The Plight Of The Urban Local Petition System And The Way Out

Since the 21st century along with the acceleration of economic development and social transformation, millions of problems in relation to system shift, industrial adjustment, judicial injustice, policy maladministration and etc. start to emerge in various forms to letters and visits authorities, and large-scale group visits and intense individual visits are frequently filed, which bring the letters and visits as focus of the public concern.Since the promulgation and implementation of the Regulations Concerning Letters and Visits in 2005, though the quantity of the nationwide letters and visits had decreased to some extent, the size, level and intensity of the visit events has not obviously changed. The situation of widely accepting, large-scale cornering and unable to derive of the letters and visits is arising in the implementation phase of the letters and visits system, which causes the accumulation of the letters and visits cases and ferment malignant events. Faced with such severe situation of letters and visits, some state bureau officers of letters and calls used to point out that 80% of the letters and visits occurred in local level and aroused simply because the local government did not properly solve the grass-roots problems.A majority of the public also produced doubts to local governments in all levels after reading the reports for various violent events occurred in the letters and visits which were published frequently. This article aims to discuss the problems and dilemma incurred in the letters and visits system of the municipal governments of our country by using the work practice of letters and visits of Shanghai Pudong New Area as an example, and to discuss the cause of formation of the dilemma and the correspondent outlets, etc. The whole article is divided into four parts.The first chapter expatiates on the history and present situation of the letters and visits system in China, including its generation, development and history. In addition, it sets forth the challenges to the current letters and visits system on the basis of induction and analysis of the relevant statistics from the government of Shanghai Pudong New Area. Also, this chapter summarizes the various opinions focused on the reservation and abolishment of letters and visits system offered by the scholars in China in recent years.The second chapter inspects all the key links of letters and visits system by reference to the regulations and typical cases concerning removal and acceptance, transaction and supervising, and the closing procedure of letters and visits in Pudong New Area, in order to further discuss the underlying causes for the inefficiency and case accumulation of the grass-roots letters and visits offices.The third chapter, based on the preceding chapter, discusses the underlying dilemma which has caused different kinds of practical problems in the execution of grass-roots letters and visits system from aspects of rule of men and rule of law, liability and power, content and form, objective and execution.The last chapter concludes that in order to solve the dilemma of grass-roots letters and visits, its functional position shall be defined clearly. This chapter also puts forward some specific measures to get out of this dilemma.In our opinion, the existence of letters and visits system cannot separate from the political, cultural and historical background of our country. In the current situation, this system will persist, and will develop and improve through practice.