Party pledges a better petitioning system
Beijing (AsiaNews) The imminent plenum of the Chinese Communist Party, scheduled for October 8-11, plans to overhaul the exiting petition system in order to provide citizens better channels to air their grievances and seek redress against corrupt local officials, Xinhua news agency announced yesterday. The 6th Plenum will address such a reform to build President Hu Jintao's "harmonious society", based on more balanced development, greater redistribution of wealth and lower tensions between social classes. The existing xinfang petitioning system will be changed "to build a harmonious society and [. . .] eradicate elements that might cause social unrest".
The xinfang system is a set of regulations that allow disgruntled citizens to seek redress for official decisions by going to higher levels of government. Issued in October 1995, the first regulations were amended in 2005. But they have so far proven "inadequate" according to the party itself.
At a time of unbridled economic growth, many farmers and workers have tried to speak out against local bosses or party cells complaining about pervasive corruption, land seizures and rigged local elections.
Last year, the government's China Petition Office received more than 10 million petitions, but just two out of every 1,000 cases were resolved.
An official survey reported by Xinhua revealed that 40 per cent of these complaints are about police, courts and prosecutors' offices, 33 per cent about government, 13 percent about corruption and 11 per cent about injustice.
Reforming the system is urgent because the party is afraid that without it people might be tempted to make their voice heard by going other routes. Last year, for instance, there were 87,000 episodes of unrest.
The thrust of the 2005 regulations is to institute progressive provisions protecting petitioners from retaliation by local authorities but it also involved restraining their access to the petition system to prevent them from turning into demonstrations and unrest.
Section 20 of the new regulations says that anyone making a complaint should not harm the interests of the state, society or collectivity nor should he violate the legal rights of other citizens. It also bans petitioners from using or creating problems in the bureaus were complaints are received and petitions signed. All forms of protest are banned.
According to various Chinese scholars, the amended petition regulations are signs of the lack of the rule of law. For Prof Yu Jianrong, a senior fellow at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, China does not need a new petition system; what it needs is constitutional change and a working legal system.
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