LETTERS AND PETITIONS ARE AN IMPORTANT WAY TO KEEP IN TOUCH WITH THE PEOPLE1
AUGUST 17, 1988
I always take letters and petitions seriously because they are a very important way for our Party and our government to keep in touch with the people. The many ways to be in touch with them also include direct visits, studies, going deep into the grass roots, and holding seminars and dialogues. At present, however, there really isn’t enough time to see the many people wanting to meet with me. That’s why I can only hear people’s views through the format of letters, so it’s not that I’m putting on airs.
I feel very strongly that we will accomplish nothing if we are out of touch with the people. Through letters and petitions, we can not only establish an information connection with the public, but can also build flesh-and-blood ties with them. Their letters aren’t all about personal interests—many are suggestions regarding overall government work. They’re very well-meaning and if we ignored them, how could people feel any enthusiasm? On the contrary, if we can respond to all these voices with concrete actions for each and every letter and petition, then our citizens will feel that there is some place they can turn to, that their views are taken seriously and will lead to results. This will generate enthusiasm as word will spread like wildfire and there will be a very positive impact. That’s why we should treat the handling of letters and petitions as very important work that enables our Party and our government to win the trust of the people.
I received 3,696 letters from the people in May, 2,453 in June, and 2,710 in July, for a total of 8,859 letters. Of course I couldn’t possibly read them all myself but am being assisted in this by a number of colleagues at the Municipal Party Committee and the Office of Letters and Petitions of the city government. Whatever they can handle, they will ask the departments concerned to handle; important letters are forwarded to me, as well as things they cannot handle; a summary is also prepared every month. Those at the Office of Letters and Petitions work very hard and are very responsible. About one-half, or 4,486, of the letters are requests for the resolution of individual problems such as the lack of restitution of private houses, or failure to return possessions confiscated when their homes were ransacked during the “Great Cultural Revolution.” Forty percent, or over 3,000 letters, are suggestions for the city government. They show that people still do care very much about the big picture, and about major affairs.
Speaking at a conference in Shanghai on letters and petitions, August 17, 1988. On the right, Vice Mayor Ni Hongfu; on the left, Wang Liping, member and secretary-general of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Party Committee.
The Importance of People’s Letters
We can benefit from people’s letters in at least three ways.
1. They Help Us to Have a Better Grasp of the Situation, Feel the Pulse of the People, and Understand Their Sentiments and Expectations. These letters let us see what the ordinary people of Shanghai are thinking and what they want, thereby enabling us to arrive at a more comprehensive and more accurate assessment of the current situation. Although quite a few of these letters air grievances, many express confidence in the Municipal Party Committee and the municipal government. What’s more, they express a willingness to participate to the utmost in the revitalization of Shanghai—these letters have moved me deeply.
One writer went to the Office of Letters and Petitions, selected very touching passages from people’s letters, and published them in last month’s issue of The Bund. The selections were very well chosen. These letters are also encouraging, as they make us feel that the people will perceive even the slightest of our efforts. In fact, this administration has only been in office for three months and hasn’t done very much, yet the people are supporting us in a spirit of hope and confidence—this is encouragement for us. Of course there are also many who say they will wait and see, and some whose words aren’t very kind, but these are all honest words. They make us more alert to the fact that our work must be down to earth, that we should do more and talk less.
2. Letters Enable Us to Correctly Gauge the Government’s Achievements and the Caliber of Its Workers. Letters reflect the populace’s judgment of the city government’s work: if we have done something that was not very effective, people will write letters to point this out. When the publicity department of the Municipal Party Committee held study sessions for cadres a while ago, for instance, each attended by 1,000 people arriving in nearly 1,000 cars, someone wrote to say you have almost 1 car per person, which not only obstructs traffic, but is also a great waste. As soon as we saw this letter, we realized how detached we were from the public and quickly notified all units. Afterward, whenever we had meetings, quite a lot of people rode over on their bicycles, while a good number shared minivans. This was clearly a criticism of us, but by accepting it and promptly improving our work style, we changed an unfavorable impression of us to a favorable one.
Hence we should have people overseeing the behavior of government workers. As the saying goes, if the upper roof beams aren’t straight, the lower ones will be crooked. Therefore we must first start with the bureau chiefs. I’ve asked the city’s Bureau of Supervision to closely monitor 506 bureau-level officials. If they behave well, if they refrain from wining and dining, and if they don’t accept gifts, it’ll be easy to deal with the others. The facts have shown that this is a very good measure. People’s letters are very specific and very clear about who is currently wining and dining, who is accepting gifts, how many bureau heads participated, and how much gifts were worth. Oversight by the people is extremely important, especially where the leading cadres are concerned.
To reiterate, the upper beams must be straight if the lower ones are not to be crooked. We’re focusing on both ends of this problem. At the top, we’re focusing on bureau-level officials, while at the bottom, we’re focusing on the “multitude of offices,” namely those grassroots agencies that have the closest ties to the people: the local police stations, grain management offices, offices of industry and commerce, taxation offices, and so on. Some people in these units—I’m not saying everyone—“bark out orders as soon as they acquire power.” Such behavior can be quite outrageous: for example, some may get nothing done unless they receive imported cigarettes. The people abhor this.
What should we do? We should make [government] work procedures public and accept oversight by the people. Nationally, pilot programs of this nature will be introduced in Shanghai, Tianjin, and Beijing and then be extended across the country. Shanghai will first conduct trials in Songjiang County and the Huangpu District, and extend these citywide next year. Work procedures will be made public there and everyone must act in accordance with the law. Then there won’t be any need to give out imported cigarettes or to rely on special relationships. If everyone follows the law, then you won’t need to give me gifts and I won’t need to give you gifts. However, we must rely on oversight by the people to ensure that this is implemented. Once problems are discovered, they must be dealt with strictly so that no one dares to test the law. That’s why I say that letters from the people are an excellent form of oversight over government workers. They allow us to accurately assess the extent of improvement in the government’s work style.
3. People’s Letters Have Truly Provided Me with Great Insights and Taught Me Many Things. From these letters, I’ve also learned how to be a mayor. Several have told me bluntly how to be a mayor. One said, if you want to be a good mayor, let me teach you these eight rules. I had these letters printed for distribution to all our vice mayors so that they can study them, study how to be mayors. The letters are all very enthusiastic, and they make a lot of sense.
Not all letters from the people are critical. Quite a few praise government workers for being incorruptible and efficient. For example, one letter praised the staff of the Letters and Petitions Office and the construction management and planning agencies of the Xuhui District government. In response to problems raised by the people, they worked day and night in a timely way to halt unauthorized construction fairly, thereby keeping friction between neighbors from intensifying. The letter said that if government workers at all levels can be as fair, incorruptible, and dutiful as they are, then the great blueprint for Shanghai’s revitalization will become a reality even more quickly.
Letters offering suggestions for our work have given me some very good pointers, as in the case of English-language signs. Shanghai is a fairly large international city, but as soon as you got off a plane, all the signs were in Chinese or in pinyin. Foreigners didn’t know which way to go, and toilets for men and women weren’t marked as such [in English]. So I told the Municipal Office of Transportation that within a month, English signs should be installed at all public transportation venues. Now regardless of whether they’re central government enterprises or local ones, they’ve all installed them in less than a month—that’s more like an international city! These examples show how we gain insights on quite a few issues from people’s letters.
To do a good job of responding to letters and petitions, we must pay attention to our methods of working.
First, Leaders at All Levels from Top to Bottom Must Take Letters and Petitions Seriously. Otherwise, nothing will be accomplished and working on letters and petitions will be meaningless. We should make sure that every letter from the people has an outcome, that every letter is answered. Regardless of whether it is something you can do, you must reply. But just replying still isn’t enough. You can’t reply “This can’t be resolved” to everything—that would be too simple. You must work at it, do sound investigation and ultimately come to a conclusion as to whether or not it is achievable. This won’t be easy to do.
Of course we can’t agree to all requests. If someone asks me for housing, can I, as mayor, give them housing? That would be impossible. But we should look into whether the question can and should be resolved, and not simply answer, “It can’t be resolved.” It is absolutely impossible to achieve this goal unless leaders, especially those in the highest positions, take the petitions seriously. Henceforth this will be the rule: if I’ve signed off on something, it must be personally handled by the district or county head. After all, everyone must be responsible to the people!
Second, We Must Be Painstaking in Our Work. If people write to complain about an agency and you still ask that agency to handle the matter, the result is often a defense of shortcomings. I only said “often,” I didn’t say “always.” If you forward the letter to them, they’ll send it back very quickly saying it was properly handled in the first place, and this was a false accusation. That’s why those working with letters and petitions must carefully read all the reports and materials submitted by the agencies in question.
Third, Our Methods Must Be Appropriate. As I just said, whom we ask to handle a letter is very important—there’s a lot of art involved here. A great deal of experience on this point shows that if you assign it to one person, it gets done; if you assign it to another, it never gets done. It’s not simply a matter of assigning it to the first-in-command. A vital question is which first-in-command, which agency to assign it to. You have to consider which agency is the most authoritative to handle the matter, which can give orders that will get things done, which is best positioned to mediate. If it’s assigned to an agency with the wrong jurisdiction, nothing can get done. It will be forwarded back and forth for a very long time and in the end it will be sent back, still giving the answer, “This can’t be done.” The Office of Letters and Petitions has been very considerate of my health and still isn’t sending me too many letters. I suggest that you send me more. I might be able to assign them more appropriately than you can, and maybe a bit more efficiently, because I know who should be able to resolve a problem. If it’s assigned to the wrong person, it still won’t be resolved half a year later, after which it is sent to me—that’s a loss of time.
Henceforth the rule must be this: if nothing has been done after a month, hurry up and send it to me. I’ll look into why it wasn’t done after a month, and if something could have been done but wasn’t, then we must track down responsibility. After all, we should be responsible to the people! We’re all officials and should be thinking about the people morning, noon, and night. We in Shanghai should now be trying to focus more on doing substantive, solid work, and on following through on something if you say you will do it. Without this approach to work, people won’t trust you. What they see are small things, substantive things. If you attend to these, they will have confidence and follow you in moving ahead; if you don’t do so, they won’t cooperate with you and will act in the most cursory way. We still have to start by getting small things done, substantive things. If we can’t achieve big things but are unwilling to focus on the small ones—how could we let that happen?
An idea I cannot accept, from a letter offering me suggestions that were otherwise all very good, is that one person can at most manage five or six others. “Therefore no matter how capable a mayor you may be, at most you can only manage five or six vice mayors, so you should not bother with anything else.” If such a thing were possible, my life would be very easy indeed. If you don’t have vegetables to eat, go to Ni Hongfu;2 if there’s a problem with transportation, go to [Vice Mayor] Ni Tianzeng. But I don’t think this would work. It’s not that you don’t trust them and want to act in their place. Given the current circumstances in Shanghai, if each level were to assign things to another level, if I were to assign something to a vice mayor, the vice mayor were to assign it to a bureau chief, and the bureau chief were to assign it to a section chief, there would be no response even after a year.
I don’t have to focus on everything, but there are some things I have to focus on specifically—which is to create a model, in hopes that our vice mayors and directors of bureau-level agencies will do as I do and see things through to the end. I’m in favor of doing things thoroughly, and I also hope our vice mayors won’t be afraid that the bureau-level departments will say that you are micromanaging. If something should be done a certain way, then instruct all levels down to the grass roots that it should be done that way. If I’m wrong and have made a mistake, you may offer a different opinion and criticize me. As long as you have good reasons, I’ll correct myself immediately. At the moment Shanghai needs decisiveness, it needs time, and it needs efficiency. We can’t keep procrastinating, sending directives back and forth and passing the buck. You may discuss whether I’m right in saying this.
In short, I hope you will all do a good job with letters and petitions. I hope that through painstaking and solid work, you can promote a clean and efficient style in government agencies and a good ethos in society, so that the people of Shanghai will place their hopes in our government. In that way, our work with letters and petitions will have achieved its aims, so let us encourage each other in this endeavor.
1. This is the main part of a speech by Zhu Rongji at a conference in Shanghai on working with letters and petitions.
2. Ni Hongfu was then a vice mayor of Shanghai.