China's Trapped Transition_ The Limits of Developmental Autocracy - Minxin Pei [121]
Chinese courts adjudicate an average of only 100,000 administrative cases a year and only 20 percent of the plaintiffs (or 20,000 individuals or corporations) get some judicial relief through such litigation.177 In most cases, therefore, ordinary citizens cannot count on the courts for solutions to their grievances. Indeed, a survey of 632 rural residents who went to Beijing in 2004 to petition the central government showed that 401 of them had sued their local governments in courts. But of the 401 peasant petitioners, 172 said that local courts refused to accept their lawsuits, and 220 said that local courts ruled against them. Nine said that even though they won their cases, the courts had failed to enforce the judgments.178 Evidently, a legal system with such a limited capacity for adjudicating state-society conflict is woefully inadequate for a large country with a huge population.
The xinfang system, the principal channel through which ordinary citizens can petition government authorities to redress their grievances, has completely broken down. Official data show that the government’s various xinfang offices received more than 10 million letters and visits in 2003, but few petitioners could expect results through such efforts. A study done by a research team headed by Yu Jianrong at CASS in 2004 found that only two in a thousand petitioners could have their problems resolved through xinfang.179Because the image of the central government was much better than that of local governments, most petitioners originally had high expectations about their success in seeking the central government’s intervention. But their hopes were soon dashed as they met indifferent and irresponsive officials at the central government level. After visiting the State Letters and Complaints Bureau, the NPC Standing Committee, the SPC, the CDIC, the MPS, the Ministry of Land Resources, and other state agencies (a petitioner visits an average of six government agencies), most rural petitioners concluded that the central government did not look upon their visits favorably.180 For many petitioners, failed attempts to seek the intervention by the central government could lead to dire consequences. Of the 632 petitioners interviewed by Yu’s team, 55 percent reported that local authorities had retaliated by ransacking their houses and seizing valuables; 50 percent said they had been beaten by local officials ; 50 percent said that had been illegal incarcerated; 72 percent said that they had been falsely charged with crimes; and 54 percent said that local officials used the mafia to retaliate against them.181
The CCP’s failure to open up the political system and expand institutionalized channels of conflict resolution helped create an environment in which groups, unable to defend their interests, were forced to take high-risk options of collective protest to express frustrations and seek redress.
However, it is difficult to gauge the immediate and direct impact of rapidly rising incidents of social protest on political stability in general, and the survivability of the CCP in particular. Although some collective protests have become more organized, most incidents remain isolated and poorly organized events. Except for Falun Gong, no protesting group has managed to organize social movements across county boundaries or sustain their protests for more than a few days. In addition, the causes of protests are specific—unpaid wages, illegal seizure of land, higher taxes, and abuse of power by local officials. Few protestors have elevated their demands beyond redressing individual grievances or called for the overthrow of the CCP. Polling data suggest that local governments may have lost their legitimacy, but the