Feng Zhenghu: The Judicial Predicament of Procedural Deadlock and the Breakthrough in Remedies — Legal Analysis and Key Points for Oversight in the “Pudong Land-Lost Farmers’ Application for Performance of Duties Case” (Series on Land-Lost Farmers’ Lawful Rights Protection in China, Part 10)

This report systematically analyses in law the phenomenon of “procedural deadlock” in the case of 55 land-lost farmers in Pudong, Shanghai, who applied for the administrative authorities to perform their duties. The central issue in the case is not the merits of historical land-acquisition compensation from thirty years ago, but the procedural failure to act constituted by an administrative authority’s failure to respond within the prescribed time limit to a lawfully submitted application asking it to perform its duties. From the administrative reconsideration authority’s decision not to accept the application, to the courts’ first-instance and second-instance rulings and the Supreme People’s Court’s retrial ruling, the decisions have serious defects in their application of the law, including conflating substantive claims with procedural claims, substituting petitioning for statutory remedies, and circumventing the newly revised Administrative Reconsideration Law. As a result, citizens’ right to obtain procedural remedies in accordance with the law has been frustrated. The report calls on procuratorial authorities to initiate procuratorial supervision of administrative litigation in accordance with the law, break the cycle of procedural deadlock, and uphold the baseline of the rule of law in procedure.

I. Case Background and Procedural Review

1. Basis of Rights and Application for Performance of Duties

The applicants, Shi Kehua and 54 other land-lost farmers (longtime residents of Gaoqiao Town, Pudong New Area, Shanghai), hold Shanghai Rural Homestead Use Certificates issued in 1991 by the former People’s Government of Chuansha County, Shanghai, and lawfully held the corresponding homesteads and privately owned houses. Land acquisition and demolition took place in 1992 during development of the Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone. Owing to historical shortfalls in compensation and resettlement, their related rights and interests have long failed to receive reasonable protection.

On December 13, 2021, the applicants formally submitted to the People’s Government of Pudong New Area, Shanghai, an Application Requesting the Pudong New Area Government to Perform Its Duty to Protect Property Rights. Postal records show it was delivered the following day. However, the application received no written response or administrative action within the statutory response period or in the years that followed.

2. A “Procedural Loop” Formed Over Four Years of Seeking Redress

Deflection between petitioning and litigation (2022–2023): The applicants once brought a lawsuit before a court, but were told to “go through the government”; after they turned to the petitioning process, the petitioning offices of Gaoqiao Town Government, Pudong New Area Government and Shanghai Municipal Government all issued written replies, uniformly stating that the matter “should be resolved through litigation or other statutory channels”; but when the applicants again filed suit in court, they were still turned away.

Reconsideration application rejected (January 2024): The newly revised Administrative Reconsideration Law took effect on January 1, 2024, expressly bringing an administrative authority’s “failure to respond within the prescribed time limit” within the scope of cases accepted for reconsideration. On January 19, the applicants applied to the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government for administrative reconsideration of the Pudong New Area Government’s failure to respond within the prescribed time limit; on January 26, the Shanghai Municipal Government issued a Decision Not to Accept the Application (Hu Fu Fu Zi [2024] No. 204).

Three levels of judicial review (2024–2025):

●  First instance: The Shanghai Third Intermediate People’s Court ruled to dismiss the lawsuit (2024 Hu 03 Xing Chu No. 82);

● Second instance: The Shanghai High People’s Court ruled to dismiss the appeal and uphold the original ruling (2025 Hu Xing Zhong No. 70);

● Retrial: On December 13, 2025, the Supreme People’s Court ruled to dismiss the application for retrial (2025 Zui Gao Fa Xing Shen No. 9077).

Thus, a simple procedural application “requesting a written response from the government” passed through four years of administrative and judicial processes without any authority conducting a substantive review.

II. Key Legal Disputes and Analysis of Legal Principles

The crux of the case is that the administrative and judicial authorities failed to correctly characterise the subject matter of the dispute during their review, resulting in multiple errors in the application of the law:

1. Nature of the Central Dispute: A Procedural Duty to Respond, Not the Merits of Historical Compensation

Whether the Pudong New Area Government should compensate the parties is a historical substantive dispute; whether the Pudong New Area Government, after receiving a citizen’s application for performance of duties, should provide a formal written response within the statutory time limit (whether granting the request, rejecting it or informing the applicant of another avenue) is a statutory procedural duty established by the Constitution and administrative law. The right to a procedural response is an independent right of claim belonging to citizens and has irreplaceable procedural value. The complexity of the substantive issue cannot directly exempt an administrative authority from its duty to respond.

2. Three Fundamental Logical Flaws in the Reasons for Rejecting the Reconsideration Application

The three reasons given by the Shanghai Municipal Government for rejecting the reconsideration application are all untenable:

● Mischaracterising the matter as a “petitioning matter”: The 2021 application had a clear legal basis, documentary evidence of title and specified requests, and was a typical statutory application for performance of duties. The fact that the parties had previously petitioned about related matters cannot, by itself, strip the application of its legal character as a statutory request for performance of duties.

● Conflating “hierarchical oversight” with “statutory duties”: A citizen’s request that a higher-level reconsideration authority correct a lower-level government’s “failure to act” is precisely the legislative purpose of the administrative reconsideration system; it cannot simply be downgraded to “internal administrative oversight” that is not subject to reconsideration.

● Misapplying “repeated handling”: The 2024 reconsideration application concerned the new fact of the Pudong New Area Government’s “failure to respond within the prescribed time limit” since the end of 2021, and its subject matter was not the same as that of the earlier historical reconsideration application.

3. Confusion Between Petitioning Outcomes and Statutory Remedies

In their reasoning, the three levels of courts generally treated records of past petitioning processes as grounds for excluding judicial review. Under the Regulations on Petitioning Work and the principles of administrative litigation, petitioning is not a statutory judicial or administrative adjudication process with final res judicata; moreover, petitioning departments at all levels had expressly told the parties to “pursue litigation”. The courts, conversely, used the fact that “the matter had been handled through petitioning” to block access to litigation, creating a cycle in which “petitioning directs people to litigation, while litigation directs people back to petitioning”.

4. Evading Application of the New Law and Insufficient Reasoning in the Rulings

Articles 11 and 23 of the newly revised Administrative Reconsideration Law have greatly expanded the scope of cases accepted and strengthened oversight and constraints on procedural failures to act, such as administrative authorities’ delayed responses and delays in performing their duties. The reconsideration authority and courts at all levels in this case failed to directly address the applicants’ central arguments based on the new law and avoided substantive legal interpretation and reasoning, effectively rendering the legislative intent of the new law inoperative.

III. Conclusions and Recommendations for Procuratorial Oversight

This case starkly reflects the typical predicament in resolving administrative disputes today: “using substantive issues to negate procedure, using petitioning to obstruct the rule of law, and using procedural deadlock to erode rights”.

1. Correct the Judicial Rulings: The Supreme People’s Court’s ruling (2025) Zui Gao Fa Xing Shen No. 9077 and related rulings have fundamental defects in their findings of fact and application of the law, and failed to fulfil the judicial oversight duty in respect of administrative inaction.

2. Request Procuratorial Oversight: It is recommended that the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, pursuant to Article 91 of the Administrative Litigation Law and the Rules for the People’s Procuratorates’ Supervision of Administrative Litigation, initiate procuratorial supervision of administrative litigation in this case in accordance with the law, lodge a protest or issue a procuratorial recommendation to the Supreme People’s Court, direct that the original ruling be corrected, and require the reconsideration authority to accept the case in accordance with the law and conduct a substantive review of this case of procedural failure to act.

3. Rule-of-Law Value: Protecting citizens’ right to “receive a lawful written response” is a baseline requirement for building a government under the rule of law. Only by breaking the cycle of procedural deadlock and ensuring that administrative authorities return to the path of performing their statutory duties can administrative disputes be substantively resolved at their source and citizens’ lawful rights and interests under the Constitution be protected.

Author: Feng Zhenghu

September 30, 2026