Feng Zhenghu: Behind a Notice of Acceptance—Thirty Years of Rights Defense by 41 Dispossessed Farmers from Xinzhuang and a Judicial Questioning of Whether the “New Law” Can Be Implemented

In June 2026, a Notice of Acceptance numbered “Hu Jian Kong Shen Xing Jian [2026] No. 60” quietly reached the hands of Huang Yaonian, a representative of dispossessed farmers from the Xinzhuang Industrial Zone in Shanghai’s Minhang District.

The notice was brief and restrained:

“Regarding your application to this procuratorate for supervision because you disagree with the administrative ruling (2025) Hu Xing Zhong No. 8 issued by the Shanghai High People’s Court in the case concerning Huang Yaonian, Wang Anming, Zhu Zhengguo and others’ lawsuit against the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government’s decision not to accept their application for administrative reconsideration, this procuratorate, upon examination, finds that the application meets the conditions for acceptance and has decided to accept it.”

The red procuratorate seal, barcode and date at the end together rekindled a glimmer of light on a rights-defense journey lasting more than 30 years and moving among the district government, municipal government and people’s courts at all three levels. This is not only a turning point in the personal fates of 41 ordinary dispossessed farmers, but also a direct challenge to a deeper question—can the new Administrative Reconsideration Law, formally implemented in 2024 and invested with high expectations, truly take root in reality?

I. The Land and Houses They Lost: From 22,000 Square Metres to 6,714 Square Metres

The story goes back to 1995.

At the time, the Xinzhuang Industrial Zone in Shanghai’s Minhang District was in the midst of a sweeping wave of land acquisition and demolition. According to documents establishing title, including the Shanghai Rural Homestead Use Certificate submitted by the applicants, these farmers—48 initially, later 45, and currently 41—lawfully owned:

● Homestead land: 11,885 square metres

● Bamboo grove: 747.6 square metres

● Private houses: 10,088.92 square metres

However, in that land acquisition and demolition, they ultimately received only approximately 6,714.65 square metres of resettlement housing. The difference between what they had and what they received amounted to a property loss of 16,006.87 square metres. According to the property-loss assessment submitted by the applicants, the total economic loss was 194 million yuan.

The homestead land was taken without compensation, the bamboo grove disappeared, and the area of housing provided in resettlement was seriously insufficient—these were not unsupported claims. The applicants possessed the originals of the Shanghai Rural Homestead Use Certificates, the Private-House Property-Rights Resettlement Agreement for Retained Housing in the Demolition, as well as a complete summary of their compensation claims. The chain of evidence clearly points to one fact: their lawful property rights suffered serious harm under the wheels of urbanisation, harm that has still not been remedied.

II. Nowhere to Complain: One Application, Followed by a Long Silence

The year was now 2021.

On December 13, 2021, the dispossessed farmers lawfully submitted to the Minhang District People’s Government an Application Requesting the Minhang District Government to Perform Its Duty to Protect Property Rights, asking the administrative authority to perform its statutory duty to protect citizens’ property rights as prescribed by the Land Administration Law and the Organic Law of the Local People’s Congresses and Local People’s Governments at All Levels.

This application did not vanish without a trace after being sent—the EMS delivery receipt (tracking number 1117268168578) clearly shows that the Minhang District Government signed for it the following day.

Yet after the receipt came a prolonged silence.

From 2021 to the present, the Minhang District Government has never provided any written response to the application. Under Article 47 of the Administrative Litigation Law, an administrative authority’s failure to perform its duties within two months of receiving an application constitutes administrative inaction. The district government’s silence has long exceeded the statutory deadline.

The victims of the infringement sought an explanation, only to find themselves trapped in a strange cycle:

● They sued in court, but judges at the filing division told them to “petition”;

● Beginning in October 2022, they petitioned through the levels in accordance with the Regulations on Letters and Visits, completing the entire process of petition submission and petition review.

● Yet the petition responses from the Xinzhuang Industrial Zone Administrative Committee and the Minhang District Government’s petitions office stated in black and white that the matters they had raised should be resolved through “litigation.”

One side said “go petition,” while the other said “go litigate”; the administrative reconsideration authorities, courts and petition departments shifted responsibility among themselves, creating a “ball” that no one was willing to catch. As the application stated poignantly: “There are laws, but they are neither enforced nor applied judicially, leaving victims of infringement with nowhere to complain.”

III. The Hope Brought by the New Law: 2024, a Year That Should Have Changed Everything

The turning point should have come in 2024.

On September 1, 2023, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress adopted the revised Administrative Reconsideration Law of the People’s Republic of China, which formally took effect on January 1, 2024. One of the central highlights of the amendment was precisely tailored to ordinary people with “nowhere to seek redress”—

Article 11, paragraph 1, item 11 of the new Administrative Reconsideration Law expressly provides that the following fall within the scope of administrative reconsideration:

“An application for an administrative authority to perform its statutory duty to protect lawful rights and interests such as personal rights, property rights and the right to education, where the administrative authority refuses to perform, fails to perform in accordance with the law or provides no response.”

The legislative explanation was even more explicit: “Expanding the scope of cases accepted for administrative reconsideration is a focus of this amendment… and is conducive to protecting citizens’ lawful rights and interests.”

This was almost a “precise portrait” of the experience of the dispossessed farmers of Xinzhuang: they asked the government to perform its duty to protect their property rights, but the government provided no response.

Thus, just 22 days after the new law took effect, on January 22, 2024, the dispossessed farmers, full of hope, filed an application for administrative reconsideration with the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government under the new law. In accordance with the “prior reconsideration” principle established by Article 23 of the new law, they sought to undergo reconsideration first and then proceed to litigation, following a path of relief explicitly laid out by law.

IV. Rejection by Three Levels of Courts: When the “New Law” Was Neutralised by the “Old Approach”

Hope fell through once again.

On January 29, 2024, the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government issued the Decision on Not Accepting the Application for Administrative Reconsideration, Hu Fu Fu Zi [2024] No. 205, deciding not to accept the application on the grounds that the applicants’ requests “concern petition matters and the internal management and supervision activities of administrative authorities and do not fall within the scope of administrative reconsideration.” Notably, the reason invoked by the municipal government was based on old notices from 2018 and 2021—using old conclusions from before the new law took effect to reject a new application submitted after the new law took effect.

The farmers disagreed and brought an administrative lawsuit. The rulings that followed constituted the most exasperating part of the case:

● Shanghai Third Intermediate People’s Court, Administrative Ruling (2024) Hu 03 Xing Chu No. 62 (December 2, 2024)—rejected the case.

● Shanghai High People’s Court, Administrative Ruling (2025) Hu Xing Zhong No. 8—rejected the appeal.

● Supreme People’s Court—ruled to reject the application for retrial, on the grounds that “the original ruling clearly established the facts and correctly applied the law.”

The core logic given by all three levels of courts was highly consistent: the case “concerns petition matters and does not fall within the scope of accepted cases.”

This is precisely where the problem lies. The applicants and their legal adviser sharply pointed out several fundamental errors in the application of the law:

First, the courts incorrectly applied the old law, violating the principle that “procedures are governed by the new law.” The three levels of courts and the municipal government continued to follow the approach of the old Administrative Reconsideration Law and the repealed former Regulations on Letters and Visits, categorising all “requests to perform duties” lawfully submitted by the farmers as “petition matters and internal supervisory activities,” thereby deftly avoiding the scope of accepted cases expressly expanded by Article 11, paragraph 1, item 11 of the new law. The new law had clearly taken effect, yet it was treated “as if it did not exist.”

Second, they mechanically invoked outdated judicial interpretations. The original ruling cited provisions in the Supreme People’s Court’s Interpretation on the Application of the Administrative Litigation Law, issued in 2018, stating that “petition matters and internal hierarchical supervision do not fall within the scope of accepted cases.” However, when that interpretation was formulated, the new Administrative Reconsideration Law had not yet been introduced, and the legislative changes of 2024 had not been considered at all. Moreover, the “internal supervision” excluded by the judicial interpretation refers specifically to pure supervisory instructions issued by a higher authority to a lower authority, not to a specific request by a citizen, based on their own property rights and interests, for an authority to perform its duties. Forcing the latter into the former category amounts to a mechanically expansive interpretation of the law.

Third, they failed to conduct a substantive review of key evidence. In the face of a complete chain of evidence including homestead-use certificates, resettlement agreements, the 194 million yuan loss assessment and the EMS receipt, the court of first instance neither organised a hearing nor investigated, collected, examined or determined the evidence through cross-examination. Instead, it summarily categorised and rejected the case with the single phrase “petition matter,” constituting unclear findings of fact and a serious lack of evidence.

In short, the applicants believe that the rulings of the three levels of courts rendered the legislative achievement of the new Administrative Reconsideration Law in “broadening channels for relief” effectively “hollow” in practice, pushing ordinary people back into the vicious cycle of “petitioning—reconsideration—litigation, with no authority taking responsibility.” This is what legal professionals often call “procedural circulation”: the procedure appears to have been completed, yet the rights remain suspended, substantively depriving citizens of their constitutional right to obtain judicial relief.

V. Procuratorial Supervision: Entrusting the Final Hope to the Law Itself

After exhausting the three levels of adjudication, the dispossessed farmers turned their attention to legal supervision, the final line of defence.

Under Article 93 of the Administrative Litigation Law and the People’s Procuratorates’ Rules on Supervision of Administrative Litigation, they submitted an Application for Supervision of Administrative Litigation to the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Shanghai People’s Procuratorate, asking the procuratorial organs to:

1. Conduct a comprehensive review of the effective rulings of the three courts in the case, determine that major errors existed in the findings of fact, application of law and litigation procedures, and, in accordance with the law, file a protest or issue a procuratorial recommendation to initiate retrial proceedings;

2. Revoke the three effective administrative rulings and simultaneously review and revoke the Shanghai municipal government’s decision not to accept the application;

3. Direct the court to docket the case in accordance with the law and conduct a substantive trial, fully reviewing the legality of the municipal government’s decision not to accept the application;

4. Ultimately order the administrative authority to accept the application for administrative reconsideration in accordance with the law and order the Minhang District Government to respond to the dispossessed farmers’ application for it to perform its duties.

In June 2026, the Shanghai People’s Procuratorate, after examination, found that the application met the conditions for acceptance and decided to accept it. This notice, “Hu Jian Kong Shen Xing Jian [2026] No. 60,” means that the case has finally been formally taken up by the legal-supervision authority—it is not a final victory, but at least the ball has not been kicked away again.

VI. Beyond the Individual Case: A Demonstration of Whether the “Rule of Law Can Be Fulfilled”

It is necessary to recognise clearly that “acceptance” is only the beginning of the review, not its conclusion. Whether the procuratorial organ will ultimately file a protest or issue a procuratorial recommendation, whether the court will initiate a retrial, and whether the farmers’ claim for 194 million yuan will receive substantive examination all remain uncertain and involve a long road ahead. But the significance of this case has already gone beyond the gains and losses of the 41 farmers.

This is one of the first widely watched typical cases since the new Administrative Reconsideration Law took effect. It is like a mirror, reflecting a sharp reality: the passage of a good law does not mean it will be automatically enforced. When the legislative intent to expand the scope of accepted cases encounters the adjudicative inertia of “evading application of the new law through the logic of the old law,” a gulf still remains between rights on paper and relief in reality—a gulf that must be filled with courage and persistence.

At the end of their application, the dispossessed farmers wrote words that were plain but powerful: they “have always had confidence in building a government under the rule of law, have continuously and tenaciously defended their rights in accordance with the law, and await the growing improvement of the rule of law in China… believing that the day will ultimately come when power is placed in a cage.”

What this Notice of Acceptance has rekindled is precisely that kind of confidence—laws must be observed, enforcement must be strict, and violations must be punished. These should not merely be slogans on a wall, but a reality that every ordinary citizen can genuinely touch.

The 30 years of the dispossessed farmers of Xinzhuang deserve to be recorded; the question they have raised deserves an answer even more:

When citizens lawfully ask the government to perform its duties, but the government chooses silence, whose side, ultimately, does the law stand on?

Author: Feng Zhenghu

August 10, 2026

【Afterword】

This article was written on the basis of the Notice of Acceptance, the Application for Supervision of Administrative Litigation and relevant evidentiary materials provided by the parties. The facts, tracking number, document numbers and legal provisions described herein are all taken from the above materials. The case is currently at the acceptance and review stage of the Shanghai procuratorial authorities; the final conclusion shall be subject to the decision lawfully issued by the judicial authorities.

Units and persons involved in the case:

1. Representatives of the dispossessed farmers from Xinzhuang: Huang Yaonian (mobile: 18321327550), Zhu Zhengguo and Wang Anming. Legal adviser to the dispossessed farmers from Xinzhuang: Feng Zhenghu (mobile: 13524687100).

2. Management Working Committee of the Xinzhuang Industrial Zone, Minhang District, Shanghai

3. Minhang District People’s Government of Shanghai; district head Wu Qiang

4. Shanghai Municipal People’s Government (Decision on Not Accepting the Application for Administrative Reconsideration, Hu Fu Fu Zi (2024) No. 204); mayor Gong Zheng

5. Shanghai Third Intermediate People’s Court (Administrative Ruling (2024) Hu 03 Administrative No. 62); judges responsible for the first-instance case: Presiding Judge Zhu Xiaojie, Judges Cheng Li and Chen Yuting.

6. Shanghai High People’s Court (Administrative Ruling (2025) Hu Xing Zhong No. 8); judges responsible for the second-instance case: Presiding Judge Tang Jun, Judges Guo Guiyin and Xu Jing.

7. Supreme People’s Court (Administrative Ruling (2025) Supreme People’s Court Xing Shen No. 9501); judges responsible for the retrial: Presiding Judge Yan Wei, Judges Ma Sheng’an and Huang Ziyao.

8. Shanghai People’s Procuratorate (Notice of Acceptance, Hu Jian Kong Shen Xing Jian [2026] No. 60); procurator responsible for the case: Zhang Shaolin, Seventh Procuratorial Division