Original: Anhui Provincial Law Publicity Office Anhui Popularization of Law June 27
Past
China's existing petitioning system originated from the ancient direct litigation system, which refers to a litigation system in which parties with grievances or close relatives directly present the case to the emperor in order to seek redress of grievances, hoping that the emperor will give a fair trial. Lung stones, road drums, car driving, table, etc., are the most representative direct litigation methods in ancient China.
The Western Zhou Dynasty established the "lung stone" and "road drum" systems
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Lung stones
According to the Zhou Li, those who have no brothers, descendants, old and young cannot seek grievances, and can stand on lung stones (red stones shaped like lungs) for three days to reach their grievances. Ordinary people can also directly report grievances or important situations to the supreme ruler by beating the road drum specially set up in the palace. "Book of Southern Qi, Ming Emperor Ji": The upper view is easy to leave, the lower love is difficult to reach, it is to see the beauty of Gantang, and the lung stone flowing.
As a symbol of public sentiment, "lung stone" is also commonly used in politicians' texts, such as the late Qing Dynasty celebrity Wang Minyun's "Shangzheng Fu": Wounding lung stones is deaf and obscene to the old.
punish
So how do you punish an unworthy official? According to the Guan Zi Da Kuang Chapter, if a villager wants to appeal and the township official obstructs it, the township official will be imprisoned for seven days; if the scholar appeals, the official concerned will be imprisoned for five days.
Street drums
The "Road Drum" later evolved into the "Dengwen Drum", which was set up during the Wei and Jin dynasties. According to the Book of Wei and The Chronicle of Punishment, when Emperor Taiwu of the Northern Wei Dynasty was in charge, the left side of the palace was hung with a drum, and if people had poor grievances, they beat the drum, and the official in charge of the bus performed the song. The "Dengwen Drum" system was used until the Qing Dynasty.
According to legend, when Yao Shun was born, there was the "Drum of Courage". Anyone who wants to speak out or complain about wrongs can speak up. The drum hanging outside the road gate in the Zhou Dynasty is called the "Road Drum", which is supervised by the servants, guarded by the royal servants, and the people have drumming and wronged, and the royal servants must quickly report to the servants, and the servants shall report to the king of Zhou without delay.
Dengwen Drum
During the reign of Emperor Wu of the Jin Dynasty, the Dengwen Drum was set up, which is actually a strengthened version of the Road Drum in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the Dengwen Drum originated from the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties. The Book of Jin and the Chronicle of Emperor Wu once had a record of Dengwen Drum, which has been inherited by successive dynasties. We often see the scene of the wronged people beating the drum at the gate of the palace in some costume films and television films, and the big drum that is hit is the Dengwen drum.
After the Wei and Jin dynasties, there were Dengwen drums
toward
Jin Dynasty - Late Qing Dynasty
Dynasties and dynasties
265 years ○
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In 1912
The Tang Dynasty Dengwen Drum was first established during the reign of Emperor Gaozong. In the era of Wu Zetian, there was also a unique envoy, which was a petitioning institution set up during the reign of Wu Zetian, and Wu Zetian called himself empress, in order to fight against political enemies and consolidate the throne, he adopted the advice of the minister Yu Baojia and cast a copper dagger to reward whistleblowers. He specially ordered Zhongshu Province to set up a court of envoys to consult the Doctor and que, and to collect one person each. In order to know the envoys, he presided over the affairs of the court and formed the central petitioning agency.
During the reign of Emperor Taizong of the Northern Song Dynasty, there was such a record: "Jingmin Muhui struck the drum of Dengwen, sued the family slave for losing his mother and dolphin, and ordered him to give thousands of dollars to pay his value." That is to say, Dengwen Drum generally solves such trivial matters as losing pigs, but civil affairs are like heaven, which shows that during the reign of the Xianming monarch, Dengwen Drum did have the role of reaching out to the people and supervising bureaucrats.
Before the Song Dynasty, ordinary people could beat drums and songs to seek grievances, or make suggestions to the imperial court, or raise objections to policies. After the Song Dynasty, the conditions for hitting the drum became increasingly harsh, and by the time the Qing Dynasty had become ineffective, it was stipulated that those who struck the drum should first have a staff of thirty to prevent the malicious petitions of the unscrupulous people.
The Yuan Dynasty also set up dengwen drums and invited cars to drive. Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang also set up a Dengwen Drum and set up a special person to manage it, and whenever there was a complaint from a wronged citizen, the emperor personally accepted it, and if an official obstructed it, he was sentenced heavily. During the Reign of Ming Xuande, an official had played the cancellation of the Dengwen Drum, and the Xuande Emperor did not approve of it for his ancestors, but the Dengwen Drum later became more formal.
The Qing Dynasty stipulated that "the affairs of the military and the state must be concerned, great greed and great evil, and strange and tragic grievances." Otherwise, no drumming shall be played for no reason, and the offender shall be guilty of a felony. In this way, ordinary people can only look up to these rules, so the Dengwen drum existed in name only in the Qing Dynasty.
Invite a car to drive
Inviting a car to drive refers to a person whose case is too serious to be unjustified, and can directly appeal to the grievances on the side of the road where the emperor is driving when he is on tour, which began in Northern Qi and ended in the Qing Dynasty. According to the Later Han Dynasty Book of Ru Lin, The Confucian Yang Zheng's old teacher Was promoted to prison, and Yang Zheng, naked, pierced his ears with an arrow, and lurked on the side of the road holding Fan Sheng's son, waiting for the emperor to drive.
The guards shot him with their bows and stabbed him with their halberds, but he still refused to leave, weeping and resigning. The emperor was touched by him, so he ordered Fan Sheng to be released.
The Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties all continued to retain the "invitation to drive" system. In the case of Yang Naiwu and Xiao Cabbage at the end of the Qing Dynasty, it was Yang Shuying's two visits to Beijing to file a complaint that alarmed the imperial court, and a group of justice officials jointly signed a letter, so that the truth was revealed and the injustice was sunk.
Table above
The above table is the emperor, and those who are still dissatisfied after being judged by the three divisions can take this way to submit the song book to the emperor and put on a body of affairs. The famous "Ti Qian Shang Shu" of the Han Dynasty said that the Shandong petitioning daughter Chun Yu Ti Qian presented to the emperor, which not only saved the life of her father Chun Yuyi, but also made Emperor Wen of Han abolish corporal punishment. Even the historian Ban Gu once wrote a poem praising her: a hundred men are not as good as a tease.
The laws of the Tang Dynasty were relatively complete, and the Tang Laws and Regulations clearly stipulated that it was allowed to invite cars to drive, lao dengwen drums, and the upper table, but there were restrictive measures: those who were untrue, the staff was eighty. In the Qing Dynasty, it was more strict: to drive a car or to beat the drum to complain about untruthfulness, a hundred rods; to clash with honors and appeals untruely, to hang.
Thus
Direct litigation advocates need to take great risks and pay a huge price. Although the ancient drumming, inviting cars to drive, and writing to the emperor no longer exist in modern society. However, the remnants of these systems can still be seen in the petitions that take place today.
Life
The contemporary petitioning system is in the same vein as the ancient direct litigation system, reflecting the inheritance of law and the continuity of traditional culture. China's current petitioning system is a special system for realizing rights and remedies and expressing public opinion that reflects China's national conditions.
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Although there are similar mechanisms for expressing people's wishes abroad, such as what Sweden calls the parliamentary administrative ombudsman system, the United States has a so-called citizen complaint system, and so on, the petitioning system can still be said to be unique to our country.
Early founding of the country
Mao Zedong stressed in his instructions "We Must Attach Importance to the People's Correspondence": "We must attach importance to the people's correspondence, properly handle the people's letters, and meet the legitimate demands of the masses; we must regard this matter as a way for the Communist Party and the people's government to strengthen ties with the people, and we must not adopt a bureaucratic attitude of taking it lightly and ignoring it." ”
There was a time when petitioners in difficulty who entered Beijing could not only get free food and lodging at the aid station, but also get the cost of traveling home.
In 1951
The Government Council promulgated the "Decision on Handling People's Letters and Receiving People's Work", marking the formal establishment of the petitioning system with Chinese characteristics.
1971
"Red Flag" magazine published an article entitled "We Must Attach Importance to People's Letters and Visits," and for the first time openly referred to people's letters and visits as "letters and visits" and the work of handling people's letters and visits as "letters and visits."
In 1982
Paragraph 1 of Article 41 of the Constitution stipulates: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China have the right to criticize and make suggestions on any state organ and state functionary, and have the right to lodge complaints, accusations or denunciations against any state organ or state functionary for illegal or dereliction of duty, but shall not fabricate or distort facts to make false accusations and frame-ups." ”
In 1995, the State Council promulgated the Regulations on Letters and Visits. It can be seen that citizens' normal petitioning is a right conferred by the Constitution and the law.
With the deepening of reform and opening up and the intensification of social contradictions, more and more social contradictions have entered the judicial field in the form of litigation, and a complex situation of intertwining litigation and petitioning has emerged. Compared with other petitions, the social contradictions embodied in the petitions involving law and litigation are more intense, the attention of all sectors of society is higher, and the handling is more difficult, so it is necessary to separate the petitions involving law and litigation and handle them by special organs.
Article 2 of the State Council's "Regulations on Letters and Visits," which was revised in 2004, stipulates: ""Petitioning as used in these Regulations refers to activities in which citizens, legal persons, or other organizations use letters, e-mails, faxes, telephone calls, visits, and other forms to reflect the situation to the people's governments at all levels and the work departments of people's governments at or above the county level, put forward suggestions, opinions, or requests for complaints, and handle them by the relevant administrative organs in accordance with law."
On January 5, 2005, the Regulations on Letters and Petitions were adopted by the 76th Executive Meeting of the State Council and came into force on May 1, 2005. Article 51 of the Supplementary Provisions of Chapter VII stipulates that these Regulations shall enter into force on May 1, 2005. The Regulations on Letters and Petitions promulgated by the State Council on October 28, 1995 shall be abolished at the same time.
Compared with the old Regulations on Letters and Petitions, the biggest change is that a series of petition procedures have been designed, such as acceptance procedures, reply procedures, handling procedures, review procedures, review procedures, etc., as well as supervision procedures.
Since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out many times: Party committees, governments and leading cadres at all levels should persist in taking the petitioning work as an important task to understand the people's conditions, concentrate the people's wisdom, safeguard the people's interests, and unite the people's hearts, and do everything possible to solve problems for the masses.
On April 30, 2018, Shu Xiaoqin, deputy secretary general of the State Council and director of the State Administration of Letters and Visits, said in an interview with a People's Daily reporter:
To promote the reform of the petitioning work system in the new era, we must take Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guide, conscientiously implement the spirit of the second meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, take social governance innovation as the driving force, thoroughly implement the central government's opinions on innovating mass work methods to solve prominent problems in petitioning, continue to build sunshine petitions, responsible petitions, and rule of law petitions, and continuously improve the professionalization, rule of law, and informatization of petitioning work.
Written by: Gong Xiaobing
Layout: Li Qianqian
Vision: Post-generation planning
Planner: Anhui Yangtze River Institute of Rule of Law Culture
Co-ordination: Anhui Provincial Law Publicity Office
Review: Xia Youqiang Miao Kun