Shanghai's legislature passed an amendment to the city's petition regulation on Wednesday afternoon, encouraging social groups and professionals to offer petitioners consultation or even to represent them.

"Professional organizations, social groups, professionals, and volunteers can attend a petition hearing with an invitation from government organs, provide consultation and services to petitioners, or represent petitioners," said the amendment, which was approved at the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress.

Petitions, or xinfang in Chinese, literally meaning letters, calls and visits, date back to China's imperial past but were formally introduced in the 1950s.