Chinese petitioning goes online(2)

Their complaints will be forwarded by letters and calls agencies to concerned authorities, who will then push the targeted authority or staff members to correct their improper practices.

However, petitioning has became a thorny issue for China, because the country, which is in a period of rapid social transition, has seen interest-related disputes, as well as public outcry over officials' corruption and lagged-behind public services, surge.

Forced housing demolitions, inappropriate land expropriations, poorly-managed pollution problems and alleged judicial unfairness have been among the most widely-reported causes of petitioning in recent years.

Many people have taken long trips to pay personal visits to letters and calls agencies to lodge their complaints, an experience that has cost them a lot in terms of both time and money.

The SBLC's new measure for receiving petitions online is expected to save petitioners from a lot of trivialities, according to analysts.

"Going online is a step made in the right direction," "Hu Yanping DCCI" posted on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo. "The Internet should be fully used to promote justice and fairness in China."

Wang Yukai, a scholar from the Chinese Academy of Governance, told Xinhua in a telephone interview on Monday that providing petitioners with a new option for voicing their complaints is the appropriate thing to do.

However, he warned that the Internet-based petitioning will not go far if complaints or suggestions can not be properly handled or if authorities can not provide timely feedback.

Moreover, the scholar said people should resort to legal means when their rights are infringed upon, rather than seeking administrative intervention via petitioning, because China's legal system has improved over the past several decades.

Over the years, more and more people have gone online to express their views in China, which is now home to 500 million Internet users. Partly due to increasingly popular online scrutiny, many high-level corrupt officials have been spotted and handled by authorities.