World News

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/52120621

The [Chinese Communist] Party’s feared internal police organ, the CCDI (Central Commission for Discipline Inspection) made its annual work report public. Like its previous reports covering 2023 and 2024, it includes data on the acknowledged number of cases in which the Liuzhi system has been employed, showing a record‑breaking 47,000 cases in 2025.

The new work report shows a staggering 24% increase in 2025 from a year earlier in the number of people placed in Liuzhi , which is essentially a system of extra‑legal black jails used to detain Party members and state functionaries for up to six months, at secret locations and without any legal remedy. The system, like the CCDI itself, exists outside the State and is not a law‑enforcement body. As the tables below show, this year’s work report contains less detailed data compared with previous years, but it does indicate an increase in the number of investigations launched (up 15.4%) and punishments issued (up 10.6%).

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The number of investigations launched and punishments meted out now surpasses 5 million for the period 2018–2025, while the number of Liuzhi cases now far exceeds 200,000 (232,240). Each use of Liuzhi, as prior reporting from several groups[...] has shown, involves a high prevalence of torture inside the system. These detentions are, in effect, arrests and imprisonment at secret locations by an internal political Party organ, not a law‑enforcement entity. Every single use of Liuzhi constitutes arbitrary detention and, in most cases, enforced disappearance, with solitary confinement used as a tool to isolate the target.

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CCDI — The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) is tasked with ensuring compliance, political correctness, and loyalty among the Party’s 95 million members. Most of its work is carried out by Discipline Inspection Commissions (CDIs) at the provincial level and below.

Liuzhi — “Retention in custody” is part of an internal CCP system for detention and investigation and is not part of the State’s criminal justice system. While in Liuzhi, which is ordered solely by the CCDI without any external oversight or approval, the detainee must, by regulation, be held in solitary confinement, denied access to legal counsel (as this is not a legal process), and prevented from any form of communication. The target is, by design, held incommunicado. Locations vary—from custom‑built facilities to Party‑run hotels, guesthouses, and offices—and must not be disclosed, meaning the person is, by any definition, disappeared. Detention can last up to six months. There is no external appeal mechanism.

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