Qincheng Prison
Qincheng Prison
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Qincheng Prison

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Qincheng Prison

The Ministry of Public Security Qincheng Prison (Chinese: 公安部秦城监狱) 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.

Political prisoners have been incarcerated in Qincheng,[self-published source] 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.[citation needed] 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 (Chinese: 秦城农场; pinyin: Qínchéng Nóngchǎng) is located, which is part of the prison.

The prison was originally built to house Kuomintang (Nationalist) 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 (simplified Chinese: 冯基平; traditional Chinese: 馮基平; pinyin: Féng Jīpíng) 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.

The prison is built in accordance with the 1954 Reform Through Labor Regulations,[citation needed] 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.

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