Ancient China employed various methods of punishment, including corporal penalties, exile, forced labor, and imprisonment. For a treatment of Japan that examines a similar time frame, see Botsman 2005 on Tokugawa period punishment and its influence on nation formation in Japan. However, it wasn't until the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) that organized prison systems resembling modern penitentiaries began to take shape. The Qing Dynasty saw high levels of overcrowding, often leading to death and disease. Banishment, considered 'more humane' a punishment than the death penalty, grew in use as as Qing Dynasty rulers were unable to deal with a rapidly growing population (Dikotter 2007, see also Waley-Cohen 1991), very similar to the European transport of convicts to the colonies of Australia and in the Americas. During this period, the Qing government established "yamen" or administrative offices that also served as detention centers for accused individuals awaiting trial or punishment.
The first significant influence of European standards on China's penitentiary system came during the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republican era. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as China grappled with internal reforms and interactions with Western powers, ideas about modernizing legal and penal institutions gained traction. In the late 1800s, the Qing sent envoys to U.S. and European prisons to observe and bring back prison technologies, both in the form of prison design and in prison order. In a series of deals with foreign powers (namely Great Britain) to 'modernize' their legal code and systems of punishment, in 1905 the Qing began to implement these changes: they abolished bodily dismemberment and beheadings immediately, and began to phase out corporal punishment. "This profound transformation of the regime of punishment entailed an overhaul of the existing detention system: not only should old gaols be reformed in line with modern penal principles current in Europe, but their number had to be drastically increased in order to accommodate a rising tide of inmates, as the custodial sentence became the most common form of punishment next to fines." (Dikotter 2007). As elsewhere, what were intended as reforms for the better treatment of prisoners inadvertently created a huge network of spaces of detention, as well as an ideology that saw custody/imprisonment as the solution to social ills.
One of the pivotal moments of this transition was the establishment of the Beiping Prison (later renamed the First Prison of Beijing) in 1912 under the influence of European models, specifically the U.K.'s Pentonville Prison. Beiping Prison in Beijing was designed based on Western penitentiary principles combined with Chinese architectural design, with separate cells, classification of prisoners based on offenses, and structured routines aimed at rehabilitation rather than mere punishment. This institution marked a departure from traditional Chinese methods of incarceration and set the stage for further changes. As elsewhere, the prison was a “prestige institution” that its supporters hoped demonstrated the country’s modernity, progress, and forward thinking. It is still functioning today, now known as Capital Model Prison.
The early 20th century also saw efforts to codify Chinese criminal law and establish standardized procedures for sentencing and imprisonment. The Penal Code of 1907, influenced by both Chinese legal traditions and Western legal concepts from Germany, France, and Japan, provided a framework for the administration of justice and the management of prisons. China also began collecting criminological data, a practice that allowed them better analysis of crimes committed and from where the accused came from. This was a criminological enterprise with counterparts in the positivist criminology of Italy which would have a great influence on Latin American and European punitive systems and that manifests there and in the United States in eugenics programs which sought to reduce what it saw as "criminal" populations, often through the prisms of race, class, and gender. The Penal Code of 1907 was not adopted formally until 1912, due to the downfall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, after the Xinhai Revolution.
China's 20th-century history, marked by revolutions, wars, and political upheavals, significantly impacted its penitentiary systems. The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 under the Communist Party leadership led to major reforms in the legal and penal spheres. The system expanded with the establishment of labor camps and reform-through-labor institutions, such as the notorious Laogai camps (reform through labor) and Laojiao facilities (reeducation through labor), which became prominent features of China's penal system during the Maoist era. During this time, incarcerated populations exploded; According to Domenach's 1992 study (which, it should be noted, as has been contested), during the early years of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party 4 to 6 million Chinese were held in labor camps, as well as potentially up to 2 million executed for crimes against the party. For more on the prominence of prison camps in China, see Williams 2004.
In the post-Mao era, particularly after the economic reforms of the late 20th century, China witnessed further changes in its penitentiary systems. Efforts were made to improve prison conditions, enhance legal protections for prisoners, and align with international standards of human rights and imprisonment. Despite these changes, concerns persist regarding issues such as overcrowding, judicial transparency, and treatment of prisoners, prompting ongoing discussions and reforms within China's criminal justice and corrections systems. The ongoing detention of Uyghur and other Turkic muslim minorities in Xinjiang Province, a prison population whose numbers the Chinese government so far has not disclosed, is notable in its parallels to racial segregation through the prison system elsewhere, and at the same time for being very much particular to China and to the 20th century. The Chinese government's reticence about releasing prison population numbers, combined with the persistence of Cold War era influence on Western scholarship about the region, makes the study of prisons in China a particularly thorny one, and one that deserves greater examination in the future.