Petition and complaint systems (xinfang)

Where elections cannot remove officials and courts are not independent, rulers often provide another channel: the right to petition higher authorities. China's xinfang ('letters and visits') offices, which exist at every level of government and party, receive letters, visits, phone calls and online complaints about everything from land seizures and unpaid wages to police abuse. Similar systems existed in imperial China, the Soviet Union and other communist states, and complaint offices exist in many democracies alongside ombudsmen.

Petition systems serve the ruler in three ways. They are a source of information about local officials that the centre cannot otherwise observe, part of the answer to the dictator's information problem. They are a safety valve that channels grievances into individual requests rather than collective opposition. And they support legitimacy by presenting the centre as a benevolent arbiter against corrupt local officials. Carl Minzner argued that xinfang functions as an alternative to formal legal institutions, and that its incentives push local officials to suppress petitions rather than resolve them. Xi Chen showed that collective petitioning became a routine form of 'contentious bargaining' with the state.

The Regulations on Letters and Visits Work, issued by the Party Central Committee and the State Council in 2022 and in force from 1 May 2022, replaced the State Council's 2005 regulations and placed the system explicitly under Party leadership (Article 1). They require most petition matters to be resolved within 60 days of acceptance, extendable by 30 days (Article 34), allow review by the next level up (Article 35), and state that no organisation or individual may retaliate against a petitioner (Article 18). They also provide for police measures against petitioners who 'disrupt order' (Article 47).

• China's national and local letters-and-visits bureaus, and online 'mayor's mailboxes'.
• In a field experiment in 2,103 Chinese counties, Chen, Pan and Xu found that about a third of county governments answered citizens' online requests, and that threats of collective action or of reporting to higher levels made them more responsive.
• Distelhorst and Hou studied how Chinese local governments handle citizens' requests as a form of constituency service, a function usually associated with elected legislators.

Because local officials have been evaluated partly on keeping petition numbers down, petitioners travelling to Beijing have been intercepted and detained. Human Rights Watch documented in 2009 unlawful 'black jails' in hotels, nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals where petitioners were held without charge and subjected to abuse; the government denied their existence.

Petition systems give citizens access without power: decisions rest with officials, and there is no independent appeal. Scholars debate whether they strengthen the regime by improving governance or weaken the rule of law by bypassing courts.

Xinfang remains one of the most used channels between Chinese citizens and the state. Field experiments show measurable responsiveness to individual requests, while human rights reports document persistent retaliation against persistent and collective petitioners.