Laogai – Re-education through labour

Although the Chinese leadership announced the dissolution of the labour camps in 2013, there are still around a thousand of these camps, known as laodong gaizao (laogai for short), in which around four million people perform forced labour. The camps have long been part of the Chinese economic plan. Since the first laogai were established soon after Mao Zedong (1893-1976) came to power in 1949, it is estimated that around fifty million Chinese have been imprisoned in such camps[1]. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has established the largest forced labour camp system in human history.

The first labour camps with ideological re-education aims were set up in conquered territory during Mao Zedong’s „long march“. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) modelled itself on the Soviet Gulag system and was able to rely on Moscow’s support in setting up the camp system. After Mao’s victory in the Chinese Civil War (1949), he brought Soviet specialists into the country, tens of thousands of Chinese received education and ideological training in the USSR and, after their return, shaped the Chinese economic system, education and legal system as well as the security apparatus. Mao’s security chief Kang Sheng had observed Stalinist methods of persecuting opponents in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and now established the Chinese Ministry of Security, initiated purges within the Chinese Communist Party and created the Laogai penal camp system modelled on the Russian Gulag.

However, the Laogai soon developed some special features. Whereas the gulags were purely forced labour camps, which were set up in the course of specific work projects (construction of a road, railway line, etc.), the individual laogai were designed to be permanent and are an integral part of the Chinese penal system. As part of a „reform through labour“ programme, they are not only an integral part of Chinese production planning, their design is also geared towards re-education. Although the term laogai has no longer appeared in official Chinese documents and announcements since 1994 and the camps are now referred to neutrally as jianyu (prison), the concept of forced labour camps has not fundamentally changed. They are still an instrument of oppression and a means of maintaining the Chinese Communist Party’s power.

The term „prisons“, which has been used since 1994, does not do justice to the Chinese labour camps, which from the outset were part of the social transformation process based on the Soviet system, a „reform through labour“. It suggests that the forced labour carried out in the laogai is comparable to the prison labour accepted in a constitutional state.

Even a brief overview shows the opposite. Although a court ruling is required in order to be sent to a laogai for forced labour, there is no procedure in accordance with the rule of law, and there is no possibility of adequate legal defence. Expressing a critical thought can be just as sufficient to be sent to a laogai as belonging to an ethnic minority, such as the Uyghur or Tibetan minority. There is no possibility of defending oneself in court before being sentenced to forced labour. The working conditions, for example in mining and road construction or in quarries, are often life-threatening and torture is commonplace. The supervisors, euphemistically referred to as „educators“, are interested in maximising the work performance of the prisoners through performance bonuses. The „ mind reform through labour „, a central component of the Laogai system, aims to break the personality of the prisoners and can in no way be equated with resocialisation in the sense of a penal system based on the rule of law.

The objective of the labour camp system was always linked to the demand of the class struggle theory to eliminate all anti-socialist forces and class enemies. Mao Zedong set a narrow definitional framework here in 1957. According to Mao, anyone who did not act or speak in favour of the socialist movement was to be regarded as an enemy of the people.[2] It was therefore not necessary to actively act against the system to be considered an opponent of it; it was sufficient not to be explicitly committed to the regime. Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997), Mao’s successor, did not make any fundamental changes to the labour camp system that still exists today after he took power in 1979 – it has long since become an indispensable part of the Chinese economy, the profits of which flow directly to the party. Products manufactured in the forced labour camps are also exported to the West.

Prisoners who have been formally arrested and convicted of a crime are held in the laogai. Any threat to the socialist system, any act that allegedly endangers the sovereignty or integrity of the state or is directed against the dictatorship of the proletariat, is directed against the socialist revolution, socialist construction or disrupts public order is considered a crime punishable by forced labour.[3]

Due to the elasticity of the terms, almost any act or statement that is not explicitly in favour of the system is considered a crime, especially since even theft is classified as a counter-revolutionary act, as the appropriation of other people’s property is by definition alien to the socialist social order and has its origins in capitalist-materialist thinking. Prisoners as a result of mass arrests, especially in connection with political movements directed against the system, are usually also transferred to the laogai, including members and sympathisers of the democracy movement that was violently suppressed in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989.

In accordance with the framework conditions for forced labour defined in 1954, convicted slave labourers can be deployed in industry and agriculture, in road construction or mining as well as in large-scale national projects. Production from unpaid forced labour must in principle be integrated into the national economic plan, i.e. planned in advance. The laogai system is therefore less an instrument of punishment than a tool of repression and mental indoctrination for the purpose of maintaining power while simultaneously exploiting the economy[5].

The term laogai refers to this harshest form of the camps themselves, but it is also used synonymously for the entire forced labour system, which comprises two further components. Citizens of the People’s Republic of China can fall into the slave labour system even without a court ruling. An administrative act is all that is needed to be sent to a re-education camp, a laojiao (re-education through labour). The laogai are supplemented by the laojiao as part of the comprehensive repression system. These camps are designed for citizens who refuse to submit and insist on individual organisation of their lives or are accused of undisciplined behaviour or a lack of commitment to the system. Suspicion of being against the regime is sufficient; they are sent to such a re-education camp for a period of one to three years in the form of an administrative act by a local police office. As the detainees have not been convicted of an offence, they receive at least a small payment for the work they perform under duress. Guarding in the laojiao is less strict and, unlike the laogai prisoners, the prisoners are allowed to write letters and receive visits.[6]

Another component of the laogai system consists of jiuye , a forced acceptance of an assigned job. This measure is mainly applied to released former laogai prisoners who have not behaved properly after their release or whose re-education success appears doubtful. However, a jiuye order can also consist of prisoners not being released at all after serving their forced labour if their mental re-education process is not considered complete. According to estimates, this affects around seventy per cent of all laogai or laojiao prisoners. It is not uncommon for a limited period of imprisonment to turn into a lifetime of forced labour[7].

It is almost impossible to obtain reliable data on those imprisoned, tortured, killed or killed in labour accidents. Total figures are not available. Independent research is impossible and internal party statistics are a state secret. The Washington D.C.-based Laogai Research Foundation , which was founded in 1992 by the Chinese-American human rights activist and former long-time Laogai prisoner Harry Wú Hóngdá (1937-2016) and was the leading research and documentation centre on the Chinese forced labour system for a long time, has also been extremely reticent.

However, the dimensions of the system become tangible through Harry Wú’s statements. In an interview with the International Society for Human Rights, Wú spoke about a single government project in which around two million prisoners were used for forced labour in river straightening and dam work in 1955. A year later, according to Wú, only around half of them were still alive, based on the analysis of available documents[8].

Although the protection of human rights has been enshrined in the Chinese constitution since 2004, the interpretation of the content of human rights is subject to the sovereignty of the Party. The government is not bound by the constitution or universal human rights, it is above them. In other words, the regime can grant or withdraw human rights, fulfil individual rights partially and depending on the situation, and also disregard others. The Chinese system is far removed from the rule of law.

For the Chinese Communist Party, human rights are not an inviolable norm, but rather an instrument of power to maintain power and discipline.
Under President Xi Jinping (since 2013), this functional use of human rights has led to further restrictions. A „National Security Law“ passed in July 2015 facilitates the suppression of social forces that advocate freedom of the press and freedom of expression, as well as the monitoring of independent interest groups such as workers‘ organisations and lawyers. The scope for security agencies to persecute uncomfortable critics and activists has been extended. The law was followed by a wave of arrests in the summer, with numerous human rights activists, including journalists, lawyers and writers, falling victim.

A „Law on the Management of the Activities of Foreign NGOs“, which came into force on 1 January 2017, included the latter in the persecution. Beijing’s aim is to curb the influence of „Western“ values and political concepts of order that are perceived as „harmful“, such as freedom of expression and the rule of law.[9] Despite the functional instrumentalisation of human rights in practice, Beijing had at least theoretically recognised their universal validity, but the Chinese government is now fundamentally questioning this. The main intention here is to seal itself off from „Western ideas“ such as the rule of law and democracy, which are regarded as dangerous and a threat to the system. At universities, it is now forbidden to speak of the universality of human rights. Students should orientate themselves more towards Chinese traditions[10].

According to the document, concepts such as freedom, democracy and human rights are part of a Western value system that foreign governments are trying to undermine the rule of the Chinese Communist Party by propagating. Beijing, meanwhile, propagates a socialist value system with Chinese characteristics as an alternative to the supposedly Western value system and attempts to strengthen internal cohesion by setting boundaries with the outside world. The specific Chinese characteristics remain unspecified[11].

Nevertheless, the growing standard of living, especially in urban centres, is expanding the scope for individual lifestyle choices. Due to the huge differences between income groups and between economic centres and rural areas, this trend is currently limited to an economic elite that owes its privileges to the system. A lack of civil liberties and a lack of legal certainty further restrict this room for manoeuvre.

China remains an authoritarian one-party state. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, civil rights and civil liberties continue to have a difficult time in China, and commitment to human rights comes at a high price. The traumatising effect of the 1989 Tien’anmen Square massacre on civil rights and democracy movements continues to this day. The wave of arrests that began in 2015 makes it clear that the regime is still prepared to respond to such tendencies with repression. Critics of the regime continue to have difficulties leaving the country, as the example of the widow of writer and human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, who died on 13 July 2017 and only received permission to leave the country on 10 July 2018, shows. The health of the 57-year-old, who had been under house arrest until recently, had deteriorated dramatically. Human rights groups had long called for her to be granted permission to leave the country.

The opening of the economy and liberalisation of the market economy have so far not led to any development towards democratisation and the rule of law; on the contrary, they have strengthened the regime’s power base[12].

Jen-Philippe Béja (ed.), The Impact of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. New York, London 2011.

Jonathan M. Cowen, „One Nation’s ‚Gulag‘ is another Nation’s ‚Factory within a fence‘,“ in: Pacific Basin Law Journal , 12 (1), 1993, pp. 191-235.

Melissa Pearson Fruge, „The Laogai and Violations of International Human Rights Law: A Mandate for the Laogai Charter,“ in: Santa Clara Law Review , 1998, Vol. 38/2, pp. 473-519.

Eva Pils, China’s Human Rights Lawyers. Advocacy and Was bedeutet das?Resistance . New York 2015.

This, Human Rights in China: A Social Practice in the Shadows of Authoritarianism. Cambridge 2018.

This, „Dislocation of the Chinese Human Rights Movement,“ in: Stacy Mosher, Patrick Poon, A Sword and A Shield: China’s Human Rights Lawyers . Hong Kong 2009, pp. 141-159.

This, Mike McConville, Comparative Perspectives on Criminal Justice in China . Cheltenham and others, 2013.

Kurt Seelmann (ed.), Human Rights: Justification-Universalisability-Genesis . Berlin, Boston 2017.

Hongda Harry Wu, Laogai, The Chinese Gulag. San Francisco, Oxford 1992.

He who is silent is guilty . Cologne 1996.

Ders., Only the wind is free . Berlin 1996.

Ders, Thunder of the Night: My Life in Chinese Prison Camps . Augsburg 2009.