Qincheng Prison
The Ministry of Public Security Qincheng Prison is a maximum-security prison located in Qincheng Village, Xingshou, Changping District, Beijing in the People's Republic of China. The prison was built in 1958 with aid from the Soviet Union and is the only prison belonging to China's Ministry of Public Security. The Ministry of Justice operates other non-military prisons.
File:Chinese ex-official Bao Tong at home.jpg|thumb|Bao Tong was the highest government official to be imprisoned after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He spent 7 years in Qincheng Prison, and lived under tight surveillance for the rest of his life while continuing to be an outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party.|270px
Political prisoners have been incarcerated in Qincheng, among them participants in the Chinese democracy movement and Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Famous former inmates include Li Rui, Jiang Qing, Yuan Geng, Bao Tong, Dai Qing, as well as Tibetan figures such as the 10th Panchen Lama Choekyi Gyaltsen and Phuntsok Wangyal. Other inmates included many communist cadres who struggled during the Cultural Revolution, such as Bo Yibo, Peng Zhen, Liu Xiaobo, Israel Epstein, Sidney Rittenberg, Michael Shapiro, and David Crook. More recently, high-ranking officials accused of corruption such as Chen Xitong, Chen Liangyu, Bo Xilai, and Zhou Yongkang were also imprisoned here.
The prison is located at the eastern foothill of Yanshan, facing the North China Plain in the east, north and south. The plain is where Qincheng Farm is located, which is part of the prison.
Origin
The prison was originally built to house Kuomintang political prisoners, but due to secrecy, the name was not publicized. Instead, it was simply referred as project #156, since it was number 156 out of 157 projects that China established with Soviet assistance. The head of Beijing Bureau of Public Security, Feng Jiping was in charge of construction of the prison. Ironically, during the Cultural Revolution he was among the first to be jailed there. He was also one of the last to get out among those who were sent to the prison with him.In 1958, high-ranking former Nationalists were sent to Qincheng Farm as forced labor.
Structure
The prison is built in accordance with the 1954 Reform Through Labor Regulations, so it is divided into three sections. The first section is for jail houses, and it includes both the jail houses for low-ranking prisoners and that of high-ranking prisoners, with the ranking often decided by the prisoner's social status, job position, and level of crime before entering the prisons. The second is called the Management and Work Section, the largest one among all three, with Qincheng Farm for field labors. The last section is the residential section for employees such as wardens and their relatives.The prison is sandwiched between orchards, with farm land and fish pond in front, an exact reflection of Mao Zedong's claim in October, 1960: "our prisons are different than prisons in the past - each prison is actually a school, but also a factory or a farm." Mao had further enhanced this on April 24, 1964, in his reaction to a case by claiming that "People can be reformed, if the correct policy and methods are adopted." This characteristic also applies to most Chinese prisons, and Chinese have called this prison system as: "Special militarized organization, special enterprise, and special school."
The jailhouse part has four buildings built upon the prison's establishment, with each having three stories. In 1967 an additional six buildings opened, with each not as large as each original building.
Cells
The original prison include four three-story brick buildings with sloped roof, each is named after celestial stems instead of numbers or alphabets: Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding. The area in front of each building is fenced with brick wall for prisoners to exercise, forming its own independent yard. Each exercise yard is divided into two sections evenly by a wall in the middle, on top of which guard patrolled, and would watch both sections. Each floor of the building is divided into many halls, on one side of the hall, there is a wall, opposite to the wall is where the cells are located, each individually locked with a padlock. There are at least 10 cells in each hall.The area of each cell is around. The wooden door of each cell is sandwiched between two iron plates, and there are two peepholes: one at the level of the toilet, while the other is above it. Around a foot from the ground, there is a rectangular window for delivering meals. The only furniture inside each cell is a bed that was around a foot from the ground and when a prisoner needs to write a confession or other materials, a desk similar to those in elementary schools would be provided. However, there would never be any chairs and prisoners must sit on the bed to write. For safety and security reasons, every sharp edge inside the cell has been changed to smooth/round shape. There are also special suicide watch cells with walls made of rubber so prisoners could not commit suicide by running into the walls.
There is a window for each cell designed for lower-ranking prisoners. The area of the window is around one square meter, located more than two meters above the ground. The windowsill is sloped upward with window opens upward toward outside, but of course, prisoners are unable to open the window themselves. There are three layers for every window: screen, iron fence, and glass painted white. In the cells for high-ranking prisoners, there are two windows but the outermost layer is sanded glass instead of glass painted white. Prisoners could neither see the courtyard nor any other buildings, but some could see the mountain and sun from their cells. A 15-watt light bulb with sanded glass is on the ceiling, and it is covered by iron mesh, and the dim light is controlled by guards via a switch outside. By the 2010s prison cells had at least one window, with two windows for VIP prisoners, and the cells had washing machines, desks, and in-suite bathrooms. The Straits Times stated that after a mid-1990s remodeling the cells became more luxurious.
In 1967, six more buildings were added, also named after celestial stem, continuing as Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui. The new jail houses are concrete and contain many more cells because the new cells are much smaller in comparison to those in the blocks built in 1958: the area of each cell is only. The toilet in these new cells require that the prisoners must squat to use the toilet and that they carry water from the sink to flush the toilet. There are two doors for each cells built in 1967: the outer one is an iron door and the inside one is a wooden door. Other features of the blocks built in 1967 are similar to those built in 1958.
Entrance
There are three gates at Qincheng Prison, the first gate has the heaviest guards presence. With the exception of prison staff and their relatives, all other people who are not prisoners entering the compound must have the permission slip from the 13th Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China.For prisoners, they would be first led to a small one-story building, where they would leave behind most of their belongings deemed to be unsuitable to be carried into cells, including shoelaces. The prisoners would then be given black prison uniforms and issued utensils, and personal hygiene materials. With the exception of a large enamel mug for water, everything else is plastic.
Administration
Qincheng Prison has been under the administration of the 13th Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security most of the time since its establishment. Beginning in late October 1967, it came under the control of the People's Liberation Army which at this point had been put in charge of the 13th Bureau by the Central Cultural Revolution Group and Zhou Enlai. The "Military Control Commission of the 13th Bureau" administered the prison until April–June 1969 when the Bureau itself was abolished. The administration of Qincheng Prison now became the responsibility of a "Military Control Commission of Qincheng Prison" which reported to the Beijing municipal Bureau of Public Security Military Control Commission and not to the Ministry of Public Security. Thus formally "downgraded" in administrative terms, Qincheng was until the end of 1972 referred to in public documents as the Seventh Brigade of the Military Commission of the Beijing Bureau of Public Security. The Ministry of Public Security reasserted control over the prison in early 1973, after a decision to this effect had been taken by Premier Zhou Enlai on 8 January of that year.During the reform in the 1980s, the combined judicial and executive roles of the Ministry of Public Security is separated and the Ministry of Public Security only retained its executive role. In June, 1983, the administration of prisons was transferred to the Ministry of Justice, but due to the special need, the Ministry of Public Security still retained several prisons under its administration and Qincheng Prison was one of them, still under the administration of the 13th Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security.
Originally designed to house Nationalist political prisoners classified by the Communists, this category of prisoners no longer existed when the last batch were released in 1975. The largest category of prisoners is in fact, coming from within Communist ranks, like former cadres. The largest increase of prisoners occurred during Cultural Revolution, with extra buildings had to be built.
Management
The prison employees are divided into two groups and are strictly separated. The first group is the interrogation / investigation team, which is only responsible for investigate the prisoners' cases, and they are strictly forbidden to venture into prisoners' cells or any other premises other than the interrogation room. The other group is responsible for guarding the prisoners and overseeing their daily activities. Unlike those from the first group, those in the second group are not even allowed to know the names of prisoners and call prisoners by their prisoner numbers.Prison employees of both groups are strictly forbidden to make any personal connections to the prisoners and are not even allowed to reveal their names to the prisoners, ask prisoners questions without authorization, or answer prisoners' questions without authorization.
Didi Tang of the Associated Press wrote that "nothing says "politically connected" like Qincheng" and that "The better conditions in Qincheng underscore how the Chinese elite take care of their own, even in disgrace." Didi Tang stated that the conditions are not as luxurious as U.S. Club Fed facilities.