By Yuan Weihua

63-year-old Ms Zhang climbed five floors to a newspaper office in the city of Shijiazhuang and asked one of the staff, "Are you reporter going to the NPC and the CPPCC sessions?"

This was not the first time Ms Zhang had tried to report problems to the authorities on behalf of several retired teachers of a local school.

They had all been teachers at a factory school until they retired. But when the factory and the school were split up, they were classified as ex-factory employees because their files were not handed over to the education authority. Their problem is that pensions for retired factory workers are much lower than those of teachers.

These aged teachers have visited government departments many times since 2006. Zhang said that they are getting too old to get such complicated things done.

Zhang left an envelope with the words "Please submit to relevant officials at the NPC and CPPCC sessions" written on it.

Evidently this is not the proper way to submit a proposal to the NPC or CPPCC. But to Ms Zhang, the best way to solve their problem is to seek help directly from the relevant government departments or from the media. They did not bother to contact their own deputy to the people’s congress.

Do vulnerable groups who are striving to make ends meet go to their People's Congress deputies when they need to safeguard their rights and interests? Ms Zhang’s neglect of her deputy reflects the distance between the electorate and the deputies. A survey showed that when people's rights are infringed or they are unfairly treated, only just over 3 percent of them seek help from deputies to people's congresses.

And how would they find their deputies? I asked people at random, including some with high level education. They did not even know the name of their deputies let alone how to contact them. And as for what their deputies were proposing at the people’s congresses, they had no idea at all.

One way interaction has been growing is via the Internet. Online chats between netizens and NPC and CPPCC members have become a hot issue. Just before the NPC opened, Premier Wen Jiabao held online talks with netizens on a variety of issues.

Lawyer Pei Xinmin has been very enthusiastic about soliciting public opinion. He uses the opinions he collects to create proposals and sends them to CPPCC members and deputies to the people's congress.

In fact the contents of Pei's proposals are no longer the main issue for him. After three years of effort, what he really cares is whether a non-deputy can communicate his ideas to the top level authorities.

"Netizens debate vehemently about issues on line. It seems that this has turned into a new form of democracy. But how to communicate online opinions to the deputies remains a problem."

I interviewed several deputies to the people's congress about how proposals should be submitted.

In 2004 Zhou Xiaoguang, an NPC deputy elected in 2003 ran a 10-day TV ad campaign asking for the public to send him their views. "Your opinions are welcome. I want to take the issues that are important to you to the NPC." Even five years later this act is still seen as being of great significance. But when asked whether they would solicit public opinion in this way, many deputies just smiled.

How to make a breakthrough on this point? The people's congress system needs to be reformed. First and foremost, the gap between deputies and the electorate needs to be narrowed. Actually in Shenzhen some deputies have set up offices in residential communities and the practice is spreading to other places in Guangdong Province. Similar offices have begun to emerge in the Haidian District of Beijing.

(China.org.cn translated by Zhang Ming'ai, March 6, 2009)