Qincheng Prison

Qincheng Prison (Chinese: 秦城监狱) is a maximum-security prison in the Changping District northwest of Beijing in the People's Republic of China. The prison was built in 1958 with aid from the Soviet Union and it is the only prison belonging to the Ministry of Public Security.

The majority of people in prison here are political prisoners. Some of them were participants in the Chinese democracy movement and Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Famous inmates include Jiang Qing, Bao Tong, Dai Qing, as well as Tibetans such as Choekyi Gyaltsen, the 10th Panchen Lama, and Phuntsok Wangyal. Other inmates included many communist cadres who were criticized during the Cultural Revolution, such as Bo Yibo, Peng Zhen, Israel Epstein, Sidney Rittenberg and David Crook. 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo was also imprisoned here.

The prison is at the eastern foothill of Yanshan, facing the North China Plain in the east, north and south. The plain is where Qincheng Farm (秦城农场) is, which is part of the prison.

Bibliography

• MacFarquhar, Roderick, and Michael Schoenhals, Mao's Last Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006, pp. 342–345, 416, 435, 442.
• Yao Lun, "Qincheng jianyu de laiyou" (Origins of Qincheng Prison), in Sun Mingshan, ed., Lishi shunjian (Moments in History), vol. 2, Beijing: Qunzhong chubanshe, 2001, pp. 51–58.