In 1963, during the Socialist Education Movement, Fengqiao district in Zhuji, Zhejiang, dealt with the “four categories” of class enemies by having local people supervise and reform them on the spot, without arrests. Mao Zedong wrote an instruction that other places should copy it.
Over the decades, the Fengqiao Experience came to mean settling disputes locally. Xinhua sums it up: “Small matters do not leave the village, big matters do not leave the town, conflicts are not passed up.”