China: CCP’s Stability Maintenance Fund Aims to Stop Petitioners

Chinese media reports that the Communist Party has set aside as much as 15 billions dollars for “Stability Maintenance Offices” around the country.

These local offices are established under the Central Leadership Office for Maintaining Stability. They’re hiring people to act as a web of informants for local authorities. The main task: to monitor and ensure so-called social stability. And one way that’s being achieved is through controlling petitioners.

[Ma Yaliang, Shanghai Petitioner]:
“The central government gives a stability maintenance fund to local authorities every year. These authorities use the money to watch and monitor petitioners. Or they use them in deals, like if you promise us you won’t petition in Beijing, I’ll give you this amount of money. Some petitioners who are struggling to live or are in other situations would accept this deal.”

Ma says that local authorities also use the money to pay for hotels—also referred to as black jails—to detain petitioners who do go to Beijing.

(NTDTV)