Feng Zhenghu: How Can 55 Landless Farmers in Shanghai’s Pudong District Break Out of a “Procedural Dead Loop”? (Series Report on Landless Farmers’ Legal Rights Defense in China, Part Four)

In July 2026, a Notice of Acceptance numbered “沪检控申行监〔2026〕73号” was delivered to Shi Kehua. The Shanghai People’s Procuratorate wrote in the document, bearing its vermilion seal: In the case brought by Shi Kehua, Yang Defu, Huang Meizhen and 55 others against the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government’s decision not to accept their applications for administrative reconsideration, they applied for supervision because they disagreed with the administrative ruling (2025) 沪行终70号 issued by the Shanghai High People’s Court; “upon examination, [the case] meets the conditions for acceptance, and it is decided that the case will be accepted.”

In ordinary cases, a notice of acceptance is merely the starting point of the process. 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 goes 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 of Gaoqiao and Gaodong towns were included in the expropriation. The applicants still possess the 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 the land acquisition and resettlement was never actually paid in full. Over more than 30 years, the land was developed, transferred and appreciated in value. The farmland of the past became warehouses and factory buildings in the bonded zone, while the original homestead rights holders never received the full compensation promised by law and the agreements. 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 beyond dispute: 34 years have passed, and this homestead compensation dispute has never received a single hearing on its merits. 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 model record of having “no door through which to enter.”

In December 2018, they applied to the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government for administrative reconsideration on the grounds that administrative authorities had failed to perform their statutory duties. 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”; petitioning matters did not fall within the scope of administrative reconsideration, and the application would not be accepted.

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

The words “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 No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court likewise informed them that it would not docket the case. The court’s meaning was clear: This is 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.

Two doors pointed at each other, with 55 elderly people standing in between. In their application materials, they wrote a passage that was almost an interrogation: “The courts fear the government, are unwilling to accept the case, and push it to the government to resolve; the government refuses to take responsibility and kicks it to the courts to resolve. Now the law exists but is not followed, the government will not accept it, and the courts are also unwilling to accept it. Which department will accept it in the end?”

This is not rhetoric. It is a citizen using the plainest language to point out a structural rupture in the chain of remedies.

III. The window opened by the new law, and the door that closed 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 an institutional breakthrough that could be described as tailor-made—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 the duty, fails to perform it in accordance with the law, or fails to respond, the matter falls within the scope of administrative reconsideration.

The three 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 kind of “procedural inaction” had precisely remained in a gray area for a long time, leaving administrative authorities room to interpret their refusal to accept such cases.

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

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

Seven days later, on January 26, 2024, the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government issued a Decision Not to Accept the Application for Administrative Reconsideration (沪府复字〔2024〕No. 204), determining that the application “concerns petitioning matters and internal supervision,” and “does 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 again stated: “For 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 just taken effect, but the old logic remained unchanged in the slightest.

IV. Three levels of courts, the same exit

The applicants promptly filed suit in accordance with the law. On June 27, 2024, the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court docketed the case; on December 27 of the same year, it issued ruling (2024) 沪03行初82号, 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) 沪行终70号, 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) 最高法行申9077号, dismissing the retrial application.

The Supreme People’s Court’s reasoning can be fully reconstructed as a chain of logic: The applicants’ application constituted a “repeated petition” → the administrative authority’s response constituted a “repeated 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 argues that its two key links cannot withstand scrutiny.

First, the premise that this was a “repeated handling” was incorrectly established. The exclusion clause concerning “repeated handling acts” established in the Judicial Interpretation of the Administrative Procedure Law is intended to prevent parties from endlessly litigating the same matter and to avoid judicial resources being repeatedly consumed by the same demand. But the core demand of the applicants in this case is not a simple restatement of the expropriation outcome from 1992; rather, it targets the administrative authorities’ “long-term failure to respond and refusal to perform their statutory duties”—an independent, continuing and ongoing failure to act. In other words, they are not suing because “the compensation was too little 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 targets of two entirely different natures. Absorbing the latter into the former is tantamount to declaring that, once a substantive dispute has been rejected, any subsequent silence by an administrative authority regarding a related application is no longer actionable.

Second, and more fundamentally, the courts avoided the issue of the new law’s temporal effect. Both the 2018 and 2021 Notices were 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 of legal application: the new law takes precedence over the old law, and when connecting the old and new laws, the matter should be handled in a manner favorable to the parties.

Yet ruling No. 9077 of the Supreme People’s Court neither directly rejected nor elaborated on this central claim by the applicants, instead bypassing substantive review of the new law’s provisions by proceeding directly on the basis of a “repeated handling act.” This silence itself constitutes the applicants’ principal reason for requesting supervision by the procuratorial authorities.

V. The complete closed loop of the procedural dead loop

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

The court verbally directs the parties to pursue petitioning → three levels of petitioning authorities respond in writing that “the matter should be resolved through litigation” → the applicants follow the petitioning guidance back to the legal track and apply for administrative reconsideration under the new law → the reconsideration authority refuses to accept the application on the grounds that it “concerns a petitioning matter” and “is internal supervision” → the court dismisses the lawsuit → the Supreme People’s Court dismisses the retrial application on the grounds of a “repeated handling act” → back to the starting point.

Viewed separately, each step has a formal basis in the law; viewed separately, each authority handled the matter “in accordance with the law.” But these “lawful” actions, linked from beginning to end, ultimately formed a sealed container impenetrable to any right.

This is the most dangerous state in the operation of the rule of law: not blatant illegality, but using procedure as a shield and legal citations as a blade, exhausting substantive justice through endless referrals. The bottleneck that the legislature sought to clear by amending the law was locked up again in practice with two keys: “turning it into a petitioning matter” and “treating it as internal.” The new law took effect, but in the lives of these 55 people, it never took effect at all.

VI. Procuratorial supervision: The last exit 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, where a party believes that an effective judgment or ruling is indeed erroneous, the party 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 54 others 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, requesting a public hearing on the major factual disagreements and disputes over the application of the law in this case pursuant to the revised Provisions of the People’s Procuratorates on Hearings in the Examination of Cases.

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 their application in accordance with the law and respond to their application concerning the performance of its duties.

What they have wanted all along is 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 said objectively: Acceptance does not equal a protest; a protest does not equal a reversal; and a reversal does not equal compensation. In legal terms, 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 a question far exceeding the individual case. When the legislature amends the law to expand the scope of accepted cases and expressly includes “failure to respond” in reconsideration supervision, while practical operations can still nullify it through three explanations—“petitioning matter,” “internal supervision” and “repeated handling”—where does the certainty of the law come from? Where, in turn, should citizens place the reasonable expectations about their rights that they form on the basis of statutory provisions?

The quality of the rule of law is ultimately reflected not in the completeness of the code, but in whether a 70-year-old farmer can get some authority to answer his question directly within a reasonable period of time.

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

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

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 evidence attached thereto. The assessments of the administrative authorities’ and the courts at all levels’ application of the law represent the positions of the applicants and their legal opinions; the case is currently at the procuratorial examination stage, and the final conclusion remains to be issued by the competent authority in accordance with the law. This article welcomes relevant authorities to propose corrections to the factual portions.

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. Shanghai Pudong New Area Waigaoqiao Bonded Zone

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

5. Shanghai Municipal People’s Government (Decision Not to Accept the Application for Administrative Reconsideration, 沪府复字（2024）No. 204), Mayor Gong Zheng

6. Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People’s Court (Administrative Ruling (2024) 沪03行政82号), 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) 沪行终70号), judges handling the second-instance case: presiding judge Lin Junhua, judges Ye Yi and Xu Hong.

8. Supreme People’s Court (Administrative Ruling (2025) 最高法行申9077号), judges handling the retrial: presiding judge Yan Wei, judges Li Shaohua and Zhao Jingli.

9. Shanghai People’s Procuratorate (Notice of Acceptance, 沪检控申行监〔2026〕73号), procurator handling the case: He Yanmin of the Seventh Procuratorial Department.

Attached: Shi Kehua’s Notice of Acceptance