“It’s like a five-star hotel,” said Bao Tong, a former secretary to the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee who spent seven years in the prison for opposing the 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Inmates at the facility -- which has housed almost all the high-ranking politicians jailed in China since the 1960s -- are given large private cells equipped with soft beds, sofas, desks and an en-suite bathroom, former residents said.

“I was pleasantly surprised the first time I saw my room,” Dai Qing, the adopted daughter of a Chinese commander, wrote in a description to AFP.

Dai, who spent 10 months in the prison for supporting the Tiananmen demonstrators, described her cell as about 20 square metres large (215 square feet) and coming “with high ceilings... and even a bathroom”, while prison guards treated her with “warmth and care”.

“The head of the prison let me put on better clothes before I left,” she recalled of one occasion when she was let out to visit a sick relative. “He reminded me of my old school headmaster.”

Prisoners can choose their clothes, drink milk for breakfast and eat selections of soups and meat dishes for lunch and dinner, they said.

Some of the jail chefs used to work in one of Beijing’s top hotels and prepare food to “ministry chief level”, according to a recent report by the Beijing Times.

Information about the prison -- which does not appear on any Chinese maps -- is tightly controlled in China, but a trickle of reports have emerged.

The former Communist Party boss in Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, jailed for graft in 2008, wore a western-style suit and practiced tai chi while incarcerated, Hong Kong media said.

Qincheng was expanded in the last year, with an old wall removed to make room for “pavilions, trees and grass reminiscent of a Chinese garden”, the respected financial magazine Caijing reported last month.

The descriptions present a stark contrast with ordinary Chinese jails, where inmates generally share cramped cells, eat basic food and are encouraged to work, sometimes manufacturing goods for export.

“Qincheng gives the best treatment of any prison in China,” said Chen Zeming, an academic blamed by authorities for helping to organise the Tiananmen protests and who spent several months in the facility.

The “Gang of Four”, a political faction including former leader Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing, were sent to the prison following a high-profile trial in 1981. Prison authorities treated senior Party figures better than the Tiananmen activists, Chen said.

“Some prisoners were allowed outside to plant vegetables, later I realised one of them was Yao Wenyuan,” he said, referring to one of the Gang of Four.

Built in the late 1950s with help from the Soviet Union, Qincheng is the only prison in China to be directly administered by state security, rather than judicial authorities.

“The prison is directly controlled by the Communist Party’s central committee,” Bao said. “The everyday situation of prisoners is reported directly to them.”

Security officials stood outside his room at all hours noting his every change of position, Bao said, while Dai wrote of being constantly monitored.

Bo’s status as the son of one of China’s most famous revolutionary generals -- and his continued support among the party elite -- would ensure his comfort, the former inmates said.

“Bo Xilai won’t be mistreated... he will have long periods to breathe the outside air and to communicate with others,” said the academic Chen.

Bao added: “If Bo Xilai wants anything, and the central party agrees, then he will get it. If he wants to dance all day, and the party agrees, he can dance all day.”

Top officials detained at Qincheng are often released on medical parole years before the end of their terms, according to reports never officially confirmed, and live out their days under house arrest.

“After two years, they will say (Bo) is ill and he will be released, and will live next to a lake,” Bao predicted, “or by the sea”.

Video: Bo Xilai sentenced with translation

Timeline of Chinese politician Bo Xilai’s downfall:

November 2011
- 15: British businessman Neil Heywood is found dead in a hotel room in Chongqing, a sprawling municipality in southwestern China. Authorities rule the cause of death was a heart attack and his body is quickly cremated.

February 2012
- 2: Bo’s right-hand man and Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun is demoted.
- 6: Wang visits US embassy in Chengdu reportedly seeking political asylum. After leaving of his own volition the next day, he is placed on sick leave for stress and over-work. “Sick leave” is often used as a euphemism for a political purge in China.

March
- 2: State news agency Xinhua says Wang has been placed under investigation, giving no further details.
- 9: Bo publicly defends himself and his wife Gu Kailai during a news conference at annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, China’s parliament.
- 15: Bo sacked from position as Chongqing party secretary, with no reason given for his dismissal.
- 26: British government asks China to investigate Heywood’s death.

April
- 10: Bo is stripped of his position in the Communist Party’s 25-member Politburo and the wider Central Committee. Government says Gu is being investigated on suspicion of involvement in Heywood’s murder.

July
- 26: Gu and Zhang Xiaojun, a family employee, are charged with killing Heywood.

August
- 20: Gu is handed a suspended death sentence for murder. The sentence is usually commuted to life in prison.

September
- 5: Wang is charged with defection, taking bribes and abuse of power. An indictment quoted by state media said Wang had “known beforehand” that Gu was under “serious suspicion” of murdering Heywood, without taking action.
- 24: Wang is sentenced to 15 years in prison following a two-day trial in which he does not contest the charges against him.
- 28: State media say Bo has been expelled from the party and will “face justice”.

October
- 26: Bo is expelled from China’s parliament, removing his immunity from prosecution.

July 2013
- 25: Prosecutors charge Bo with bribery, embezzlement, and abuse of power.

August
- 22: Bo goes on trial at the Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern city of Jinan.
- 26: The five-day trial ends after Bo mounts a feisty defence amid lurid allegations surrounding his family’s lavish lifestyle.

September
- 22: Bo is sentenced to life in prison, banned from politics for life and has all his property confiscated.