Institution File
National Supervision Custody System
Manages liuzhi, protective custody, ordered availability, and duty-crime investigations.
Contents
Liuzhi replaced the shuanggui system
The 2018 supervision reform merged the former state administrative-supervision organs with the CCP disciplinary-inspection system and created the National Supervision Commission and its local counterparts. The Supervision Law places public employees who exercise public power within supervisory jurisdiction and authorizes investigations of duty violations and duty crimes. Liuzhi is its most severe investigative measure. A supervision organ can hold a subject at a designated site, restrict outside contact, and later decide whether suspected criminal material will be transferred to procurators. The 2024 amendment further adjusted procedural rules. [9]
The system is presented as a legalization of anti-corruption work, but its structure first serves party organizational control. Discipline commissions and supervision commissions operate with shared offices, personnel, leads, and political objectives. A subject does not face a judicial inquiry independent of the party's anti-corruption arm. They face a system that carries party discipline, administrative punishment, and criminal allegations in one continuous process. Liuzhi begins before prosecution and trial, when the subject cannot challenge the case in an open court.
How liuzhi takes liberty
The Supervision Law requires stated conditions and approval for liuzhi. It is generally used for serious suspected duty violations or crimes when a subject may flee, harm themselves, collude, falsify evidence, or transfer assets. The law also sets rules on duration, notice, food, rest, and medical care. Yet the first decision to impose, extend, and manage liuzhi remains inside the investigative system. A family notice does not give a family complete information about location, questioning, health, or the allegation. [9]
The public has limited access to information about liuzhi sites, guards, and interview records. A subject can lose work, communications, and social contact in the early stage while party and personnel systems adjust their position and treatment. For civil servants, state-enterprise managers, and staff at public schools and hospitals, the investigation immediately transforms work and family life. The decision to investigate itself has punitive effects long before criminal liability is tested.
The handoff among discipline, police, procurators, and courts
There is a relay chain between supervisory enforcement and criminal justice. A supervision organ can begin through complaints, inspection findings, audits, personnel work, or other leads. During liuzhi it collects documents, electronic data, and statements. If it identifies a suspected duty crime, it transfers the case to the procuratorate, which decides on arrest and prosecution; the court then hears the case. These stages have formally different legal roles. In practice they cannot easily be separated because the core evidence, narrative, and pressure on the person often formed during liuzhi.
Procurators and courts should examine evidence legality, but both operate within a party-led political-legal system. Lawyer participation and outside scrutiny during liuzhi are far weaker than an ordinary criminal process should require, and families cannot promptly verify conditions. The high-pressure channel built in the name of anti-corruption therefore gains a decisive advantage before judicial review becomes public.
Selective power within anti-corruption
Corruption is real, and officials who abuse power or steal public resources should be held accountable. The problem is that the same party organization controls the opening of investigations, information disclosure, and political explanation. Without independent media, prosecutors, and courts, the public cannot judge why an investigation began against a particular official, department, or faction at a particular time, or ask with equal force about those who were not investigated. Anti-corruption can therefore pursue genuine corruption while also reorganizing loyalty, intimidating the bureaucracy, and consolidating top-level power.
The warning extends beyond the person under investigation. Officials know that the organization can sever liberty, career resources, and outside contact without a public hearing. Political obedience becomes a condition of professional safety. The system turns anti-corruption from a tool of public accountability into an instrument of party discipline and social control.
Power logic: the party investigates before the courts take over
The central function of national-supervision custody is not simply faster case handling. It gives party disciplinary power the force of the state. It connects organizational investigation, administrative punishment, and criminal prosecution, enabling one political center to decide who is first isolated, what narrative enters the dossier, and when a case reaches the judiciary.
Real restraint requires prompt access for independent lawyers, verifiable records of custody sites and questioning, independent review, and public accountability. Without those checks, liuzhi gives the CCP a closed space that can punish corruption and also punish political disobedience.
Sources
NPC Standing Committee Decision Amending the Criminal Procedure Lawprimary-recordLive
SPP Rules on Oversight of Residential Surveillance at a Designated Locationprimary-recordLive
Five-Agency Rules on Strict Exclusion of Illegally Obtained Evidenceprimary-recordLive
Implementation Measures for the Detention Center Regulationsprimary-recordLive
MPS and Ministry of Justice Notice on Lawyer Meetings in Detention Centersprimary-recordLive
Mental Health Law of the PRCprimary-recordUnavailable
Exit and Entry Administration Law of the PRCprimary-recordLive
Prison Law of the PRCprimary-recordUnchecked
NPC Standing Committee Decision Amending the Supervision Lawprimary-recordLive
UN Mandates Communication on RSDLgovernment-reportLive
UN Expert Statement on Chang Weiping and the Crackdown on Lawyersgovernment-reportLive
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Findings after China Visitgovernment-reportLive
CECC Report on China's Criminal Justice Systemgovernment-reportLive
UN Experts Renew Call for Accountability for Cao Shunli's Deathgovernment-reportLive
2024 U.S. State Department Human Rights Report on Chinagovernment-reportLive
CECC 2025 Annual Reportgovernment-reportLive
Reporting on the 709 Crackdown on Human Rights Lawyersinvestigative-reportingLive
Human Rights Watch Investigation of China's Black Jailsinvestigative-reportingLive