Free China Movement (FCM) supports criminal-procedure reforms that strengthen counsel, evidence standards, exclusion of coerced confessions and fair trial. It opposes detention structures that create disappearance, torture or coercion risks by removing people from normal custody and meaningful outside contact.
Current law and reform
China’s 2012 Criminal Procedure Law authorized residential surveillance at a designated location (RSDL) for specified categories including national-security, terrorism and especially serious bribery cases. The 2018 law removed the especially-serious-bribery category while retaining RSDL for national-security and terrorism cases. Procuratorate and public-security rules specify location restrictions, family-notification requirements and supervision mechanisms.
Domestic criminal-defense lawyers and legal scholars have argued that RSDL can function as de facto detention and can undermine lawyer access and protections against coercion. A 2025 SPP/MPS reform response tightened approval, site, recording, lawyer-access and oversight rules. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate later reported 344 correction opinions specifically concerning RSDL execution supervision in January–November 2025. That is evidence of supervision and detected problems, but it does not reveal the total number of RSDL uses or a national violation rate.
FCM assessment
National-security investigations may require temporary secrecy about evidence, but secrecy about a person’s detention status, location, access to counsel or medical care must be subject to strict independent control. Formal safeguards should be judged by actual access, notification, recording, inspection and remedy outcomes.
Third Republic governing alternative
- Abolish incommunicado designated-location detention.
- Require prompt appearance before an independent judge.
- Guarantee counsel and independent medical access.
- Require immediate family notice except for narrowly tailored, court-approved delay.
- Maintain a national detention registry accessible to courts and authorized family/counsel channels.
- Audiovisually record interrogations and exclude coerced evidence.
- Create independent inspection and habeas-type review of detention legality.
Evidence limits
No contemporaneous institutional FCM policy statement specifically on RSDL or the 2012 Criminal Procedure Law has yet been verified. This is a present FCM governance assessment and is not backdated. The 344 RSDL-specific correction opinions must also not be conflated with broader correction statistics covering multiple coercive measures.
Free China 