All detainees in Guangzhou labor camps will have completed their sentences and be released by the end of the year, a senior judge has said.

Authorities in the Guangdong provincial capital stopped approving applications for laojiao - a controversial system of re-education through labor - in March.

"The police and many legal experts have realized the drawbacks of laojiao and called to abolish the system, which has become outdated," Yu Mingyong, deputy president of Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court, was quoted as saying by local media.