What kind of system is petition?

A system in which individuals or groups of citizens contact the institutions or personnel responsible for letters and visits in various forms, such as letters, emails, visits, telephone calls, faxes and short messages. In order to reflect the situation, express opinions and request to solve problems, the relevant institutions or personnel responsible for letters and visits shall handle them in a certain way.

The outstanding feature of China government is that there are five levels of party and government governments from the central government to the villages and towns (sometimes there is one level of government in rural areas, that is, village committees and village party branches). Cities are one level less than rural areas (one level less than municipalities directly under the central government-prefecture level), but "units" are one level more.

The hierarchical status between the upper and lower party and government is very strict, and governments at all levels are subordinate to the lower level, forming a "pyramid" nested mechanism with downward constraints and upward responsibility. This means that it can only be directly managed at the provincial and ministerial levels. Even if the demolition policy of a province or county is corrected, it must go through the province, and the province must also deal with it through the county's superior government, that is, the municipal party and government, such as dismissing the county party secretary and county magistrate.

This system logic determines that the government at the next higher level will always encourage people to petition their lower-level governments, but they don't want people to go beyond themselves to petition their higher-level governments. Petition for the lower-level government enables the government at the same level to exercise the power to bind the lower-level government, so petitioning sometimes gives the higher-level government the power to manage the lower-level government.

If people cross the government at the same level to petition, it will make the government at the same level become the object of restraint, even if people reflect their own lower-level government, but in the view of the higher-level government, it is the government at the same level that should be responsible for this.

This has formed a major feature of China's petition system: allowing petitioners to petition step by step until they reach the central government, but opposing leapfrog petitions.