The use of torture in China is widespread, and frequently carried out by police who exercise “wide discretion” within the country's under-developed legal system, a United Nations special envoy said on Friday.

Manfred Nowak, UN special rapporteur on torture, said police often resorted to torture in the early stages of detaining subjects as they came “under heavy pressure to produce confessions”. Techniques such as beatings and sleep deprivation by police and other security authorities focused on “breaking the will” of individuals, thus creating a “general culture of fear”, he said.