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Phoebe Zhang

China has been quietly restricting the widespread abuse of a form of detention legal critics believe is a key source of illegal interrogation that has led to multiple deaths and blocked suspects’ access to lawyers.
There has been no official announcement of the changes. But last month, a leaked file of new guidelines circulated online, adding supervision and restricting the way the measure, known as residential surveillance at a designated location (RSDL), is approved and executed.
RSDL was originally included in China’s Criminal Procedure Law in 1979 as a form of mild restriction of personal freedom, similar to house arrest.
But in a key amendment in 2012, the law stipulated that it could apply to those suspected of serious crimes such as terrorism and state security breaches, which pundits argued marked a turning point in how RSDL was applied.
Over the years, it has been frequently used by police in organised crime and state security cases, and later expanded to less serious crimes, with suspects often locked up in special facilities and tortured.
China’s legal community has tried repeatedly to address the issue. As early as 2015, Sun Qian, then deputy prosecutor general of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, said in an article that some local governments regarded RSDL as a convenient tool for solving cases, favouring its use because it isolated the suspects, prevented them from receiving outside information and occupied all of their time.
In July last year, Huang Yong, an official with the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, wrote in the Journal of Law Application that there had been many suggestions to revise the criminal law system and procedures, including RSDL.


There has been a string of high-profile deaths related to the measure in recent years, with some resulting in lawsuits. In 2022, 34-year-old Bao Qinrui died on the 13th day of RSDL. Media reported that he had suffered electric shocks and repeated physical injuries and was forced into restrictive stress positions for long periods.
In September, 11 police officers involved in the case were convicted of intentional injury and the crime of extorting confessions by torture, with the heaviest punishment being 16 years in prison.
In another case, Yuan Shihong, a suspect in a series of thefts in Hubei province, died in 2023.
In April last year, Xing Yanjun, a gaming company manager accused of creating an illegal online casino, also died during RSDL.
The news of the revision surfaced quietly only this year. Police and prosecutors across China have held meetings to study the document in recent months, according to various government websites.
For example, in July, the prosecutor’s office and police bureau of Wuqiang county, Hebei province, agreed to set up a united supervision mechanism. They agreed to check RSDL cases regularly, correct mistakes in a timely manner and share information with each other in real time, according to a news release issued at the time.
According to Caixin magazine, people close to the matter confirmed that new guidelines were issued by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security on June 30. The report also confirmed the validity of the details of the changes leaked online.
The new regulations try to plug loopholes that allowed police to torture suspects in the past.
Criminal lawyer Si Weijiang wrote on social media on Wednesday that in one big change, police must now grant lawyers’ requests to meet their clients within 48 hours, and the meeting must be conducted in the absence of police.
“It fixed the fact that many police bureaus don’t let suspects meet lawyers during RSDL, because once they meet, their torturing would be exposed,” he wrote.
Another restriction gives conditions under which RSDL should not be approved. This includes cases in which a suspect’s home is in the same district as the site of the alleged crime, according to Si. The new rule prevents the police from assigning the case to a different district to put the suspect in RSDL.
Other details address the approval and execution of RSDL. Guo Rui, a Beijing-based criminal lawyer, said the approval now had to go through the legal department in the police bureau.
Additionally, those in charge of designating the location should not be the ones working on the case or providing supervision, according to the leaked file. There should be no interrogations at the designated location; instead, when the police decide to interrogate the suspect, they should do so in a law enforcement room after showing a summons notice. This must be recorded on video, and the interrogation should be conducted no more than eight hours at a time.
The suspect’s other needs – including medical visits, food and eight hours of rest – should be ensured, the file said.
Guo said the changes addressed some concerns lawyers had and seemed to be an improvement, but more observation was needed to see whether law enforcement would uphold the changes.


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New guidelines on supervision, approval and execution of ‘residential surveillance at a designated location’ leaked online


New guidelines on supervision, approval and execution of ‘residential surveillance at a designated location’ leaked online.


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Human rights in China

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China quietly curbs abuse of detention procedure linked to suspect deaths

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}New guidelines on supervision, approval and execution of ‘residential surveillance at a designated location’ leaked online

New guidelines on supervision, approval and execution of ‘residential surveillance at a designated location’ leaked online