When I first blogged about black jails back in 07 they seemed to be ad hoc affairs: disused motels up side streets where interceptor teams from various provinces detained petitioners come to the capital to seek redress for local abuses. Now they seem to have expanded into large formal processing systems for inconvenient persons:
Wu and other petitioners described the center as a collection of rooms and buildings, furnished only with plastic waiting-room seats, capable of holding several thousand people, although they said it normally holds a few hundred. Petitioners, who are divided up according to their province of origin, are fed a meal comprising two steamed buns, an egg, and a helping of pickled vegetables.
They are then fed out from there to holding centres maintained by different provinces before being sent back to where they came from. Anyway, the story here concerns a rumour that the central government had ordered the release of 70,000 black jail prisoners. This turned out not to be the case, though a few hundred were let go.
On the face of it this rumour isn't credible: it's hard for the government to simply dissolve a set of institutions that it chooses not to know about in the first place. But the fact that it took hold does seem to indicate that Xi Jinping's early promises to curb official abuses of power are being believed, and believed by people with very good reason to be cynical about the system as a whole.
We do seem to be moving towards a fairly intense rectification campaign targeted at corrupt cadres, more on which tomorrow, perhaps. I'll just note for know that the crackdown seems to be at its most forward in Chongqing, where it's post Bo Xilai open season, and in Guangdong, the lair of reputed reformer Wang Yang.
What do you make of the figure of 70k? That's a...big secret jail.
Posted by: Alex | December 05, 2012 at 10:15 PM
I assumed it was the figure for Beijing as a whole, and indicated a general commitment to end the system. I wonder if the whole thing's not inflected by the whole jubilee mindset, ie it's an indicator of a basic and persistent psychological acceptance of authoritarian rule, conditioned by a belief in the mercy of an incoming monarch.
Posted by: jamie | December 05, 2012 at 10:37 PM
I would be fascinated to know how successful this system is. If you try to get to Beijing and file your petition, what is the chance of your being scooped up and black-jailed? 10%? 50%? 90%?
Posted by: ajay | December 06, 2012 at 09:34 AM
It tends to be linked to whatever stage you're at in the petitioning cycle:
http://chinesepolitics.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/as-is-often-said-all-roads-to-hell.html
I suspect right now we'ere at as stage where an immediate crackdown around the Big 18 has just ended.
Also, these days petitioners can be prevented from getting to Beijing more easily: their personal details are logged when they make a complaint and shared with transport authorities/comopanies which insist on a real name system for buying tickets. So complainants names get flagged when they try and they're refused service.
Posted by: jamie | December 06, 2012 at 11:18 AM
Interesting - thanks. (Honestly. Petitioning the emperor for justice in this day and age. You have a space programme, ffs.)
Posted by: ajay | December 06, 2012 at 11:32 AM
Ajay - if you read the Gagarin biog, _Starman_ you will discover that petitioning the powerful for redress is entirely consistent with having a space programme. Yuri spent lots of time in the 60s dealing with his mail.
Posted by: Chris Williams | December 06, 2012 at 11:54 AM
So you're free to lodge a complaint, but there's no way to get action on it except by travelling to Beijing, and there's no way to get to Beijing except by using transport agencies which blacklist everyone who lodges a complaint.
That's some catch...
Posted by: Phil | December 07, 2012 at 10:21 AM
But people keep doing it, and IIRC a lot of them are frequent-flyers. There's obviously some sort of balance to strike between repression on one hand, and getting valid information on the other (as well as projecting the impression of justice).
Posted by: Alex | December 07, 2012 at 10:37 AM
70,000! That's less than 30,000 off the UK prison population. Jesus.
What's this about Guangdong? I've seen news about Chongqing, Sichuan and Shandong, but not Guangdong. Does this mean Wang is less likely to be a front runner to come into the Standing Committee in five years' time, or is it just a holding purge?
Posted by: Malcs | December 07, 2012 at 02:41 PM
There are five mid level cadres under CDIC investigation for ties to organised crime, which appear in turn to be related to attempts by WY and the Provincial government to privatise public service and policing functions.
This started independently of the current flood of mistress-related allegations - currently coming in at around one a day, B&T roundup soon - but if the whole thing gets packaged into a wholesale rectification campaign then he could be in trouble especially if it's formally linked to his policies.
XJP's in Guangdong right now, btw, doing a mini-'southern tour'
Posted by: jamie | December 07, 2012 at 03:18 PM