China has experienced rapid economic growth and a sharp rise in social conflicts and mass incidents since the launch of its reforms in the late 1970s. The petitioning institution of ″letters and visits″, which was designed to deal with ordinary citizens' complaints and petitions, has been caught in a paradox. The more power the institution gains, the more petitions it attracts. The draft law on ″letters and visits″ and the debates on how to reform this institution have centered on as well as divided on the two extreme positions of ″expanding″ and ″weakening″ the body. These debates have largely ignored the democratization of the petitioning institution of letters and visits. This paper argues that local deliberative democracy, such as citizen juries, has the advantage of addressing and managing petitions and complaints and it should become the main resolution to the ″paradox revolving around the petitions process″. China started public hearings on petitions more than 10 years ago, and the local deliberative democratic mechanism has been introduced. Such a process reflects the transformation of the petitioning institution of letters and visits from government affairs to public affairs, and from the secrecy of the state to the transparency of public concern and participation.Through a comparative study of the three cases of how local deliberative democracy addresses petitions at the grass-roots level in China, this paper finds that the cases share some common features- equal dialogues with petitioners, fair and reasonable decisions through public deliberation, and simplified and transparent procedures. These features have greatly improved the legality of the petitioning institution of letters and visits. However, such practices of local deliberative democracy also suffer from some shortcomings: they are time and labor-intensive, they produce a trade-off between the representativeness of public consultation and the quality of deliberation, and they create tensions between authority and control. To improve the practice of deliberative democracy at the local level, it is critical to innovatively integrate various methods of deliberative democracy, to combine formal deliberation and informal consultation, to set up a set of standards that are applicable to China, to ensure inclusiveness and neutrality, and to professionalize the function of citizen juries. Two core issues still need to be considered in the future. First, how to construct a consultative mechanism to deal with claims, and second, how to construct an independent third-party mechanism to handle complaints.