Labour camps may become a thing of a past, but what will replace them?
Beijing's promised reforms to the controversial system of 're-education through labour' raises questions of how dissent will now be handled
When Mao Hengfeng heard that the police had stopped sending people to laojiao, or re-education through labour, she felt a sense of relief.
Mao, a petitioner from Shanghai, had been sentenced to laojiao three times and locked up in a mental asylum three times - one time after her seven-month fetus was forcibly aborted when she was pregnant for the third time. She attributes recurring nightmares, high blood pressure and migraines to the torture she said was inflicted on her in laojiao - including being forcibly fed urine and excrement .
"If police cannot throw people into laojiao as they please, then that's an improvement," she said.
Over the past months, many authorities across the mainland have quietly stopped sending petty criminals and government critics to forced labour.
Top security chief Meng Jianzhu announced in January that the notorious system of arbitrary detention would be halted this year. In March, Premier Li Keqiang said details of the "reform" to the system would be announced before year's end.
Over the past few months, state media have reported that provinces such as Guangdong, Shandong and Yunnan had stopped approving new cases for laojiao and many centres built for that purpose had been turned into drug treatment centres. But there has been no word from the central government on whether this suspension will be permanent.