Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, along with his wife and a group of officials, was on a “tour” in Fujian Province recently when a woman suddenly rushed to his motorcade from the side of the road and knelt down to cry out for injustice, only to be chased away by plainclothes officers in the welcoming crowd and quickly dragged away by force. In recent years, Chinese Communist Party leaders have been repeatedly confronted with embarrassing scenes during their trips in which visitors cry out for injustice and sue the government. That is sad and lamentable.
Woman kneeling suspected of crying out for injustice
A few days ago, a video was circulated on the Internet showing a woman in a light red blouse suddenly leaving the crowd of onlookers and running at speed to kneel down not far from the Chinese bus believed to be carrying Xi Jinping during his tour of Sanming City in Fujian Province, when more than a dozen people in plain clothes mingled with the crowd. At least one other woman in a gray shirt also ran after her, and both were taken back to the side of the road by plainclothes officers.
The video, which lasted just over 10 seconds, also showed the woman in red kneeling on the ground, followed by two buses of a black SUV suddenly accelerated overtaking, blocking the kneeling woman and still moving between the buses, the entire fleet did not pause or slow down, but continued to move forward away. In the meantime, a police officer on duty at the scene just went up to check, did not take action, and did not seem to ask the identity of those who attempted to stop the car and shout for justice and those in plain clothes, while most of the onlookers did not seem to notice the unusual situation and continued to shoot with their cell phones in the direction of the convoy.
The shocking scenes that emerged in the video did not receive any official media coverage, and the identity and whereabouts of the woman kneeling against the car and those who rushed forward are not known at this Time. However, the unexpected incident quickly went viral in the online media, with some overseas Chinese media and self-publishers reporting, commenting and ridiculing it, saying that the authorities’ well-orchestrated “pro-people show” of the leader had become a “mockery” due to the accidental incident of what appeared to be a petitioner kneeling down and shouting his grievances. The show was a “mock show” because of an accidental incident in which a visitor appeared to kneel down and cry out for justice.
Liu Shasha, a pro-democracy activist in exile in Canada, has long been concerned about the rights of the Chinese underclass. She told Voice of America that she felt the two women recorded in the video breaking through a tight blockade and rushing toward the convoy must have been deeply wronged.
“I really admire them, they are very brave. Because under the kind of tight control and pressure in the country now, to go and rush Xi Jinping’s car, I admire their courage and their mobility. And I think they should have a big grievance. A small grievance would not be so desperate.”
Liu Shasha said she does not agree with the Chinese people’s habit of kneeling to those in power, but cannot blame them harshly because it is the result of the people’s long-term indoctrination by the Chinese Communist Party’s brainwashing.
Frequent Stops to Cry Out for Justice
At the beginning of his term in office, Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping declared that he was against officials traveling in crowds and disturbing the public, a statement that was once well received by the Chinese public. In the last five or six years, in particular, bodyguards have been lined up everywhere he goes, doors and windows on the street are not allowed to see the light of day, and road closures have become the norm, with the odd phenomenon of police entering residents’ homes in Wuhan last year.
Even with such a tight deployment like an enemy, there are still some accidental “stopping the driver to cry for justice” events.
The overseas Chinese website reported on June 17, 2015 that Xi Jinping was greeted by a crowd of citizens in Zunyi, where he was “inspecting public sentiment”. Suddenly there was an accident when a woman tried to stop the car to cry out for injustice and was pushed to the ground, her harsh screams were drowned out by cheers.
A video shows that when the motorcade appeared at the corner of the street, suddenly from the crowd of people greeted by a woman hissed a scream: President Xi help! The second scream was stopped by some plainclothes officers before it could be heard, apparently unnoticed by Xi Jinping as the welcoming crowd appeared in front of the leader, who was wearing a white shirt for his tour.
However, netizens sweeping the newspaper on the matter commented, “So close, almost woke up the Chinese dream.”
On June 10, 2018, Xi Jinping’s motorcade was intercepted by a woman shouting injustice on a main street in the seaport city of Yantai, Shandong province. The online video showed several plainclothes officers soon dragging the woman, who had stopped the car and shouted injustice, to the side of the road as the convoy continued on its way.
On Nov. 5 of the same year, a visitor to the owner of Taixing Chungjin Commercial Plaza in Taizhou, Jiangsu province, was rumored to have successfully intercepted the official motorcade of Xi Jinping on the opening day of the first China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai. A video shows the interceptor being quickly escorted away by several uniformed police officers.
Voices of Ordinary Visitors
Some petitioners have expressed understanding and sympathy for the occasional attempts to stop cars to cry out against Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party, who wields power over the party, government and military.
Ke Daying and her two daughters, a petitioner from Yunxi, Hubei Province, China (Photo by Ke Daying)
Speaking to the Voice of America, Ke Daying, a petitioner in Shiyan City, Hubei Province, said that when she encounters General Secretary Xi, she too will run up and ask for redress of grievances.
In 2003, Ke Daying’s second daughter, Jin, who is under 14 years old, was sentenced to five years in prison for “poisoning and murder,” but Ke and her Family accused the court of handing down the sentence in vain when the prosecution did not provide physical evidence as required by law.
Ke Daying told the Voice of America that for 18 years, the family has been petitioned at all levels of the procuratorate, and has been subjected to violent interceptions and physical and psychological abuse by the township government and local authorities at the behest of triad members.
Zhao Minxiu, a petitioner from Nanchong City, Sichuan Province, told VOA that her brother was shot and killed by a gang after he retired from the army and became a fashion model, so the case has not been reasonably resolved.
She said that during her petition, she went to Zhongnanhai to submit a petition letter and had the idea of stopping a car to cry out for help from a senior official.
Beijing rights activist Quan Shixin tweeted a comment saying, “It’s not the time of The Emperor anymore – it might as well be the time of the emperor! Now, you can’t even see the “lord” (in the past, when the emperor banged a drum and complained, the lord had to ascend to the court to ask for a case, but now you can’t even see the mayor of the town! Not to mention that you can not sue the imperial court. However, you are guaranteed to see the “detention ticket”!
She went on to say: the reason you were detained is “because you let the tube (comrades) “accident” it! The tube light performance bonuses are lost, serious disciplinary action will be the head! Not to hate you to death to kill you are hell!”
Quan Shixin of Beijing’s Four Seasons Green Township, who has persisted in defending her rights since her family’s Home base and house were forcibly demolished by the authorities years ago, and has publicly reported serious corruption among local cadres, has been severely suppressed and illegally detained by local authorities. Her latest detention on charges of provocation and nuisance is said to be due to her repeated comments on Twitter in 2019 in support of Hong Kong‘s anti-Send-China protests, which are currently at the stage of postponing the court hearing pending additional evidence from the public prosecutor.
Numerous petitioners are getting more and more unjust
A few months ago, He Fangmei, a parent of a child victim of the Henan vaccine, and her husband, journalist Li Xin, were disappeared for defending their rights, leaving a pair of young children without parental care for a long time.
He threw ink on a door sign of the local government in Hui County, Henan Province, on Oct. 2 last year to protest authorities preventing her from taking her vaccine-injured daughter to Beijing for treatment. Li Xin had sent an open letter to Chinese National People’s Congress deputies and CPPCC members calling for the enactment of a Vaccine Injury Law, the establishment of a vaccine court, and the creation of a vaccine adverse reaction reporting system that would be immediately public and available for public inspection.
Li Shulian, a small store owner in Longkou, Shandong province, was persecuted for failing to get a bribe from a local official and has been imprisoned nine times and lost her personal freedom for more than 100 days. Her family says that in the summer of 2009, Li Shulian was taken naked from the small hotel where she was staying by triad members hired by local authorities and was severely humiliated. On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival that same year, Li Shulian was detained and beaten to death by local stabilization agents, but authorities falsely claimed that she had strangled herself with her underwear and that her body was still frozen in a funeral home.
Li Shulian’s daughter Li Ning, then a student at Renmin University of China, took up her petition after losing her mother, and on March 5, 2013, she knelt naked in Tiananmen Square during the two sessions of the National People’s Congress in Beijing to cry out for justice, drawing widespread attention from Chinese and foreign media and society.
Li Ning told Voice of America that she had been pursuing her mother’s case for more than 10 years, undergoing many ordeals and suffering serious physical and psychological injuries, and had to seek medical treatment in Beijing, while her mother’s case was moved to an off-site retrial in Penglai City Court at the end of 2018 under the pressure of public opinion, but the retrial judge still imposed a light sentence on the seven officials and fighters involved in the case in vain, finding that Li Shulian died of suicide, despite the evidence that the defendants faked the victim’s suicide clear.
Liu Shasha, a democracy activist in Canada, said China’s unique petition system has proven to be ineffective, with only a small probability of successful petitioners and a large probability of persecution and repression, with some petitioners losing their lives.
“A lot of people died, those who froze to death in Beijing, those who died of illness, and then those who couldn’t go on hanging themselves. Those who are desperate enough to cut someone down are executed, like Xu Youchen. It doesn’t work to expect the petition system to change the injustice. This is the systemic injustice.”
Visitors interact with the Premier during the Hu-Wen era
Stories have been circulating among the Chinese people of civilians beating drums to cry out their grievances, stopping sedan chairs to cry out their grievances, or even stopping drivers to cry out their grievances, and of ancient Qing officials and wise rulers seeking redress for their people’s grievances and removing evil. In the 21st century, former Communist Party premier Wen Jiabao personally received visits to the State Bureau of Letters and Calls, which is believed to have effectively added to his deliberate “pro-people” image.
Southern Weekend reported that on the afternoon of January 24, 2011, “Premier Wen Jiabao came to the reception room of the State Bureau of Letters and Visits on Yongdingmen West Street in Beijing, where eight petitioners from Tianjin, Jilin, Shandong, Hubei, Inner Mongolia, Henan, Shanxi, and Jiangsu presented their injustices and sufferings to Premier Wen Jiabao, who asked the accompanying ministries and commissions to actively supervise the matter, setting a precedent in the 62-year history of the founding of the country. The first of its kind.”
Speaking to the petitioners present, Wen Jiabao said, “Our government is the people’s government, and our power is given by the people. We should use the power in our hands for the benefit of the people.”
With this seemingly pro-people act, Wen Jiabao became the first Chinese Communist Party premier to receive visitors since 1949, but annoyed Cai Mingzhao, then vice minister of the Propaganda Department. In the political book China’s State Security Commission: The Secret of Secret Expansion, it is written that Cai denounced Wen Jiabao as a “troublemaker” who was “afraid of the world” and reprimanded the Southern Newspaper Group, which was covering the news of the Premier’s visit. He also dismissed Changping, a senior media figure who was writing for the Southern newspaper.
In addition to these officially arranged visits, Wen Jiabao had several chance encounters with visitors during his premiership.
On June 30, 2011, Dalian visitor Wang Chunyan accidentally met then-Premier Wen Jiabao in the waiting room of Beijing’s South Railway Station, where he was attending the opening of a high-speed train. Wang Chunyan not only shook hands with Wen Jiabao, but also handed in her petition materials.
In 2008, Wang Chunyan’s four siblings’ private house of 800 square meters was forcibly demolished by the government and developers in Dalian, she and her family have been petitioning, her younger siblings got neurological diseases, and her mother died of anger while petitioning in Beijing.
It was reported that petitioners from Yingkou and Shenyang were among those who submitted petition materials that day, and Wen Jiabao said after receiving the materials that he would look at them carefully.
Liu Feiyue, an activist who hosted the People’s Livelihood Observation Office at the time, told Voice of America, “This was a chance incident, and it’s hard to say what the consequences will be for the case, and it may even have the opposite effect on the resolution of her case.”
Liu Feiyue said many local officials in China tend to be more aggressive toward people who sue the imperial government.
On the afternoon of May 9, 2012, Lin Xiuli coincidentally met then-Premier Wen Jiabao in the waiting room on the second floor of Beijing’s South Railway Station, and the premier took Lin’s materials and promised to resolve them until she was satisfied. However, according to rights.org, the secretary of Qingdao’s Political and Legal Committee “solved” Lin’s case by sending her to a psychiatric hospital and later to a black prison where she was held for 369 days.
Li Keqiang was “stopped and complained about”
Li Keqiang, Wen Jiabao’s successor, also had an incidental encounter with a visitor.
On February 12, 2018, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang was stopped by a local petitioner, Wang Xigui, during a visit to Zhenlai County in the city of Bailai, Jilin Province, to voice his grievances. The petitioner was blocked by surrounding guards at the time, and Li Keqiang called him over to shake hands with him and demanded the petition materials. Official media reports of the incident were silent. Wang Xigui’s phone number has since been unavailable.
When a reporter from Radio Free Asia called the Zhenlai County government, he was told that the petitioner’s situation had been understood, reported upward, and “properly handled”.
Displaced Farmer Accused of “Inciting Subversion”
The Chinese Communist Party’s CCTV has launched a long feature report years ago, pointing out that “at the grassroots level in China, land requisition and relocation and petitions are both known as the “number one problem”. These two “number one problems” are often intertwined.”
Chen Jianfang, a long-time rights activist in the suburbs of Shanghai, petitioned the Shanghai government and housing developers for the illegal expropriation of her family’s land without reasonable compensation for resettlement.
In more than a decade of defending her rights, Chen has become a representative figure among Shanghai’s petitioners by participating in civic activities to promote human rights and the rule of law, and in 2018 received the Cao Shunli Memorial Award for Human Rights Defenders, named after Cao Shunli, a human rights activist who was detained and persecuted to death by Beijing police.
On March 19, Chen Jianfang appeared in court in Shanghai on charges of “allegedly inciting subversion of state power,” and no verdict has been handed down in the case.
Commentary says Xi’s family has a history of petitioning
In a 2017 article by the online media outlet “China at a Glance” signed by Jasmine, it was estimated that there are about 20 million petitioners in China today. The article said Professor Yu Jianrong’s team at the Institute of rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences had conducted a survey of more than 2,000 petitioners and found that only three had solved their problems through petitions, and more than 60 percent had been imprisoned by authorities for petitioning. The article points out that these figures show that petitioners who follow legal procedures and petition civilly in China have very little chance of having their problems solved.
According to the article, Xi Jinping, who was beaten as a counter-revolutionary and sent to a juvenile detention center when he was a teenager because of his father Xi Zhongxun, was also a petitioner and the “most bullish petitioner”.
The article says that after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Xi’s mother, Ms. Qi Xin, petitioned many times and finally found Mr. Hu Yaobang in the Central Organization Department, and her father’s unjust case was vindicated. But Xi Jinping, who today holds the highest power in the country, refuses to solve problems for desperate petitioners like Hu Yaobang did.
Petitioners questioning and asking for help
Before the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), more than 100 visitors spoke out in a video message to Xi Jinping, who is about to be re-elected as General Secretary of the CPC. Jiang Jiawen, a human rights activist from Dandong, Liaoning province, who has been reeducated through labor the highest number of times in China, asked Xi Jinping, “Don’t forget your original heart. When you petitioned for your father, did you endure the hardships of the current petitioners? What prompted you to win the case? And today’s petitioners can’t win their lawsuits for ten years or decades? Do you know the living conditions of the petitioners today?”
Ma Guiqin, a petitioner from Xinglong County, Chengde City, Hebei Province, told President Xi in a video she recorded herself, “The Public Security Bureau and other government officials have detained me, reeducated me through labor, and detained me countless times. I hope you, President, will save me. I am a good and legal citizen, but they can arrest me whenever they want to arrest me. Disable me. They detained me. I hanged myself, died and came back to Life, and was able to enjoy your good policy again. I hope the President will save my life, I am here to kowtow to you.”
The director of the letter and visitation was accused of lying
During the two sessions in 2017, Shu Xiaoqin, then director of the State Bureau of Letters and Visits, claimed to the media that “80 percent of the nation’s letter and visit cases were resolved in 2016.” The perceived inflated figure angered petitioners, who collectively complained about Shu’s alleged public falsification.
According to Voice of America reporters in Beijing, hundreds of petitioners lined up outside the reception room of the State Bureau of Letters and Calls every weekday to submit documents before the 2020 outbreak. Other concentrations of visitors included the letter and petition departments of the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the letter and petition department of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and the later-established veterans’ affairs department. The authorities have set up permanent reception sites in Jiuchingzhuang and Majialou, located on the outskirts of Beijing, to deal with visitors to the capital, but these two places are a deterrent to many visitors.
Li Huanjun: Leaders are getting worse from generation to generation
Li Huanjun, a former Beijing Shijiazhuang rights activist who has twice stopped Xi Jinping’s convoy in the United States, told Voice of America that the real public opinion is with the female petitioner who is moving forward, while millions of other petitioners do not have such an opportunity to move forward. She believes that the unabated increase in petitioners is a problem caused by the authoritarian system.
She said, “The problem with the system is that officials are protecting each other. Now the petition department is an industrial chain. After the petition department gets the material, it will give it to the local government. The local government pays for the material and then treats it as if nothing has happened. The door of the Bureau of Letters and Visits is also the same, those interceptors come to which visitors, the door of the money, this person in front of their eyes to take away.”
Since Xi Jinping became general secretary of the Communist Party in November 2012, he has repeatedly stressed that he is most concerned about the people in need.
Li Huanjun, a former victim of the forced demolition of Shigurazhuang in Beijing’s Fengtai District’s Nanyuan Township, believes that the most difficult masses in China are the suffering petitioners, located at the State Bureau of Letters and Visits not far from Zhongnanhai.
Li Huanjun noted that after she stopped Xi Jinping’s motorcade in Washington in September 2019, the leader sent an entourage to receive her petition, but more than five years later instead of resolving the issues she reflected, her sister and other family members have suffered even more brutal suppression from Nanyuan Township and village bullies. She said Xi’s new era has not yet caught up with the Hu-Wen era, or even the Manchu Empire when Cixi was in charge.
“Wen Jiabao took the case and still gave a solution,” the former Beijing kindergarten teacher said, “Xi Jinping took my case in September 2015 and has not given me a solution so far, and my sister was beaten in 2016 and ’17. It’s too dark. Now he can’t even catch up with the past. He can’t catch up with Wen Jiabao, even in the past Cixi that little foot old lady he didn’t catch up. At that time Yang Naiwu and Xiao Bai Cai shouting injustice are given to solve it.”
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