In China, there are many forms of personal contact, one of which is institutionalization.

In China, there are many forms of personal contact, such as government Weibo, government consultation and dialogue, government hotline, policy hearings, etc. One of the institutionalized practices is letters and visits.

Letters and visits refer to the 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. , so as to reflect the situation, express opinions, request to solve the problem, by the relevant agencies or personnel responsible for the work of letters and visits in a certain way.

According to the definition in Article 3 of the Regulations on Letters and Visits, letters and visits are an important part of the Party's mass work, an important task for the Party and the government to understand people's feelings, concentrate people's wisdom, safeguard people's interests and rally people's hearts, and an important way for government organs and units at all levels and their leading cadres and staff to accept mass supervision and improve their work style.

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.