To deliver a single complaint to China’s national petition office, Liu Qin spent 45 hours on a Beijing sidewalk. He ate dry rations, drank bottled water, washed in a public toilet, and dozed in a folding chair beside a moat through the night. By the time he reached the door on a Thursday morning, he said, he “reeked all over.”
He could have spared himself most of it. For 500 to 1,000 yuan (about $75 to $150), Liu said, a scalper would have walked him straight to the front of the line.
The State Bureau for Letters and Calls, in Beijing’s Xicheng District, is billed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as the highest channel for ordinary people to seek justice when local courts and officials fail them. For many, it is the last door left to knock on—and petitioners and rights groups have long called it a dead end….
At China’s Petition Office, Folks With Grievances Find Even Place in Line Is for Sale
