Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location

The history of Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location traces its heritage back to a related form of detention named "Residential Surveillance". In 1954, the Law on Detention and Arrest was enacted in China which included a clause that regulated Residential Surveillance. The law established Residential Surveillance as an alternative to arrest applied to those who met the requirements for arrest but could not be arrested because they were seriously ill, pregnant, or nursing a newborn. This form of detention was very rarely used by authorities; when used, the police often held people in specialized facilities as opposed to their own residences. The vague nature of residential surveillance, regarding who it targeted and how it was enforced, resulted in a series of abuses of the system during the 1980s and 1990s. These abuses were severe enough to warrant a ruling from the Supreme People's Court in 1984, that admonished the public security apparatus for improperly enforcing residential surveillance outside the domicile of the suspect. Yet lawmakers chose to keep residential surveillance due to its usefulness in "certain investigation" and utility in arrests. The revision to the law notably obliged the person under surveillance to remain in their home until given permission to leave and decreed that those without a "fixed domicile" could be confined to a "designated residence". One significant oversight of 1996 reform was the failure to define "fixed domicile". This term went undefined until 1998 when the Ministry of Public Security issued regulations that defined it as being a legal residence in the jurisdiction of the public security organ investigating the suspect. Another major addition in the Criminal Procedure Law of 2012 was the crediting of time that a suspect spent under residential surveillance for any future sentences. For every two days a suspect spent in residential surveillance, one day would be subtracted from a sentence of imprisonment or penal servitude. ==Prominent persons detained under RSDL==

Well known people detained under RSDL include artist Ai Weiwei, Nobel Peace Prize-winning poet Liu Xiaobo, Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai, and women's tennis star Peng Shuai. Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are both Canadian citizens who were detained in 2018 using RSDL. The detention of these two Canadians was allegedly in retaliation for the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou by Canadian authorities and her resulting extradition to the United States. In a press conference on 19 March 2021 Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian asserted that China's judicial organs handle cases independently in full accordance with China's own laws and the Vienna convention on Consular relations. He went on to further state that since the case involves state secrets it will not be heard in an open court, and Canadian diplomats will be unable to sit in on the trial. Cheng Lei, prominent Australian television anchor and journalist working in China was detained on 14 August 2020, and was being held under RSDL. In September 2020 it was revealed by Chinese officials that she was accused of supplying state secrets overseas, and thus endangering China's national security. American Kai Li accused of espionage also spent ten weeks under RSDL in 2016. ==See also==