Petitioners Provide Five Major Suggestions, Call on the National People’s Congress to Abolish Local Management.

The National People’s Congress of 2025 will be held on March 5, and Chongqing petitioner Liu Guangfen has publicly raised various drawbacks of the domiciliary management system on the internet before the meeting. She has put forward five major suggestions to the National People’s Congress, and requested to change to handling cases and making judgments in different locations.

In her open letter, Liu Guangfen stated that if domiciliary management could really solve problems, there wouldn’t be a sea of people filing complaints at the National Bureau of Letters and Visits from Monday to Friday. Handling cases in the locality and solving problems in the locality through self-examination are not feasible.

The new “Regulations on Letters and Visits” of the Communist Party of China in 2005 emphasizes “domiciliary management, graded responsibilities”, that is, the principle of “who is in charge, who is responsible, combining the prompt and on-site resolution of problems with guidance and education”, with the intention of reducing the number of petitioners going to Beijing.

However, petitioners themselves are disadvantaged groups. Many petitioners have stated that their petition cases are caused by individual government officials’ inaction or misbehavior, and some are due to judicial corruption leading to wrongful cases that prompted them to file complaints.

Liu Guangfen pointed out that people gradually file complaints at the grassroots level, and only go to Beijing when there is no other recourse. Along the way, they are often subjected to violent law enforcement by officials from various departments of local governments and police officers at train stations, on trains, at airports, and on airplanes, disrupting social order through malicious provocations. There are instances where petitioners are forcibly summoned using electronic summonses and methods to restrict their personal freedom ultimately through administrative and criminal penalties, imprisonment, and other punitive measures as retaliation.

She further mentioned that some people are able to report and address issues to various central government departments. However, these relevant departments transfer the cases back to the petitioner’s place of registration for handling. This essentially results in the problem creators handling the problems, and the victims of the petition cases are never able to have their issues resolved.

Beijing petitioner Du Xueling once told the media, “Now, petitioning is domiciliary management, where a petty demolition section chief can override everything. Faced with such obvious errors, there is nowhere you can turn to ultimately it’s handed back to them, and the responses are always about ensuring everything is settled properly.”

Shanghai petitioner Yu Zhonghuan has also repeatedly mentioned that every time he reports to the higher-level government, his reports are always redirected back to the local Letters and Visits office, to the extent that during sensitive periods, he becomes a key figure for stability maintenance.

She put forward five major suggestions to the National People’s Congress:

1. Legalize public supervision, welcome public observation, discussions, criticisms, filming, publishing, and speaking out during law enforcement, combining freedom of speech with morality and law to prevent abuse of power.

2. Conduct trials and public sentencing in open court sessions, and broadcast them online for nationwide public scrutiny and discussion.

3. Abolish the domiciliary management jurisdiction system for petition cases.

4. Implement a lifetime responsibility system for case handlers.

5. Handle cases at a higher level, in different locations, and with public online transparency, ensuring freedom of speech, protecting the people, and cracking down on abuse of public power.

She emphasized, “Many petition issues are often downplayed and evaded by local authorities. When mistakes are not rectified and there is no recourse for complaints, it leads to incidents of retaliation like that seen with figures such as Oujinzhong, Huwenhai, Yanggongxun, Huowenchang, and others. She calls for strict investigations by the People’s Congress on public security, judiciary, prosecution, and law enforcement, especially targeting rural cadres.”