China wants petitioners' cases solved locally

China's ruling Communist Party has ordered local officials to meet regularly with people complaining of injustices in a bid to stop them from traveling to Beijing to petition the central government.

The party also promised to send legal experts to the provinces to hear the cases, state media reported Wednesday — the first such proposal from senior party officials aimed at dealing with the regular deluge of petitioners.

Petitioners — mostly from China's vast, impoverished countryside — routinely flock to the capital by the tens of thousands to air complaints after their local governments ignore them. The system, which has its roots in China's imperial past when people petitioned the emperor, is considered inefficient. Only a very small percentage of cases are ever resolved.

Petitioners in recent years have become bolder in seeking new means of getting their voices heard, including staging protests in central Beijing that often embarrass the authorities. Many were cleared out before the start of the Olympic Games last August.

Complaints include land grabs by local officials, miscarriages of justice, and stories of being beaten by local police and summarily detained. Many return year after year, becoming symbols of the failure of China's legal system, which remains under control of the Communist Party.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Wednesday that the inability of the current system to address the petitioners' cases has marred the public's perception of justice.

To rectify this, the Communist Party will send legal officials to visit provinces and other areas with a high number of petitioners who come to Beijing and will hear cases on the spot, Xinhua reported.

Important officials from local politics and law committees in every province, city and county have been told to set aside one day a month to meet with petitioners, it said. Government Web sites should also receive petitions online and they should be solved within 60 days, Xinhua said.

"Problems can be solved without coming to Beijing," Zhou Benshun, secretary-general of the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee that drafted the proposal, was quoted as saying earlier this month.

But the proposal also said that people who have had their cases heard locally but repeatedly come to Beijing to petition will have their cases terminated, Xinhua said.

Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociology professor at Renmin University in Beijing, said it will be hard to stop petitioners from coming to Beijing if they are unhappy with decisions made by local government departments.

"The question is: If they come, are they going to be detained or sent back as usual?" he said.

Officials from Beijing will regularly visit the provinces to review cases to check for any legal abuses, Xinhua said. It is common now for local governments to ignore court decisions against them — an action that also drives petitioners to Beijing to seek redress.

Zhou Benshun, the party official, was quoted as saying government officials should be particularly careful in handling public complaints ahead of the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, an important event for the leadership. Beijing has tightened security in numerous areas ahead of the anniversary.