China Proposes Narrowing Police Power to Hold Suspects at Designated Locations

A proposed limit on a disputed police power

China has proposed removing the power of police to place criminal suspects and defendants under residential surveillance at a designated location simply because they have no fixed residence. The change is part of a draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law containing 55 articles across seven main areas, including detention, access to lawyers, evidence and protection for victims.

The draft was submitted on November 2 for a first reading at the 25th session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress. It would narrow one route into a system known as RSDL, which allows confinement for up to six months at a location selected by authorities before formal arrest.

The proposal comes after years of complaints about isolation, coerced confessions and deaths during RSDL. Liu Renwen, a researcher at the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said abuses of designated residential surveillance had undermined judicial fairness and that the revision sought to reduce its use.

The practical question is what happens to people who would otherwise enter RSDL. Beijing criminal defense lawyer Jin Hongwei welcomed the proposed restriction but warned that it could lead to more arrests rather than less detention. The draft calls for other lawful compulsory measures when a person has no fixed residence, making the choice of replacement central to its effect.

What would change, and what would remain?

Current law permits police to designate a surveillance location when a suspect or defendant has no fixed residence. It also permits designated surveillance in cases involving crimes endangering state security or terrorism when surveillance at home could hinder an investigation.

The proposed amendment removes the first of those grounds. The change described in the draft leaves the separate state security and terrorism grounds in place. No adoption date or commencement date was given.

Residential surveillance is meant to offer an alternative to detention while allowing an investigation or prosecution to continue. In ordinary language, the intended purpose is to restrict a person's movements without necessarily putting that person in a detention center.

Designated surveillance can operate very differently from staying at home. Former detainees describe confinement in hotels, police premises or dedicated facilities, with guards controlling daily activities and contact with the outside world. Lawyers and scholars seeking abolition argue that this arrangement can give investigators extensive control over both questioning and custody.

How the debate developed

China's Criminal Procedure Law was adopted in July 1979 and underwent broad revisions in 1996 and 2012, followed by amendments in 2018. Residential surveillance dates to the 1996 revision, while the 2012 changes expanded the use of designated locations in sensitive criminal investigations.

The current proposal follows public arguments over whether to restrict RSDL or abolish it. Lawyer Yan Xin of Beijing Laishuo Law Office and Han Xu, a professor at Sichuan University's law school, have called for abolition. Their position goes further than removing the lack of a fixed residence as a reason for imposing the measure.

• 1996: A revision to the Criminal Procedure Law introduced residential surveillance.
• 2012: Legislative changes expanded the use of designated residential surveillance, including in national security and terrorism investigations.
• 2018: Further amendments produced the version of the law examined in later research on RSDL.
• 2024: Public debate included deaths in custody and calls from lawyers and scholars to abolish the system.
• November 2: The latest draft amendment was submitted to the NPC Standing Committee for its first reading.

The debate has therefore moved from demands for reform to a specific legislative proposal. Its scope is narrower than the abolition sought by some lawyers, while its other provisions attempt to strengthen checks throughout a criminal case.

What research records about confinement

Human rights organization Safeguard Defenders describes the operation of RSDL in its Locked Up report. It examines Article 75 of the 2018 Criminal Procedure Law and says safeguards, including family notification and prosecutorial oversight, are routinely bypassed. The organization had documented 175 individual cases by June 2021.

Within those cases, Safeguard Defenders recorded lawyer access in one case, family contact in four and prosecutor visits in two. It documented six cases exceeding the legal maximum of six months, including one lasting almost four years. Those findings describe the organization's case collection rather than a national administrative count.

The report describes at least two guards watching a detainee, alongside cameras operating around the clock. Accounts include interrogations lasting hours, restricted food, delayed medical treatment and pressure involving relatives. It also describes restrictions after release, including limits on travel, contact with lawyers and disclosure of what happened.

Bao Longjun, a human rights lawyer and former detainee, described constant observation:

At night, two guards watched me, even when I went to the toilet or brushed my teeth.

Ding Jiaxi, another lawyer held under RSDL, described the conditions surrounding his sleep and movements:

The fluorescent light in the room was lit 24 hours.

Safeguard Defenders also records testimony from Niu Tengyu that he slept less than 30 hours between December 10, 2019, and January 20, 2020, and was beaten. Such accounts help explain why access to counsel, recordings of questioning and scrutiny of confessions feature prominently in the proposed changes.

Deaths added urgency to demands for reform

Bao Qinrui, 34, died on July 20, 2022, on his 13th day under RSDL on suspicion of picking quarrels and provoking trouble. His family saw an autopsy report from the Forensics Center of the Supreme People's Procuratorate on April 22, 2024.

The autopsy findings, as described publicly, attributed his death to acute respiratory and circulatory failure caused by a pulmonary embolism following prolonged restrictive stress positions, repeated physical injuries and electric shocks. A pulmonary embolism is a blockage in a blood vessel supplying the lungs.

Xing Yanjun, a technology company manager, died while under RSDL in Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia. His brother alleged that police tortured Xing and colleagues to obtain confessions about a gambling operation. The family disputed the police explanation that Xing had hanged himself and said they learned of his death four months afterward.

Other cases raised in the debate include the death of theft suspect Yuan Shihong in Hubei and a suspect in Taizhou, Jiangsu, who entered a vegetative state after developing Wernicke's encephalopathy associated with severe malnutrition and sleep deprivation. Chen Yongsheng, a Peking University law professor, said public reporting had exposed at least 10 relevant cases.

Lawyer Hao Chen has also alleged that clients faced prolonged unlawful confinement, coercive demands for payments and torture. He described a practice of moving suspects from liuzhi, custody used in supervision investigations, into nominal RSDL while questioning by supervisory authorities continued. His allegations point to concern about successive forms of confinement extending a person's isolation.

How many people have been affected?

Safeguard Defenders' figures vary substantially across publications and periods. Its 2021 report cited fewer than 500 people in RSDL in 2013 and more than 6,000 in 2019, an increase of more than twelve times using those thresholds. It estimated that 20 people entered RSDL each day in 2020.

Other findings attributed to the organization estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people annually. A 2022 publication was described as documenting 270,000 RSDL instances since 2013 and estimating a total between 560,000 and 860,000 over that period. The different measures, including documented cases, instances and estimated people, leave the national scale uncertain.

Foreign nationals have also experienced RSDL. Named cases include Australians Yang Hengjun and Cheng Lei, Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and American basketball player Jeff Harper. Harper's case concerned an allegation of causing a death through negligence, illustrating the use of designated surveillance beyond national security investigations.

Harper said he lost 18 kilograms during confinement in Shenzhen. Swedish activist Peter Dahlin, the founder of Safeguard Defenders, spent 23 days in custody in early 2016 before being expelled. His account forms part of the organization's research into conditions.

Checks on arrest and time in custody

The draft would require prosecutors reviewing requests to approve arrest to question the suspect and hear the defense lawyer's views. Prosecutors would also have to review regularly whether continued detention remains necessary.

Another provision would require release or a change in compulsory measures when time in custody is about to exceed the prison sentence the person is likely to receive. The purpose is concrete: someone awaiting a decision should not spend longer confined than the anticipated punishment.

The draft also proposes tightening the reasons for extending police detention while seeking approval for arrest and shortening those extensions. Police would be required to investigate promptly during detention. Restarting the calculation of the investigation custody period would require approval from prosecutors.

These provisions bear directly on Jin Hongwei's concern about more arrests. Removing one route into designated surveillance changes the legal options available to police. Regular reviews, lawyer participation and limits tied to the likely sentence would help determine how long someone remains confined under a replacement measure.

The draft would also explicitly prohibit presuming guilt. China has had a provision since 1996 stating that no person may be determined guilty without a lawful court judgment. The proposed addition would make the prohibition express and connect it with changes governing evidence, defense rights and restrictions on liberty.

Lawyers, witnesses and recorded confessions

Defense lawyers requesting a meeting would have to be allowed to see a person held in a detention center within 48 hours. Duty lawyers would receive clearer rights to learn about the case, meet the person and examine case files.

Courts using ordinary trial procedures could notify legal aid bodies to appoint defense counsel. Prosecutors could also seek an appointed lawyer for an unrepresented suspect facing a possible prison sentence of three years or more. This would extend access to legal help during the stage when prosecutors decide whether to bring a case to trial.

Mandatory audio and video recording of questioning would expand to cases carrying a possible sentence of at least three years. Recordings would have to be preserved and made accessible to courts and prosecutors. Signing a statement accepting guilt and punishment would also require simultaneous audio and video recording.

Courts would generally accept a prosecutor's proposed charge and sentence after finding that the admission was voluntary, the signed statement genuine and lawful, and the sentence appropriate. This places an express responsibility on the court to examine how an admission was obtained.

Witnesses whose testimony changes substantially or becomes inconsistent could be required to appear in court. If a witness refuses after being summoned and the truth of earlier testimony cannot be confirmed, that testimony could not support the verdict. Audiovisual material and electronic data collected contrary to legal procedure would also face exclusion in specified circumstances.

Victims, children and property receive attention

Victims, their legal representatives and close relatives would gain routes to apply for legal aid in specified circumstances. Lawyers acting for victims would have rights to inspect, take notes from and copy case files.

For cases that victims must initiate themselves, such as certain insult, defamation and abuse cases, courts could ask police to help when gathering evidence is genuinely difficult. This would address a practical obstacle for a person who can describe an injury but cannot obtain the records or other material needed to pursue it.

Children who are victims and lack a representative would receive an appointed legal aid lawyer after consent is obtained. Questioning of child victims and witnesses should protect privacy and reputation and, where possible, be completed in one session to reduce repeated distress.

The draft also addresses property seized or frozen during investigations. Police would have to send prosecutors decisions involving property of great value or measures having a major effect on the people concerned. Other provisions seek to reduce disruption to normal business and prevent seized assets from being used to fund investigating agencies.

Provisions involving foreign cases would permit evidence obtained through international law enforcement or judicial cooperation when it meets Chinese legal requirements. The draft also calls for fair treatment of foreign suspects and defendants and allows countermeasures against improper foreign criminal jurisdiction or discriminatory restrictions targeting Chinese citizens and organizations.

Key Points

• The draft would remove the lack of a fixed residence as a ground for police to impose designated residential surveillance.
• The separate grounds involving state security and terrorism would remain under the change described.
• The proposal contains 55 articles across seven main areas and was submitted for a first reading on November 2.
• Lawyers and former detainees have described isolation, torture and deaths during RSDL, fueling demands for abolition.
• Other changes would strengthen detention reviews, lawyer access, recording of questioning and scrutiny of evidence.
• The practical effect depends partly on which measures replace RSDL for people without a fixed residence.