BEIJING: A Chinese journalist has uncovered the economics of China's ''huge and monstrous'' state-sanctioned abduction industry, which is designed to prevent citizens from reporting grievances to Beijing.

More than 10,000 people at a time have been engaged by municipal and county governments to ''retrieve'' citizens before they could lodge complaints at national petitions offices in Beijing, says Outlook Magazine, citing knowledgeable officials.

''In Beijing, a huge and monstrous 'grey business network' has emerged to feed, house, transport, 'man-hunt', 'detain' and retrieve petitioners,'' said the magazine, owned by China's official Xinhua news agency.

It said abuses in the quasi-commercial abduction and detention network were ''seriously damaging the Government's image''. The Government has twice this year denied such black jails exist.

On November 12, Human Rights Watch detailed how China's black jails replaced vagrant detention centres in 2003 and now constitute ''one of the most serious and widespread uses of extralegal detention in China's recent history''.