Feng Zhenghu: Comprehensive Legal Analysis Report on the Case of Xinzhuang Landless Farmers’ Application to Perform Statutory Duties — Breaking the “Procedural Motions” and “Endless Cycle of Remedies” (Series Report Six on Landless Farmers’ Lawful Rights Protection in China)

On January 1, 2024, the newly revised Administrative Reconsideration Law of the People’s Republic of China officially took effect. One of its core purposes is to strengthen the role of administrative reconsideration as the “main channel” for resolving administrative disputes, expand the scope of cases accepted, firmly correct administrative agencies’ failure to act, and effectively protect citizens’ lawful rights and interests.

However, in the “Xinzhuang landless farmers’ application to perform statutory duties” case, 41 landless farmers holding valid certificates of title to homesteads, facing estimated losses of RMB 194 million in property rights and interests, went through applications for administrative performance of duties, administrative reconsideration, first instance, second instance, and even retrial by the Supreme People’s Court, yet became trapped in procedural motions: “the application to perform duties was redirected to petitioning, reconsideration was not accepted, litigation was dismissed by ruling, and the retrial failed to correct the errors.”

This report brings together the cross-validation and systematic argumentation by multiple leading artificial-intelligence legal models (DeepSeek, Claude, Gemini, GPT, and Grok) concerning the administrative reconsideration decision and the three levels of judicial rulings in this case. It offers an in-depth examination of the erosion of the rule of administrative law by the “generalization of petitioning,” providing rigorous jurisprudential support and possible solutions for breaking the endless cycle of rights remedies.

I. Basic Background and Findings of Fact

1. Historical Title and Claims of Rights

The applicants are 41 landless farmers holding Shanghai Rural Homestead Use Certificates. The applicants lawfully enjoy the rights to use and own legal homesteads (approximately 11,885 square meters), a bamboo garden (approximately 747.6 square meters), and private houses (approximately 10,088.92 square meters). During the land acquisition and demolition in the Xinzhuang Industrial Zone around 1995, the above property was illegally occupied or was not compensated and resettled in accordance with the law, causing the applicants’ direct and consequential economic losses, estimated at approximately RMB 194 million.

2. Application to Perform Duties and Continuing Failure to Act

On December 13, 2021, pursuant to substantive legal provisions including the Land Administration Law and the Organic Law of the Local People’s Congresses and Local People’s Governments at All Levels, the applicants submitted to the People’s Government of Minhang District, Shanghai, an Application Requesting the Performance of Duties to Protect Property Rights, requesting that the government protect their lawful property rights in accordance with the law and order the relevant departments to provide compensation. The Minhang District government provided no written response within the statutory two-month period, constituting a continuing administrative failure to act.

3. Reconsideration Rejection and Chain of Judicial Rulings

Administrative reconsideration: On January 22, 2024, after the new Administrative Reconsideration Law had taken effect, the applicants applied to the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government for administrative reconsideration. On January 29, the Shanghai Municipal Government issued a Decision Not to Accept the Application for Administrative Reconsideration (Hu Fu Fu Zi [2024] No. 205), determining that the application concerned “petitioning matters and internal management supervision” and refusing to accept it based on the thinking of the old law.

First-instance ruling: The Shanghai Third Intermediate People’s Court ([2024] Hu 03 Xing Chu No. 62) dismissed the lawsuit by ruling on the grounds that the matter concerned petitioning and internal supervision and did not fall within the scope of accepted cases.

Second-instance ruling: The Shanghai High People’s Court ([2025] Hu Xing Zhong No. 8) upheld the first-instance ruling and even blocked relief on the grounds that the plaintiffs had “no legal interest in bringing the action.”

Retrial ruling: The Supreme People’s Court ([2025] Zui Gao Fa Xing Shen No. 9501) held that there was nothing improper about the original ruling and declined to initiate retrial proceedings.

II. Core Legal Disputes and Jurisprudential Analysis

Cross-model legal analysis consistently demonstrates that the administrative agencies and the three levels of courts displayed systematic bias in fact-finding and the application of law, contrary to the legislative intent of the new Administrative Reconsideration Law.

1. Violation of the Principle of “New Procedural Law Applies,” Deliberately Avoiding the Scope of Cases Accepted Under the New Administrative Reconsideration Law

Under general legal principles, administrative reconsideration and litigation follow the rule that “old substantive law applies, while new procedural law applies.” The applicants filed for reconsideration on January 22, 2024, when the revised Administrative Reconsideration Law had already formally taken effect. The reconsideration body was therefore required to apply the new law when examining the conditions for acceptance.

Article 11, paragraph 1, item 11 of the new Administrative Reconsideration Law expressly provides: “Where an application is made for an administrative agency to perform its statutory duties to protect lawful rights and interests such as personal rights, property rights, and the right to education, and the administrative agency refuses to perform, fails to perform in accordance with the law, or fails to respond,” citizens have the right to apply for administrative reconsideration. The Minhang District government’s failure to respond after the deadline was continuing in nature, and this case clearly fell within the scope of cases accepted under the new law. The reconsideration body and the courts ignored the legislature’s clear intention to expand the scope of accepted cases, perpetuated the restrictive interpretation applied under the old law, and thereby made an error in applying the law.

2. Abuse of the “Petitioning” Label, Allowing Statutory Duties and Failures to Act to Evade Judicial Review

Administrative agencies habitually classify difficult historical problems as petitioning matters, creating an avoidance route in which “petitioning is a basket into which everything is thrown.”

The legal boundary between a “request for performance of statutory duties” and “ordinary petitioning” must be strictly clarified:

• ● Request for performance of statutory duties: Based on a right of claim granted by specific substantive legal rules such as the Land Administration Law, it has legally binding force, and administrative agencies have a statutory duty to investigate, handle, and respond in accordance with the law.
• ● Petitioning matter: An expression of opinions, suggestions, or appeals made pursuant to the Regulations on Petitioning Work; it is a fallback channel for non-specific legal acts.

Forcibly characterizing a citizen’s clear application for the performance of duties concerning a major property infringement as a “petitioning matter” confuses its legal nature and seriously departs from the principles of “separating litigation from petitioning” and “making petitioning work rule-of-law based,” established by the central authorities and the Supreme People’s Court.

3. Comprehensive Absence of Evidence Review and Fundamental Bias in the Balancing of Interests

The applicants submitted complete Rural Homestead Use Certificates, surveying and mapping data, and mailing receipts; the amount at issue was as high as RMB 194 million. From the first-instance proceedings through retrial, none of the courts conducted any substantive review of the title evidence or the fact of property damage at issue. Instead, they directly pushed the case out of judicial proceedings on procedural grounds. The second-instance ruling even determined that the parties had “no legal interest in bringing the action.” Where citizens’ enormous lawful property has been infringed and they have received not a cent in compensation, this determination was manifestly neither objective nor fair.

4. Creating an “Endless Procedural Loop,” Departing from the Modern Rule-of-Law Foundation That “Every Right Must Have a Remedy”

In practice, this case evolved into a typical procedural dead end:

This closed loop completely removes the administrative agency’s failure to act from legal and judicial supervision, forcing citizens into a vacuum in which they have no avenue for protecting their rights.

III. Integrated Multidimensional Analysis Across Models

Integrating the independent legal analyses of the leading models presents multidimensional jurisprudential support:

IV. Statutory Remedies for Advancing Resolution of the Case

To break the current impasse over remedies, the report recommends that the parties adopt the following rights-protection and rule-of-law supervision measures:

1. Apply for procuratorial supervision and a protest. In view of the exhaustion of the judicial supervision procedures within the court system, it is recommended that, pursuant to Article 93 of the Administrative Litigation Law of the People’s Republic of China, the applicants petition the Supreme People’s Procuratorate for supervision of the administrative litigation and apply for a protest on the grounds that the original ruling “contains a clear error in the application of law and lacks evidentiary support.”

2. File an independent administrative compensation lawsuit. On the premise that the property damage and the government’s failure to perform its duty to provide protection are established, the applicants may directly bring an administrative compensation action before a court pursuant to the State Compensation Law, bypassing the procedural obstacle of characterizing the application as one for performance of duties and compelling the judicial authorities to enter into a substantive hearing.

3. Rely on the requirement of making petitioning work rule-of-law based to correct the errors. Require the petitioning-work department to issue a written determination pursuant to the Regulations on Petitioning Work, clarifying that the matter falls within the scope of statutory administrative duties, and then, pursuant to Articles 30 and 35 of the new Administrative Reconsideration Law, urge the higher-level administrative agency to correct the errors in accordance with the law.

4. Advance legislative supervision and feedback through exemplary cases. Report the phenomenon of “implementation bottlenecks” in the implementation of the new Administrative Reconsideration Law to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and its Legislative Affairs Commission, promote the issuance of unified judicial interpretations and guiding cases, and prevent judicial inertia from hollowing out the results of legislative amendments.

V. Conclusion

The dignity of the law lies in its enforcement, and the warmth of the rule of law lies in remedies. The institutional benefits of the newly revised Administrative Reconsideration Law must not be eroded in practice by established mindsets and the tendency toward “petitioning-based” handling.

The appeal by the 41 landless farmers of Xinzhuang concerning their lawful property rights and interests concerns not only the implementation of RMB 194 million in livelihood-related rights and interests; it is also a touchstone for testing whether the new Administrative Reconsideration Law can truly become the “main channel” for resolving administrative disputes. Only by breaking the “procedural motions” and daring to confront substantive disputes can the modern rule-of-law bottom line that “every right must have a remedy” be upheld.

Author: Feng Zhenghu