Feng Zhenghu: How Did 55 Landless Farmers in Shanghai’s Pudong Break Out of the “Procedural Dead Loop”? (The Fourth Report in a Series on Landless Farmers’ Lawful Rights Protection in China)

In July 2026, a Notice of Acceptance numbered “Hu Jian Kong Shen Xing Jian〔2026〕No. 73” was delivered to Shi Kehua. The Shanghai People’s Procuratorate wrote in the document, stamped with a vermilion seal: In the case brought by Shi Kehua, Yang Defu, Huang Meizhen and 52 others against the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government’s decision not to accept their application for administrative reconsideration, they applied for supervision because they disagreed with the administrative ruling (2025) Hu Xing Zhong No. 70 of the Shanghai High People’s Court; “upon examination, it was determined that the application met the conditions for acceptance, and it was decided to accept it.”

A notice of acceptance is merely the starting point of the process in an ordinary case. But for these 55 landless farmers from Pudong, all over 60 and most already gray-haired, this was the first time in nearly a decade that a public authority had said the five words “meets the conditions for acceptance.”

I. Beginning in 1992: A bonded zone, and compensation that was never completed

The story must go back to 1992. That year, construction began on the Waigaoqiao Bonded Zone in Pudong, and the homesteads and houses of a group of farming households who had cultivated land for generations in the area around Gaoqiao Town and Gaodong Town were included in the expropriation area. The applicants have retained to this day their Shanghai Rural Homestead Use Certificates and the demolition agreements from that time—these are the foundation of all their claims to property rights.

According to the materials they submitted to the procuratorial authorities, the consideration for land expropriation and resettlement was never actually paid in full. Over the course of more than 30 years, the land was developed, transferred and increased in value; the farmland of the past became warehouses and factory buildings in the bonded zone, while the former homestead rights holders never received the full compensation promised by law and agreement. Calculated according to current standards, the applicants claim economic losses of approximately 355 million yuan.

The accuracy of the figure can be debated and should be verified by the competent authorities. But one fact is indisputable: 34 years have passed, and this dispute over homestead compensation has never received a single substantive hearing. It has not even been formally “accepted” by any authority.

II. The government says go to court; the courts say go to the government: A closed circle

What rights defenders fear most is not losing a lawsuit, but having no door through which to enter. The experience of these 55 farmers is a textbook record of having “no door through which to enter.”

In December 2018, citing the administrative authorities’ failure to perform their statutory duties, they applied to the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government for administrative reconsideration. The Shanghai government issued Notice No. 2018-1080, determining that the homestead and demolition-compensation issues they had raised had “already been handled by the relevant administrative authorities under the petitioning procedure,” that petitioning matters did not fall within the scope of administrative reconsideration, and that the application would not be accepted.

In November 2021, they applied for reconsideration again, requesting that the Pudong New Area government be ordered to legally urge the governments of Gaoqiao Town and Gaodong Town under its jurisdiction to perform their duties of protecting citizens’ property rights. The Shanghai government issued Notice No. 2021-736. This time, the reason changed: the matters requested “concern the internal management and supervision activities of administrative authorities” and did not fall within the scope of reconsideration. The document ended with a highly consequential sentence: “With regard to similar letters or applications for reconsideration from you in the future, this authority will no longer process or respond to them.”

The sentence “will no longer process or respond” amounted to permanently closing the door to reconsideration for 55 families.

They therefore turned to the courts. On September 18, 2023, the Jing’an District Court issued a Notice, returning the materials on the grounds that it had no jurisdiction; in October of the same year, after receiving the complaint, the Shanghai First Intermediate People’s Court likewise informed them that it would not docket the case. The courts’ meaning was clear: this was a petitioning matter; go back to the government to resolve it.

The government’s previous response had been equally clear: this should be resolved through judicial channels; go to court.

The two doors pointed to each other, while 55 elderly people stood between them. In their application materials, they wrote a passage that was almost an interrogation: “The courts fear the government and are unwilling to accept the case, pushing it to the government to resolve; the government is irresponsible and kicks it to the courts to resolve. Now there is law but it is not followed, the government will not accept it, and the courts are also unwilling to accept it. Which department will accept it?”

This is not rhetoric. It is a citizen using the plainest possible language to identify a structural rupture in the chain of legal remedies.

III. A window opened by the new law, and the door that closed along with it

On January 1, 2024, the newly revised Administrative Reconsideration Law of the People’s Republic of China formally took effect. For this case, the law introduced what could be called a tailor-made institutional breakthrough—Article 11, paragraph 1, item 11, expressly provides:

Where an application requests 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, and the administrative authority refuses to perform, fails to perform in accordance with the law, or fails to respond, the matter falls within the scope of administrative reconsideration.

The words “fails to respond” were, for the first time, expressly written by the legislature into the scope of cases eligible for reconsideration. Under the framework of the old 1999 law, this type of “procedural inaction” had precisely remained in a gray area for a long time, leaving administrative authorities with some room to explain their refusal to accept such applications.

The legislative intent could not have been expressed more clearly: failing to respond is itself conduct that can be reviewed.

On the 19th day after the new law took effect, January 19, 2024, the 55 applicants submitted their third application for administrative reconsideration, requesting that the Pudong New Area government be ordered to respond in accordance with the law to their application that it perform its duties. This time, they invoked the new provisions of the new law and targeted a new fact of inaction.

Seven days later, on January 26, 2024, the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government issued a Decision Not to Accept an Application for Administrative Reconsideration (Hu Fu Fu Zi〔2024〕No. 204), determining that the application “concerned petitioning matters and internal supervision,” and “did not produce a new actual impact on rights and obligations”; it therefore did not fall within the scope of reconsideration and would not be accepted. It once again stated: “With regard to similar letters or applications for reconsideration from the applicants in the future, this authority will no longer process or respond to them.”

The new law had only just taken effect, but the old logic had not changed one bit.

IV. Three levels of courts, the same exit

The applicants promptly filed suit in accordance with the law. On June 27, 2024, the Shanghai Third Intermediate People’s Court docketed the case; on December 27 of the same year, it issued ruling (2024) Hu 03 Xing Chu No. 82, dismissing the lawsuit. They appealed on January 6, 2025, and on April 18 of the same year, the Shanghai High People’s Court issued ruling (2025) Hu Xing Zhong No. 70, dismissing the appeal. They applied for a retrial on August 18, 2025, and on December 13 of the same year, the Supreme People’s Court issued ruling (2025) Zui Gao Fa Xing Shen No. 9077, dismissing the retrial application.

The Supreme People’s Court’s judicial logic can be fully reconstructed as a chain of reasoning: the applicants’ application constituted a “repeat petition” → the administrative authority’s response constituted a “repeat handling act” → Article 1, paragraph 2, item 4 of the Judicial Interpretation of the Administrative Procedure Law applied
→ the matter did not fall within the scope of cases accepted for administrative litigation → dismissal.

Formally, this chain is self-consistent. But a legal analysis report submitted by the applicants to the procuratorial authorities states that its two key links cannot withstand scrutiny.

First, the premise that this was a “repeat handling” was incorrectly determined. The exclusion clause for “repeat handling acts” established by the Judicial Interpretation of the Administrative Procedure Law is intended to prevent parties from endlessly litigating the same matter and to prevent judicial resources from being repeatedly consumed by the same claim. But the applicants’ core claim in this case was not simply a restatement of the outcome of the 1992 expropriation; rather, it targeted the administrative authority’s “long-term failure to respond and refusal to perform its statutory duties,” an independent, continuing and ongoing inaction. In other words, they were not suing because “the compensation was insufficient at the time,” but because “I submitted an application in accordance with the law, and you will not even give me a response.” These are litigation matters of two entirely different natures. Absorbing the latter into the former amounts to declaring that once a substantive dispute has been rejected, the administrative authority’s silence in response to any related application thereafter is no longer actionable.

Second, and more fundamentally, the court avoided the issue of the new law’s temporal effect. The two Notices issued in 2018 and 2021 were both issued under the framework of the old Administrative Reconsideration Law. At that time, “failure to respond” had not yet been expressly included within the scope of reconsideration, and the administrative authority’s refusal may still have had a legal basis. But the new law has clearly amended this rule. Can a conclusion of “non-acceptance” formed under the old law become a “permanent pass” blocking rights granted by the new law?

The applicants believe it cannot, citing two of the most basic rules for applying the law: the new law takes precedence over the old law, and where the old and new laws must be connected, the matter should be handled in a manner favorable to the parties concerned.

Yet Supreme People’s Court ruling No. 9077 neither directly rejected nor elaborated on this central argument by the applicants. Instead, it went straight to “repeat handling act” and bypassed substantive examination of the new law’s provisions. This silence itself constitutes the main reason the applicants requested supervision by the procuratorial authorities.

V. The complete loop of the procedural dead loop

Compressing the eight-year timeline into a single diagram reveals a disturbing closed loop:

The court verbally guided the parties to petitioning →
the three-level petitioning authorities responded in writing that the matter “should be resolved through litigation” →
the applicants followed the petitioning guidance back onto the legal track and applied for administrative reconsideration under the new law → the reconsideration authority refused to accept the application on the grounds that it “concerned a petitioning matter” and “fell under internal supervision” → the court ruled to dismiss the lawsuit
→ the Supreme People’s Court dismissed the retrial application on the grounds of a “repeat handling act”
→ back to the starting point.

Viewed separately, each step has a formal basis in the relevant legal provisions; viewed separately, each authority handled the matter “in accordance with the law.” But these “lawful” actions, connected end to end, ultimately formed a sealed container that no right could penetrate.

This is the most dangerous state in the operation of the rule of law: not an open and blatant violation of the law, but the use of procedure as a shield and citations as a blade, exhausting substantive justice through endless referrals. The blockage that the legislature sought to clear by amending the law was locked again by practical operations using the two keys of “turning it into a petitioning matter” and “turning it into an internal matter.” The new law took effect, but in the lives of these 55 people, it never took effect.

VI. Procuratorial supervision: The last outlet from the procedural deadlock

Under Article 93 of the Administrative Procedure Law and the Rules of the People’s Procuratorates on Supervision of Administrative Litigation, when a party believes that an effective judgment or ruling contains an error, it may apply to a procuratorial authority for supervision; after examination, the procuratorial authority may lodge a protest or submit a procuratorial recommendation for retrial to the court at the same level.

In 2026, Shi Kehua and the other 54 people submitted an Application for Supervision of Administrative Litigation to the Shanghai People’s Procuratorate, attaching 18 items of evidence, including a series of administrative rulings, previous applications for reconsideration and decisions not to accept them, petitioning-response documents, and a special legal analysis report concerning ruling No. 9077. They also submitted an Application to Convene a Hearing, citing the revised Provisions on Hearings in the Examination of Cases by the People’s Procuratorates and requesting a public hearing on the major factual disagreements and disputes over the application of law in the case.

Their request was clear and restrained: they did not ask the procuratorate to directly determine compensation of 355 million yuan; they only requested that the relevant rulings be revoked and that the administrative authority be ordered to accept the matter in accordance with the law and respond to their application that it perform its duties.

What they had wanted all along was not to win the case, but simply to have it heard.

In July 2026, the Notice of Acceptance from the Shanghai People’s Procuratorate responded to them.

VII. The significance of this Notice of Acceptance

It must be stated objectively: acceptance does not equal a protest; a protest does not equal a change in judgment; and a changed judgment does not equal compensation. Legally, this notice means only one thing—the case meets the conditions for acceptance and has entered the examination procedure. The road ahead remains long.

But its significance should not be underestimated. During the eight years before this, every legal document the case received said “not accepted,” “lawsuit dismissed,” “appeal dismissed,” or “retrial application dismissed.” This is the first document to say “accepted.” A circle that had remained closed for eight years has developed its first crack.

And what this crack illuminates is an issue far beyond the individual case. When the legislature expands the scope of cases eligible for acceptance by amending the law and expressly includes “failure to respond” in reconsideration supervision, while practical operations can still neutralize it through the threefold interpretation of “petitioning matter,” “internal supervision” and “repeat handling,” where does the certainty of the law come from? Where should citizens place the reasonable expectations regarding their rights that they form on the basis of statutory provisions?

The quality of the rule of law is ultimately not reflected in how complete the legal code is, but in whether a 70-year-old farmer can, within a reasonable period, get an authority to answer one of his questions directly.

Thirty-four years have passed. Among the 55 parties, some have already died before living to see today. The answer they want is actually simple: Is my homestead use certificate still valid? Is the agreement from that time still valid? If they are valid, please tell me whom I should approach to assert my claim; if they are invalid, please also give me a document stating the reasons.

A request like this should not consume a person’s entire lifetime.

Author: Feng Zhenghu (13524687100)

August 2026

[Afterword]

The procedural facts, document numbers and legal claims described in this article were compiled on the basis of the application materials for supervision of administrative litigation submitted by the applicants to the Shanghai People’s Procuratorate and the attached evidence. The evaluations of the administrative authorities’ and the courts at all levels’ application of the law represent the positions held by the applicants and in their legal opinions; the case is currently under examination by the procuratorial authorities, and the final conclusion remains to be made by the competent authorities in accordance with the law. This article welcomes relevant authorities to propose corrections to the factual content.

Units and personnel involved in this case:

1. Representatives of the landless farmers of Pudong: Shi Kehua (mobile: 13585572276), Yin Guoliang, Huang Meizhen

2. Legal adviser to the landless farmers of Pudong: Feng Zhenghu (mobile: 13524687100)

3. Waigaoqiao Bonded Zone, Pudong New Area, Shanghai

4. People’s Government of Pudong New Area, Shanghai; district head

5. Shanghai Municipal People’s Government (Decision Not to Accept an Application for Administrative Reconsideration, Hu Fu Fu Zi (2024) No. 204), Mayor Gong Zheng

6. Shanghai Third Intermediate People’s Court (Administrative Ruling (2024) Hu 03 Xing No. 82), judges handling the first-instance case: Presiding Judge Bao Hao, Judges Shen Liping and Ma Huifang.

7. Shanghai High People’s Court (Administrative Ruling (2025) Hu Xing Zhong No. 70), judges handling the second-instance case: Presiding Judge Lin Junhua, Judges Ye Yi and Xu Hong.

8. Supreme People’s Court (Administrative Ruling (2025) Zui Gao Fa Xing Shen No. 9077), judges handling the retrial case: Presiding Judge Yan Wei, Judges Li Shaohua and Zhao Jingli.

9. Shanghai People’s Procuratorate (Notice of Acceptance, Hu Jian Kong Shen Xing Jian〔2026〕No. 73), procurator handling the case: He Yanmin, Seventh Procuratorial Department.

Attached: Shi Kehua’s Notice of Acceptance