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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BEIJING 000384 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/12/2030 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM SOCI CH
SUBJECT: BEIJING BANS LOCAL-LEVEL LOBBYISTS; FEW PACKING 
BAGS 
 
REF: 09 BEIJING 1318 
 
Classified By: Deputy Political Section Chief 
Ben Moeling.  Reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). 
 
¶1. (C) Summary: China's State Council is moving to 
close the thousands of local government 
representative offices in Beijing.  Notorious for 
giving lavish gifts in exchange for central 
government pork-barrel spending in their districts, 
local government representatives, according to 
several contacts, have become too great an 
embarrassment for the Communist Party.  A State 
Council "opinion" document issued January 19 is 
expected to result in the closure of hundreds of 
county-level representative offices in Beijing. 
The large provincial representative offices are 
expected to remain.  Media commentators expressed 
skepticism and noted that past reform efforts have 
failed to stem the growth of local government 
representative offices, which now number an 
estimated 5000.  Post contacts also predicted that 
local representatives would repackage themselves as 
business enterprises and remain in place.  A central 
government cadre told us that the proliferation of 
local government representative offices is a symptom 
of the concentration of power and resources in 
Beijing.  However, another well placed contact 
predicted that the central government would enforce 
the order with budget rules to prevent local 
governments from spending any money in Beijing. 
 
China's K Street: Lobbyist by Day, Jailer by Night 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
 
¶2. (U) According to 2006 statistics cited in the 
February 8 edition of China Newsweek, Beijing has 
927 officially registered provincial and local 
government representative offices.  The magazine 
also noted unofficial estimates that, if 
unregistered county-level and sub-county-level 
representative offices are included, the actual 
number is over 5,000.  Representative offices have 
several functions including lobbying for central 
government funding and handling logistics when local 
leaders (or their spouses or children) visit 
Beijing.  Representative offices have also played a 
central role in detaining and returning home 
petitioners from their districts who come to Beijing 
to present their grievances to the central 
government.  Some representative offices are 
reported to operate "black jails," a term in common 
use in China which refers to extralegal detention 
centers where petitioners are held until they can be 
sent home. 
 
¶3. (U) Local government representative offices 
represent an industry unto themselves in China's 
capital.  In addition to their official functions, 
many also run restaurants and hotels, both to 
entertain visiting leaders and to generate revenue 
to cover the office's expenses.  According to one 
news report, the 50 provincial-level representative 
offices in Beijing alone employ approximately 2,000 
government employees and another 7,000 restaurant 
and hotel workers.  Beijing also has a newspaper 
(www.zhujingban.cn) that caters exclusively to 
representative offices. 
 
County-Level Rep Offices Forced to Close 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶4. (U) On January 19, the State Council issued a 
document, "Opinion for Strengthening and Regulating 
the Management of Local Government Representative 
Offices in Beijing," announcing new measures to 
regulate representative offices in the capital.  The 
document calls for the elimination of all Beijing 
offices at or below the county level.  Beijing's 50 
provincial-level representative offices, which in 
addition to provincial governments also include 
major metropolitan areas such as Shanghai, Chongqing 
and Tianjin, will stay.  The document also outlines 
exceptions for representative offices of the 
Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (the 
quasi-military "bingtuan") and special economic 
zones.  Also, some local governments will be allowed 
to maintain representative offices at the discretion 
 
BEIJING 00000384  002 OF 003 
 
 
of provincial authorities.  The document warns that 
provincial and local governments must increase 
oversight of their representative offices, ensure 
they conform with anti-corruption efforts, and halt 
lavish entertaining.  In remarks to the press a 
State Administration for the Affairs of State 
Council Organs official announced that before July 
19 of this year, 436 local government representative 
offices and an additional 146 offices representing 
functional departments within local governments 
would be closed. (Note: These figures appear to only 
refer to registered offices and it is unclear how 
central authorities will deal with the many 
unregistered offices in Beijing.) 
 
100K for Bathtub Hooch 
---------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) The seedy side of rep offices was 
highlighted in April 2009 when news broke that the 
Beijing representative offices of Xuchang and Luohe, 
two cities in Henan province, together spent USD 
100,000 to purchase 777 bottles of Maotai liquor, a 
favorite gift among Party cadres.  The alcohol 
turned out to be counterfeit and the representative 
offices contacted Beijing city authorities to 
investigate.  The phony Maotai story prompted a 
media and Internet debate about the practice of 
representative offices using expensive gifts to 
curry favor among central government bureaucrats. 
Even prior to the Maotai scandal, public interest in 
representative offices had increased due to the 
popularity of a series of novels, first published in 
2007, that centered around a candid depiction of the 
life of a Beijing representative for a fictitious 
city.  (Note: Following the January 19 State Council 
notice, the author, Wang Xiaofang, a former aide to 
a deputy mayor of Shenyang who was later jailed for 
corruption, became a sought-after media commentator 
on the representative office system.) 
 
Who Will Be Left to Lock Up Petitioners? 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶6. (SBU) Media commentators expressed doubts about 
the plan to rid Beijing of local representative 
offices.  An editorial in the January 28 edition of 
Southern Weekend (Nanfang Zhoumo) noted that there 
have been several failed attempts in the past to 
regulate the offices.  The State Council, the 
article notes, issued a nearly identical order in 
1990, only to watch the number of rep offices 
explode from 309 in 1990 to the estimated 5,000 
today.  Representative office directors interviewed 
by China Newsweek noted that the central government 
depends on them to deal with petitioners and that 
social order in the capital will suffer after the 
offices close: "...once the petitioners increase," 
one representative told the magazine, "(the central 
government) will regret it." 
 
"Just Pushing It Underground" 
----------------------------- 
 
¶7. (C) Several Embassy contacts also expressed 
skepticism that the thousands of local rep offices 
could really be closed.  Mou Guangfeng (protect), 
Director General for Environmental Impact Assessment 
at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told 
PolOff January 29 that he did not think the policy 
would succeed.  The various representative offices, 
he said, would simply be forced "underground" and 
local governments would continue to have 
representatives in the capital, even if they had to 
operate out of hotel rooms.  Mou said the rep office 
phenomenon was a symptom of the over-centralization 
of power and budget resources in China. 
 
¶8. (C) Liu Xiaoyuan (protect), a human rights 
lawyer, likewise predicted the crackdown effort 
would ultimately fail.  Many county-level 
representative offices, he told PolOff February 2, 
would continue to function under the guise of 
business enterprises.  In addition to lobbying and 
rounding up petitioners, Liu said, representative 
office workers also act as personal assistants for 
visiting local leaders and their families, including 
the children of local party secretaries studying at 
 
BEIJING 00000384  003 OF 003 
 
 
Beijing-area universities.  (Note: During a May 2009 
meeting with PolOff (reftel), the Party Secretary of 
Hulunbeier (protect), Inner Mongolia, stressed the 
importance of his city's Beijing representative 
office in winning a central government funding for 
large infrastructure projects in his district. 
Though in Beijing for a private visit to see his 
son, a senior at Renmin University, the Party 
Secretary was chauffeured in a government car by 
staff from his city's rep office. End note.)  Such 
blatant personal use of government resources has 
sparked public ire, Liu said, and the damage done to 
the Communist Party's image was the main reason 
central leaders are moving to clean up the 
representative office system.  Provincial 
governments, Liu said, are supportive of the reform 
because it will increase their power over local 
officials, who will be forced to work through the 
provincial representative offices when interacting 
with the central government. 
 
Central Government Means Business This Time 
------------------------------------------- 
 
¶9. (C) In a February 3 conversation with PolOff, 
Deputy Director of the State Bureau of Foreign 
Experts Zhang Jiangguo (protect) agreed with other 
contacts that corruption was the main reason central 
authorities wanted to close the local representative 
offices.  Party leaders also want to diminish the 
role of local government lobbying in the budgetary 
process.  Zhang said the Bureau of Foreign Experts 
(which not only controls the hiring of foreign 
consultants for Chinese government entities but also 
the distribution of official scholarships for 
Chinese cadres to study overseas) worked regularly 
with provincial representative offices but would not 
deal with county- and city-level offices.  Zhang 
predicted the January 19 edict would result in "nine 
out of ten" local representative offices in Beijing 
being closed.  Acknowledging that past efforts had 
failed, Zhang said that this latest attempt would 
succeed because the central government would enforce 
the closure order with directives explicitly 
forbidding local government from spending any funds 
on offices or representational activities in 
Beijing.  Even so, Zhang said, some local 
governments would inevitably attempt to maintain 
their representative offices by registering them as 
companies. 
HUNTSMAN