(TibetanReview.net, Dec30’24) –China has built or expanded more than 200 specialized detention facilities nationwide under a new law to interrogate suspects ensnared in Xi Jinping’s widening anti-corruption drive as the Chinese leader extends his crackdown beyond the ruling Communist Party to a vast swath of public sectors, reported the edition.cnn.com Dec 28. However, the anti-corruption campaign is seen as selective, mainly targeting those seen as threat to the Xi Jinping leadership, besides being prone to abuse by a corrupt officialdom, and therefore largely ineffective, according to this report and the firstpost.com Dec 28.
Indeed, the CNN investigation report noted that since taking power in 2012, Xi had launched a sweeping campaign against graft and disloyalty, taking down corrupt officials as well as political rivals at an unprecedented speed and scale as he consolidated control over the party and the military.
The expanded detention regime, named “liuzhi,” or “retention in custody,” comes with facilities with padded surfaces and round-the-clock guards in every cell, where detainees can be held under harrowing conditions for up to six months without ever seeing a lawyer or family members, said the edition.cnn.com report.
The report called it an extension of a system long used by the party to exert control and instil fear among its members.
A National Supervisory Commission (NSC) was founded in 2018 as part of the constitutional revision that cleared the way for Xi to rule for life. It consolidated the government’s anti-graft forces and merged them with the party’s disciplinary arm, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). The two agencies work hand in glove and share the same offices, same personnel and even the same website – an arrangement that expands the remit of the party’s internal graft watchdog to the entire public sector.
A criminal defence lawyer, requesting anonymity due to fears of retribution from the government, has said many of their clients had detailed abuse, threats and forced confessions while in liuzhi custody.
“Most of them would succumb to the pressure and agony. Those who resisted until the end were a tiny minority,” the lawyer said.
The report cited state media as saying the expanded jurisdiction fills longstanding loopholes in the party’s anti-corruption fight and enables graft busters to go after everyday abuse of power endemic in the country’s behemoth public sector, from bribes and kickbacks in hospitals to misappropriation of school funds.
However, critics say it is another example of the party’s ever-tightening grip over the state and all aspects of society under Xi, China’s most powerful and authoritarian leader in decades, it added.
The spate of construction of liuzhi centres appears to be largely driven by a surge in demand for detention cells due to the NSC’s new broad remit, as well as efforts to make liuzhi facilities more standardized and regulated than the hotels and villas often used for a controversial practice – now disbanded – known as “shuanggui,” or “double designation”, before the NSC was established and which targeted party officials, the report said.
Authorities are seen to have laid down standard construction rules for liuzhi centres – including a national plan for building these facilities between 2023 and 2027 – which is a financial burden especially for poor local administrations.
For example, the report noted that Dingxi, one of the poorest cities in the northwestern province of Gansu, had said its 305-million-yuan ($42 million) detention centre would be built following requirements specified by the CCDI and NSC to achieve the “standardized, law-based, and professional operations” of the liuzhi facility.
This massive complex, featuring 542 rooms, will include 32 detention cells, accommodation for investigators and guards to live on site, as well as other facilities to meet their daily needs, according to a 2024 budget document of the city’s anti-graft agency, the report said.
Despite a national supervision law, introduced in 2018 to regulate the NSC, legal experts have said the legislation only wraps a thin veil of legality around a detention regime that operates outside the judicial system, lacks external oversight and remains inherently prone to abuse.
“In the past, it was extra-legal. Now, some critics call it ‘legally illegal,’” a Chinese legal scholar who has studied the NSC has said, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing fears of government retribution.
And China’s opaque court system, which answers to the Communist Party, already boasts a conviction rate above 99%, the report noted.
Abuses of the system appear to be common. In September, Zhou Tianyong, a top economist and former professor at the elite Central Party School, where the Communist Party trains its senior officials, warned that local authorities had been using corruption probes to extort money from private entrepreneurs to fill their strained coffers, the report said.
It said that in recent years, allegations of abuse and forced confessions had emerged in multiple liuzhi cases publicized online. For example, Chen Jianjun, an architect-turned-local official, has claimed that he was deceived and forced into making false confessions of bribe-taking while detained under liuzhi in 2022 in the northwestern city of Xianyang.
Given the extreme conditions under which liuzhi detainees are held, “where both the body and the mind are pushed to their limits,” it becomes increasingly difficult to tell whether the detainee is giving an “honest confession” based on facts or opting for “full cooperation” by compromising the truth under unbearable pressure, the report cited Dacheng, a Beijing-based law firm, as saying said in an article on its social media account.
Structural reforms to address systemic corruption have yet to be implemented– or even fully ideated– leaving the root causes of graft largely unaddressed. While the crackdown has removed numerous officials, its long-term effectiveness remains uncertain, noted the firstpost.com report.