Chinese citizens with unresolved complaints are increasingly heading to Zhongnanhai, the central compound of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), petitioners told The Epoch Times.
Under the regime’s “Xinfang” system, citizens unsatisfied with local authorities can take their grievance to city- or provincial-level petitioning bureaus, and ultimately to the National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration (NPCPA).
However, “stability-maintenance” officials, many of them police officers, routinely intercept petitioners from their jurisdiction before they reach their destination, sending them back to where they came from.
Liu Dongbao, a long-term petitioner in his 70s, estimated that the number of petitioners visiting the NPCPA has increased tenfold, and more of them are turning to Zhongnanhai instead.
Zhongnanhai, around 2 miles from the NPCPA, is an official and residential compound for the CCP leadership located in central Beijing.
According to Liu, he was detained by police when he was on the bus to Zhongnanhai on Jan. 16, and taken to a nearby police station where intercepted petitioners were held in a cinema-like room. Police vehicles constantly ferried petitioners to the station, and regional stability-maintenance officials then took petitioners away.
“I went to Zhongnanhai before and there weren’t many people then,” Liu said. “There were two or three busloads of people a day at most. Now, it’s incredible, there are hundreds of people going at once,” he said.
Liu, a former businessman from Shanghai, lost his home three decades ago in a government-led urban relocation project, and could not afford to buy another apartment with the monetary compensation.
In December 2023, Shanghai police confiscated his property, including kitchen appliances, which he placed outside the back door of his small rental property. Liu was injured during the process. He then made multiple attempts to complain about the police.
By June 2025, he was arrested nine times for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
In July 2025, four police officers and six other men picked him up from his home, beat him before detaining him for two months, leaving him with serious injuries, he previously told The Epoch Times.
Another petitioner, identified by pseudonym Liu Mei for her safety, also reported a large increase in petitioners who are staying in the capital.
According to Liu, many petitioners are staying in Beijing to keep petitioning, working part-time jobs to fund their living expenses there, because they have lost their homes and have nothing left in their hometowns.
“There are more and more miscarriages of justice, hence a lot more petitioners [in Beijing],” she said.
