This month the Chinese Communist Party is celebrating its 100th anniversary. What can be expected are self-gratulatory propaganda efforts to paint the authoritarian rule of continental China by the Communists as the greatest success in the long history of China. western attitudes towards Beijing, though, have been changing and turning more critical. A sore point of the relations between China and the West remain the institutionalized human rights abuses of the former. Today, as the fate of Tibet, forcefully incorporated into the People’s Republic of China as a result of the Chinese Civil War, has receded into public oblivion, the fate of the Uighur minorty in China’s westernmost province of Xinjiang has by now reached the public conscience in the West.
Masses of Uighurs are detained in internment camps, where prisoners are reportedly used as forced labor since camps are frequently located next to factories. There are at least 380 internment camps in Xinjiang alone as of last year, of which 14 had been still under construction (Graham-Harrison, 2020). Heavy investment in the building of new detention facilities has continued throughout the last few years despite official statements to the contrary (ibid.).
As much as the suffering of Uighurs is being revealed, one can deduce from Tibet’s lot what is happening to the Muslims minorities in Xinjiang. With the explicit objective to destroy any resistance to the central powers in Beijing, any form of religion in Tibet was suppressed, monasteries dismantled and monks sent to labor in coal mines; living standards were actively reduced, and hundreds of thousands of Tibetans interned – as much as up to 10% of the whole population (Margolin, 1997). And the decades-long campaign to eradicate the Tibetan culture and completely indoctrinate the population has not finished yet, as first-person accounts still today attest (Demick, 2020). A central part to enforce the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) authoritarian rule is the prison system, formerly known as laogai.
Communist China and the laogai
Introduced in 1949, when the Communists took power in mainland China, the first camps were erected with Soviet help copying the Gulag system. The constituting Act for Reform Through Labor stems from 1954. In this document, it is specified that detainees have to work without pay; the work may include industrial, agricultural, mining activities, and contributions to large-scale public-works projects like road construction; and that production from the prison population makes part of the national economic plan (Cowen, 1993).
According to the CCP’s logic anti-social behavior – no matter if of a criminal or political nature – can be cancelled and transformed into a ‘new socialist man’ by forced labor and re-education (Laogai Research Foundation, n.d.). As part of the CCP’s overall goal to submit China’s population to the will of Beijing, internment, therefore, seeks not simply to punish a criminal but to mould them into ‘model’ citizens and the forced labor of detainees is deemed a means to secure the socialist system (Fruge, 1998). Anti-social behavior includes anything which may be seen as a danger to the state: opposition to government policies, criticism of government officials, practice of banned religions (Laogai Research Foundation, n.d.). Hence, the laogai has been essential in suppressing dissent and strengthening Communist rule by imposing ‘social stability’ – and what in reality means complete state control over education, work and family life (Zanz, 2019).
China’s prison system today differs only in name from the infamous laogai ( = “re-education through labor”) prison system established after Mao Tse-tung’s Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 (Laogai Research Foundation, n.d.). In 1994, the Chinese government the replaced the term laogai with the word jianyu, which simply means ‘prison’, while officially announcing that “the function, character and tasks of our prison administration will remain unchanged.” (Funakoshi, 2013). Increasing international inquiry and criticism had moved the Chinese regime to end this system only in appearance. In fact, the re-named prisons continue to operate in the same manner, only that Beijing has expanded great efforts to restrict public knowledge about these facilities (Laogai Research Foundation, n.d.).
Beijing has done everything to hide its wide prison system from the eyes of the public (be it abroad or at home), condemning people not to ‘detention’ or ‘forced labor’ but to ‘reform’ or ‘reeducation’ (Margolin, 1997). Another way of hiding the true nature of the prison facilities is to give them unassuming cover names such as ‘XX Farm’ or ‘XX Mining Factory’ (Fukanoshi, 2013). Similarly to changing the name of the laogai system to a more palatable term, crimes have also been reclassified. For example, the crime of “counterrevolution” of the Mao era is now called “crime against state security” (International Herald Tribune, 1997).
Since the CCP has been trying to gain full control over Chinese territories and minorities, it does not come as a surprise that the largest prisons of the laogai type, which would correspond to high-security prisons in the West, can be found not only in Xinjiang but also in Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Qinghai, all regions with significant numbers of ethnic minorities (Margolin, 1997).
The current prison system – exploitation and human rights abuses
Today’s prison population in China is the highest in the world, but actual numbers are hard to obtain. Official figures from mid-2015 speak of 1,649,804 prisoners detained in facilities managed by the Ministry of Justice (World Prison Brief, 2019). To that number at least another 650,000 (in 2009) have to be added who are held in the Ministry of Public Safety’s detention centers raising China’s incarceration rate to 168 per 100,000 (ibid.).
It is common that political detentions are arbitrary and no specific charges pressed against prisoners who are denied a trial (Laogai Research Foundation, n.d.). Characteristic of this kind of penitentiary system is to hand out life sentences to political prisoners, since the detainees first have to acknowledge their (unspecified) crimes before they can be subjugated to the law and the actual ‘reforming’ of the delinquents can begin. This is a process that has no clear end date and, consequently, prisoners serve indefinite sentences (Margolin, 1997).
Prisoners are by default deprived of fundamental rights and suffer different forms of torture; contact and communication between prisoners and families are restricted, correspondence can only be addressed to anonymous post boxes; in many cases relatives learn of the death of incarcerated family members years later (ibid.).
True to the 1954 Constituting Act, internment camps are part of the national economic plan, and hence, often located next to factories (farms, workshops, mines etc.). In the prison camps, oftentimes highly-skilled individuals are forced to do low-skill labor (Zanz, 2019). Without receiving salaries (or very little) detainees provide a free source of labor enabling associated companies to make huge profits (Laogai Research Foundation, n.d.). Which companies are being supplied to remains unclear in most cases, though; for example, one prison in Liaoning in the north-east of China controls businesses in almost 20 diverse industries ranging from automobiles to construction (Wu, 2019). Data from Xinjiang’s Yarkant County shows that the majority of detainees working in such satellite factories are over 40 or even retirees taken from their families causing them to fall beyond the poverty line. The strategy of pushing adults into satellite factories is to separate parents from their children and keep all of them in state-controlled environments for as much time as possible, thus contributing to dissolving family ties and to facilitating political indoctrination (Zanz, 2019).
That the prison system is still an important economic enterprise can be gleaned from the fact that prison compounds actively solicit Chinese companies to employ detainees, and participating companies pocket around 5,000 RMB. Hence, it is a scheme not only to provide very cheap labor but also to attract business as openly advertized on Xinjiang’s regional government webpage (Zanz, 2019). Due to the intentionally deceptive tactics by the Chinese regime, as well as negligent international labeling requirements and reliance on third-party exporters, products from the prison system are hard to identify and are traded worldwide (Laogai Research Foundation, n.d.). Unfortunately, many states do not show interest in unmasking these illegal schemes and benefit from commercial relations with the largest market in the world and the home of cheap labor (ibid.)
A macabre outgrowth of the laogai system and a mockery of human rights is organ harvesting of prisoners. Since the 1980s, the CCP has turned this practice to a veritable business, providing the regime with a new source of income and a further means to exploit detainees literally to the last (Laogai Research Foundation, n.d.). Again, current numbers are almost impossible to find; according to China’s Ministry of Health 34,726 organ transplants took place between 2000 and 2004 in a country where voluntary organ donation traditionally is widely rejected. The former Vice minister of health, Huang Jiefu, disclosed that “most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners” (ibid.).
Conclusions
Putting a stop to the Chinese prison system will be difficult to obtain from the outside, however, Western states can help to reduce the profitability of the prison system scheme. Necessitating careful analysis of global supply chains in a traditional approach is impossible to obtain since only officially approved data, hiding the facts, is publicly available in China’s surveillance police state (Zanz, 2019). The refusal of some Western companies active in Xinjiang and profiting from this forced labor scheme to discontinue their collaboration is a large obstacle to defend human rights there. Citing their support to the local economy in the region does not in reality apply here. Continued collaboration only means the perpetuation of the forced labor system. An example of a successful counterstrategy of the West has been the divestment and sanctions regime placed on South Africa’s apartheid government.
A first step to dismantle the Chinese prison system and its methodical abuse of human rights is to expose the whole structure and crimes to the international public. This would require the access of independent organizations to investigate the proceedings in the Chinese prison system; a remarkably difficult task as no free access is granted by Beijing to journalists, NGOs or diplomats (Graham-Harrison, 2020). Then, to increase pressure on Western companies which are collaborating in this system to seize their activities or otherwise face real consequences in the form of financial fines.
As Fruge (1998) already suggested more than 20 years ago, the establishing of a Laogai Charter by United Nations members to set a precedent and, hence, enforce international human rights. A Laogai Tribunal would then function – similarly to the International Court of Justice – as the court to adjudicate cases brought forth. The implementation of the Tribunal’s judgments could be entrusted to an international organization. However, as sound as this suggestion sounds, the fact that no such initiative has materialized in the past does not bode well for the future. All too often, European governments have looked the other way and have preferred to make business with the Chinese regime instead of protecting human rights in China. A glimmer of hope may be the reformulation of American foreign policy towards China in the past years.
Bibliography:
Cowen, J.M. (1993). One nation’s “Gulag” is another nation’s “factory within a fence”. Pacific Basin Journal, 12(190), 190-236.
Demick, B. Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town. New York: Random House.
Fruge, M. P. (1998). The Laogai and Violations of International Human Rights Law: A Mandate for the Laogai Charter. Santa Clara Law Review, 38(2), 473-519.
Funakoshi, M. (2013, Feb 06). China’s ‘Re-Education Through Labor’ System: The View From Within. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/chinas-re-education-through-labor-system-the-view-from-within/272913/
Graham-Harrison, E. (2020, Sep 24). China has built 380 internment camps in Xinjiang, study finds. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/china-has-built-380-internment-camps-in-xinjiang-study-finds
International Herald Tribune (1997, Mar 22). China’s small steps.
Laogai Research Foundation (n.d.). The laogai system. https://laogairesearch.org/laogai-system/
Margolin, J.-L. (1997). Chine: une longue marche dans la nuit. In S. Courtois et al. Le livre noir du communisme. Paris: Robert Laffont.
World Prison Brief (2019). China. https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/china
Wu, H. (2019, Dec 24). Factbox: China’s use of prison labor. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesco-china-labour-prisons-factbox-idUSKBN1YS0OF
Zanz, A. (2019, Dec 11). Xinjiang’s New Slavery. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/11/cotton-china-uighur-labor-xinjiang-new-slavery/
By Andreas Rösl : The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
