I was reading a China history book* yesterday when I came across a section that described more than 1,000 Qing-era state exam candidates supporting a petition protesting the disadvantageous terms of a peace treaty with Japan, and calling for large-scale reform.

What struck me is this: after the document was rejected by a royal court office, the signatories “were apparently not directly penalized.” And then a second version was submitted, and it made it to the emperor and his senior advisors.

In today’s China, people are harangued, dragged back to their provinces, beaten, jailed or all of the above for submitting, or even trying to submit, petitions complaining about rights violations to the central government.

Before going further, I should be clear: I am neither qualified nor inclined to venture even a hint of historical parallel, judgment or critique. China at the time was a wreck; riddled by foreign occupation and a weak, dysfunctional economy and political system that subjugated the peasantry.

It is now a world power that has pulled hundreds of millions of its own people out of extreme poverty.

But the detail got my attention. I’ve been reporting here for less than three months and the issue of the ... difficulties of filing for redress in China has already come up several times.    

In Henan province, where signs on the side of the road warn of the perils of “illegal petitions,” farmer Peng Gonglin tried to get government help after buying bad seeds. Following several months of humiliation, capped by physical assault, Peng hung himself.

In Shaanxi province, businessman Zhu Baoqi was hoping the director of a petitions office could solve a dispute between him and a local potentate. It turned out that director and the local leader were colluding against Zhu, who in the end was murdered.

Both of those cases involved regular people who weren’t looking for confrontation, but ran into trouble and, looking for a solution, quickly discovered the drawbacks of China’s lack of rule of law.

Feng Zhenghu (activist) and Ai Weiwei (artist/political provocateur), on the other hand, have long been aware that the country has serious challenges along those lines.

When Feng travelled from Shanghai to Beijing to help a group of people find legal help, he was apprehended by police (he called it being “kidnapped”), and held in a Shanghai hotel room for 41 days until he agreed to leave China.

Ai went to testify in the trial of an activist and was reportedly beaten by police.

Of note is that all involved in these examples would describe themselves as patriots: Both the petitioners and those seeking to thwart them.

Kang Youwei, the scholar behind the Qing-era document who advocated change within the system – to establish a constitutional monarchy – certainly would have. His contemporary, Sun Yat-sen, wanted the regime overthrown. Sun, of course, got his wish and a long period of turmoil did follow.

* The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895-1980, by Jonathan D. Spence.