Weak legal system spawns petition surge
- Source: The Global Times
- [22:19 April 29 2009]
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A Peking University professor at the center of a media firestorm has now apologized for reportedly suggesting that 99 percent of people who repeatedly petition the government are “mentally ill”.
“I extend my sincere, deep apology to those people whose feelings are hurt,” Sun Dongdong, head of the university judicial expertise center, said in an online statement.
His words were taken out of context, Sun said. He didn’t mean 99 percent of all “professional petitioners” in the country are insane – only 99 percent of those whom he has met.
Controversy surrounding petitioning is hardly anything new: Dating back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the petition system is like a last chance saloon for those seeking redress for perceived injustices from officials. The system permeates all levels of government above county level, and most cabinet ministries have their own petition offices in Beijing.
Since the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and the introduction of modern transport, petitioners began gathering near the railway station in the Qianmen area of Beijing, the central business district of its day. They would then scour the imperial city for mandarins with whom they could air their grievances.
“As the modern legal system doesn’t provide an effective service to the public, petitioning has become a more useful and affordable channel for solving individual grievances and social confict,” said Zhou Hanhua, researcher of the Institute of Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“Compared to petitioning, it costs a lot more to seek justice through litigation. Plus it takes much longer to carry out a court ruling and the compensation is low. A lot of people don’t trust the legal system because of corruption.
“They’d rather turn to petitioning, the traditional way. As more and more Chinese rely on petitioning, government at all levels is working under intolerably high pressure. Thus a vicious cycle has been created. If one day our petitioning system collapsed, then there would be severe social disruption.”
The centuries-old system is not without its critics.
In his paper The Right to Petition in China: New Developments and Prospects, Zou Keyuan, a senior research fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, calls it a product of “the rule of man” that “contravenes the ongoing legal reform toward the rule of law and is detrimental to strengthening the legal awareness of Chinese citizens”.
A lawmaker at the Legislative Affairs Office of Shanghai Municipal Government said the system serves a dual function.
“It allows ordinary people to protect their legal rights and it also allows the administrative branch to gain firsthand information on societal conflicts,” said Chang Jiang.
How to reform petitioning and so ultimately fix the legal system is currently being explored by central government, he said.