At peak times, the article said, as many as 10,000 retrievers  those paid by local officials to keep petitioners from successfully filing their complaints  roam Beijing in search of quarry. The report counted 73 secret detention centers, many of them run by regional governments, and laid out in detail the lucrative business of retrieving, detaining and sending home petitioners. The magazine described it as a “chain of gray industry.”

Image Detention pens like this one are hidden in basements and guesthouses in Beijing, used to lock away people pulled off streets before they can file longstanding grievances with the government. Credit... Greg Baker/Associated Press

Such a system of extralegal detention, sometimes called black jails, “damages the legitimate rights of petitioners and seriously damages the government’s image,” the article said.

Although the right to petition the authorities is enshrined in the Constitution, that right is frequently swallowed up by the reality of contemporary China’s system of governance: local officials, facing pressure to maintain social stability, are penalized for allowing too many complainants to find their way to the offices of the central government.

The article in Outlook comes less than two weeks after Human Rights Watch issued a report documenting China’s network of secret jails  a report that prompted a Foreign Ministry spokesman to deny their existence. “There are no black jails in China,” Qin Gang, the spokesman, said when asked about the report. “If citizens have complaints and suggestions about government work, they can convey them to the relevant authorities through legitimate and normal channels.”

Given the government’s tight control of the media, human rights advocates expressed guarded optimism that the article might signal a shift away from official tolerance for the jails, which are thought to have existed since 2005.