Chinese judges have been warned they will lose their jobs or be prosecuted if they try to extract confessions with torture, state media said.
The warning, which comes along with an order not to conceal or make up evidence, is part of a 13-item list of rules that judges must abide by if they want to keep their posts, the China Daily reported.
Torture was traditionally widely used in Chinese courts, as a defendant could usually not be found guilty unless he admitted to his guilt.
The list, issued by the Supreme People's Court, also stresses the need to abstain from taking bribes, accepting gifts or engaging in business for profit, according to the paper.
"The goal is to strengthen corruption prevention mechanisms and standardize the behavior of judges to weed out corruption in the judicial sector and guarantee judicial fairness," said Li Yucheng, in charge of disciplinary supervision at the supreme court.
"A few" judges have failed to resist the temptation to become corrupt, Li said, according to the paper.
China launched a nationwide effort to reduce corruption in the legal system in the late 1990s, but the release of the new rules suggest that it was not uniformly successful.