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Letters and Petitions Are an Important Channel for Gaining a Sense of the People
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305 39 Letters and Petitions Are an Important Channel for Gaining a Sense of the People1 october 30, 1995 it is part of our Party’s fine tradition and work style to care about letters and petitions and to take them seriously. the older generation of proletarian revolutionaries were role models for us in taking these seriously. the Party’s third generation of central collective leadership with jiang zemin at its core attaches great importance to letters and petitions and has issued a series of important directives concerning them. i myself have also deeply felt the importance of working on letters and petitions. First of all, letters and petitions are an important channel through which we can get a sense of how the people are doing. now we do go down to inspect work and to conduct investigations and studies. comrades, would you say that everything we see when we go down is the truth? We should say that we see some of it, but not much. i’m not saying that anyone has anything to hide, or that anyone is deceiving us. For many matters, going from one level to the next is like passing through sieves, each sieve finer than the last. By the time it’s filtered up to you, there isn’t much left. Very often what we can see isn’t such an accurate picture, particularly because the time we spend going down for inspections is very short, so there are many things we don’t understand, or don’t completely understand. here letters and petitions can play an important role—they are an important channel for truly getting a sense of the people. When people write letters, they often do so anonymously, and they’re saying what they want to say in their heart 1. on october 30–november 2, 1995, the general office of the Party central committee and the general office of the State council convened the fourth national conference on letters and petitions work in Beijing. Some leading officials in charge of letters and petitions work from various provinces, autonomous regions, and centrally administered municipalities, as well as from government departments in charge of letters and petitions, attended the opening ceremony. conference participants included secretaries general or office directors in charge of letters and petitions work from all provinces, autonomous regions, and centrally administered municipalities, as well as responsible officials from departments in charge of letters and petitions, office directors responsible for letters and petitions at some agencies of the central government, Party and military, and representatives of advanced collectives and workers who had been rewarded for their work. this is the main part of remarks zhu rongji made while receiving conference attendees. 306 Letters and Petitions Are an Important Channel for Gaining a Sense of the People of hearts. of course what they say may not necessarily be in accordance with the facts, but if even only 5% is in accordance, for us that would still be a good channel to learn about the situation! Second, i consider letters and petitions to be timely feedback on how policies are being implemented. What kind of reaction does a policy elicit after it is unveiled? often you only hear cadres at each level saying that they support the wise decisions of the central leadership, but have they all gone deep into the masses to understand how these policies are being carried out? not necessarily. these policies, especially economic policies, directly affect the vital interests of the people. they are the ones most deeply affected, and as soon as they feel something is wrong, they will immediately reflect this in letters and petitions. therefore letters and petitions enable us to determine whether or not our policies are correct, and whether or not they are well rounded. this is timely feedback. third, letters and petitions provide a natural channel, a natural bridge, or, i might say, a natural link for us, the high-ranking cadres of the Party, by which to stay in touch with the people. to stay in close touch with them, we need to make more friends and hear more about actual circumstances, yet in our position, it’s often not that easy to make genuine friends at the grassroots level. through people’s letters, you can truly make friends, and this can also help us do our work better in a fact-based way. once, when i was working in Shanghai, i brought some district Party secretaries and district heads...