Opinion | Now that Taiwanese can petition Beijing, why not Hongkongers?
Frank Ching considers how Beijing's new office for handling petitions from Taiwanese may work, and what grievances may arise
In traditional China, aggrieved people from around the country could seek justice by travelling to the capital and lodging a petition. In today's China, the system continues, with the State Bureau for Letters and Calls being responsible for dealing with petitioners.
Unfortunately, much of the publicity in recent years has been about how local government officials kidnap petitioners to prevent them from lodging complaints while Beijing officials pretend not to know that this goes on.
Officials who do not want the petitions to reflect badly on their work will even break the law to ensure that people with grievances don't get to Beijing.
Two weeks ago, the Chinese government expanded its petitioning network to include Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its territory but which the People's Republic of China has never administered in the 65 years of its existence.
Xinhua announced that on August 15, the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office "officially opened a special office to manage public petitions related to Taiwan affairs". The office's director, Zhang Zhijun, visited Taiwan for the first time in June and the occasion was hailed as marking the beginning of a new era in which mainland and Taiwanese officials will deal with each other as equals.
To ensure equality, perhaps Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council should consider setting up an office to handle petitions from the 1.3 billion mainlanders. But, then again, perhaps not.