The Yichuan county, Henan Province liaison office building in Beijing's Fengtai district. Photo: CFP
After clicking on the weblink yczjb.com, a well-organized website appears with a banner at the top reading "The Yuncheng Government Liaison Office." However, when a call was placed to the number listed on the website, it was answered by a person who claimed to be a hotel receptionist.
The website contains updated travel information, business opportunities, and the latest news reports related to the city in North China's Shanxi Province. On the right hand side of the website, a picture of a man is displayed with a description under his photo that claims he is the director of the liaison office for Yuncheng.
The main problem is the Yuncheng liaison office was among the 625 liaison offices in Beijing that were supposed to have been shut down last year. However, many of these offices still remain open after changing their names. Some even go so far as to disguise the office as a hotel.
"It's impossible to completely remove these offices," an anonymous source and former employee who worked for a Gansu provincial department's liaison office in Beijing told the Global Times. The person said that business hasn't changed at the office, even though authorities ordered it to close last year.
Experts have said there is still high demand for local governments to lobby for financial grants from central government departments and maintain the capital's "stability" by intercepting petitioners, therefore making it hard to eradicate such organizations. Many liaison offices exist outside of the law because the penalty for those that get caught is small.
Programs to target domestic violence
Sina Microblog
Tencent Microblog
Feedback
RSS
