the standpoint of Chinese authorities, they do not regard this 

as a system where we think that we should be resolving every single petition that’s coming through. 

Rather, from the standpoint of Chinese authorities, the xinfang 

system serves as a general information source about what’s going 

on in their own country. They use it as a way to generally note 

that, for example, there have been 400 petitioners coming from 

Sichuan Province over the last six months, maybe the local officials 

there are less competent than those in Gansu Province. 

This means that the xinfang system serves as a channel for information to higher level authorities. But that’s totally divorced 

from the idea that they need to take action on any individual citizen grievance, much less resolve all grievances equally according 

to law. The xinfang system is primarily a tool for higher level leaders to understand better what’s going on, and to help them generally monitor their subordinates. It is not primarily a system to 

prompt higher level officials to take action in all cases that come 

into the system. 

Sure, there are cases out there where one official, such as Wen 

Jiabao, takes a personal interest in a particular problem and resolves it through his personal political power. But I’m hesitant to 

suggest that is a positive example of the system working the way 

it should. 

Ms. DAVIS. I think also we should distinguish between different 

kinds of cases and what we define as working. So, for instance, 

with the people who are petitioning for compensation from hospitals for HIV transfusion and blood supply, it can work for people 

in that, if you get a bunch of people together, you go to the hospital, you have your evidence, you stand there and you don’t get 

beaten up or taken away, you might get some compensation and it 

might be more than you would have gotten as an individual going 

and talking to the hospital. 

But in cases—which are some of the worst cases that we were 

looking at in 2005—where you have someone who has lost a family 

member to police abuse, or some local official tried to kill them 

because they were complaining about corruption, ultimately the 

person doesn’t really have any other avenues and so they wind up 

petitioning, and petitioning, and petitioning in the hope that someone will see how horrible their case is and will do something about 

the local official, and no one ever does. 

I mean, the most they ever get that I’ve heard of is a letter from 

the Supreme Court saying, ‘‘Please look into this case,’’ which the 

official laughs at and tosses out the window. So in those kinds of 

cases I think there’s very rarely an instance of something working 

in the sense of the case being resolved to the petitioner’s satisfaction. So, it depends on the topic, I think. 

Mr. GROB. Any other questions? Yes? 

21 

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT. I have a question for the experts. What 

are the attitudes or positions of the general public in China toward 

petitioners? 

It seems to me that people in China cannot organize to express 

their grievances, so what are the positions of the public toward petitioners? 

Mr. GROB. So the question was, what is the attitude of the general public toward both petitioners and the petitioning system, 

given the suggestion that, unless a particular petitioner’s grievance 

is echoed to some extent by the general population, there will be 

less likelihood of effective redress of grievances. So what is the attitude of the general public toward petitioners and the petitioning 

system? Xiaorong, would you like to—— 

Ms. LI. Hard questions come to me. I wish there were some studies of the popular attitudes. I haven’t seen any good studies. My 

feeling is, there is a measure of support of the government repression against petitioners from the city residents, because before the 

Olympics, before other important national events, the residents in 

the cities regarded these people who came from far away, they’re 

poorly fed, shabbily dressed, look all tired and dusty and sleep in 

street corners as homeless people and beggars, so they wanted to 

kick these people out. They also contributed to increasing crimes 

through the gatherings of such groups of people. 

But then increasingly in China, as the middle class, educated 

people come into contact with real social miseries, people can be 

moved to try to help them. For example, right now there are several drives in Beijing, when the winter comes, to collect warm blankets and coats, and to send it to the petitioners. There are at least 

three that I know of. So it’s a mixed picture, but I would like to 

see such a study. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you. 

Any additional questions? I think there is one way in the back 

there. Yes, please go ahead. 

Mr. SHEN. My name is Shen Wei and I will talk a little about 

Shanghai and how many people are affected and what it means, 

because it’s very serious, especially the actions by police. It means 

that these people are being kicked out of their houses by the government without receiving any compensation. Their houses are confiscated so we’d like to thank you for your attention. Can you 

maybe briefly speak in Chinese so that I don’t have to translate for 

her? [Translation in Chinese]. 

Ms. SHEN [through translator, Mr. Hongfuan Li]. Sometimes 

there wasn’t compensation. Other times there was compensation, 

but I believe it to be extremely unfair, so there’s no agreement that 

had been reached. To my knowledge, there are thousands of households and people who have been affected. They have nowhere to 

live. They have already been kicked out of their homes. They’re living in rentals, but the landlords are constantly under harassment 

for renting to petitioners. Since this occurred, that is—one of the 

particular reasons to try to bring these events in China to your attention before the World Expo happens. 

Thank you. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you very much. 

22 

Additional questions? We have a few minutes left. Yes. Please go 

ahead. 

Mr. HONGFUAN LI. Can I ask a question about historical perspectives. I’ll share my own observations. About 20 years ago actually, 

I was a young teacher in Beijing. Twenty years ago, it was the students and young people like myself who went on the street, and 

some people took extreme measures trying to bring people’s attention to the demands. The students were not happy with the political system. Specifically, that’s why we gathered in Tiananmen 

Square. 

That’s a very small signal—but over the past 20 years, those 

kinds of struggles have faded away. Personally, myself, I graduated 

from a famous university in China. If I had stayed in China, I 

would be a professor. I would make $10,000 and live a very good 

life. The majority of people like myself in China are not really willing to risk anything that will call for a political change. So that’s 

what I observed. Gradually, the workers are being kicked out. 

All the factories are being merged and these people are living a 

very hard life. They are all by themselves, so there is little unity 

in trying to change things so these people are just living, that’s it. 

Then in the second step beyond that is—the houses they live in, 

this is like Beijing and Shanghai, they’re 10 times bigger. But the 

land, in Chinese law, the state holds ownership. No individual is— 

very few people—very few, less than 1 percent, so the majority of 

people—family all stay living in Shanghai. Somehow a big project 

is going on, so they—— 

Mr. GROB. Let me ask our panelists to comment on the historical 

perspective. Thank you very much for sharing. 

Mr. HONGFUAN LI. Thank you. 

Mr. GROB. Thank you. 

Do you have anything to add on the historical perspective? No. 

Okay. Well, perhaps we can come back to that. 

Any other questions right now? Please. 

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT. I just had a quick question. If you could 

clarify, in your written remarks it talks about the xinfang which 

needs to be reviewed—of xinfang, and maybe you could touch on 

the relationship between the xinfang and legal systems; is there a 

difference between the two systems and how this gets resolved, and 

what would be the outcomes? 

Mr. MINZNER. That’s a really good question. Yes. Xinfang is a 

broad umbrella term that refers to all of these offices. Let me try 

to break it down. Almost every single government agency is going 

to actually have its own xinfang bureau. 

In addition, at every level within the Chinese bureaucracy, such 

as county-level governments or provincial-level governments, you’ll 

find that there’s a xinfang bureau attached to the particular government and Party committee at that level. It’s a shared bureau. 

That is to say, if you’re trying to go to the Hebei provincial government or the Hebei Party committee, you’ll actually find it’s the 

same xinfang institution that’s receiving your grievances. 

These xinfang offices are channels by which you can attempt to 

submit a wide range of political suggestions, appeals for redress of 

grievances, allegations of corruption on the part of local officials, 

and so on. Within the judiciary itself, you’ll also find that there are 

23 

also a range of—and it’s going to vary based on the time period— 

institutions which are set up to receive less-than-formal submission 

of complaints. So you’ll have channels within individual courts 

where you can submit complaints that don’t rise to the level of formally filing a case. 

There’s a parallel between these systems in the sense that, at the 

end of the day, what’s really pushing higher level officials to decide 

whether or not to take a particular issue seriously is less the legal 

merit of the underlying dispute and the extent to which it’s perceived by higher level officials that this could blow up into a mass 

petition or protest. 

Within courts, that can end up in yanking or pulling of a court 

opinion that has already been issued. True, if you’re looking at the 

paper requirements, you will find statements that say, no, petitions 

should not be brought for cases which have already been decided— 

but in practice you’ll find that the social stability concerns can 

trump whatever the technical requirements are. 

Mr. GROB. Go ahead. 

Ms. BRETTELL. I have a question for the panelists. Recently there 

have been several local level rules passed in Shenzhen, in Inner 

Mongolia, in Jiangsu Province, and other places that prohibit certain behaviors of petitioners. I think there are a total of 14 behaviors that they prohibit petitioners from engaging in. This exceeds 

the number that are prohibited by the national xinfang regulation. 

So I’m wondering, do you think that these rules will be implemented? Are these rules actually justifying activities that authorities are already doing? What’s behind some of these rules, and will 

they be implemented? What has been the reaction from petitioners, 

academics, or legal scholars regarding the new rules? 

Ms. LI. It’s a reaction to the fact that the crackdown hasn’t 

worked, so they need other legal tools. Remember, jiefang [intercepting petitioners] has no legal basis because xinfang is allowed. 

So now they have to come up with a legal foundation for doing so. 

So a way is to respond, they need stronger legal tools, and a way 

is to sort of get ready for harsher crackdown when the petitioners 

go to higher levels. It’s a reflection of the desperation felt at the 

local levels by the authorities that they cannot stop the petitioners 

from going. 

So it is to justify what they’re about to do. It’s also a way of getting public support by saying, ‘‘Look, here are the legal regulations, 

we’re doing it according to the books.’’ So they first have the books 

ready, and then they can justify what they are about to do, or they 

have been doing. The reactions—I think it’s too short of a time to 

have scholarly reactions. I know the local human rights groups, the 

civil society groups have reacted very negatively and angrily to the 

regulations. 

Mr. GROB. Okay. And with that, we have reached 3:30. Unfortunately, I have to conclude the proceedings. We would like to thank 

you all for your participation, and thanks especially to our panelists, Carl Minzner, Li Xiaorong, and Meg Davis. We would also like 

to thank Dr. Anna Brettell, Senior Advisor on the Commission 

staff, for organizing this panel. 

Please look for the transcript, which will be posted on our Web 

site, and keep your eyes on www.cecc.gov for our Annual Report, 

24 

our periodic reporting, and other events and special topic reports 

that we post there. 

With that, we’ll conclude our proceedings. Thank you very much. 

[Whereupon, at 3:30 p.m., the roundtable was concluded.] 

(25) 

A P P E N D I X 

26 

PREPARED STATEMENTS


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Æ 


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