Joel Martinsen from Danwei has translated two articles that shed new light on the problems in the petitioning system. The first, written by a frustrated official working in a small town petitioning bureau, shows the obscene amount of time and money that local petitioning officials spend in keeping tracking of petitioners locally and in “retrieving” petitioners who travel to higher level petitioning offices to reflect their problems. The petitioning officials suppress these petitioners rather than solving their problems because, under the current “zero tolerance policy” system, a blemish on their record could permanently tarnish their careers. The second article, written by highly respected CASS researcher Yu Jianrong, shifts the focus back towards seeing things from the petitioners’ point of view, and shows how the “zero tolerance policy” is not conducive towards solving the petitioners’ issues and providing justice, nor towards enhancing judicial authority.
These articles, yet again, show the need for reform of the petitioning system. Likewise, if we assume that government officials are rationale actors in a system behaving in their own best interest, a more humane system needs to be created so that petitioning officials primarily feel accountable towards citizens, and don’t feel the need to engage in the ritualistic cat and mouse game of sending three or four workers to Beijing to monitor and detain a determined petitioner every time a “sensitive” political conference or date comes up on the calendar. Furthermore, it doesn’t make sense to always scapegoat local officials as corrupt and incompetent people not properly carrying out policies designed by the (ever-benevolent) central government if the system designed and controlled by the central government in fact encourages these behaviors.