The development of the laogai system

Pages 185-186. How effectively did the Communist Party deal with opposition?

How did the reality of the laogai system differ from the Party’s official explanation?

The party’s official explanation of the laogai system was that they were places of re-education rather than of punishment.

However in reality the system frightened the population into conformity and the regime relied on it.

Why was the laogai system needed in the first place? What did inmates do?

The existing Chinese prison system could not cope with the number of inmates produced by the Great Terror. The inmates were forced to be labourers in order to expand the Chinese economy.

Number of prisoners in laogai camps by 1953

2 million

Half of whom were working as forced labourers

What was the economic value of the camps?

They contributed 700 million yuan in industrial products and 350,000 tonnes of grain to the state each year by 1955.

Who was sent there?

A Range of people from poor farmers in debt to the state, to technical experts accused of being counter-revolutionaries.

9/10 inmates were political prisoners.

What were conditions like?

Brutal as they involved a constant fear of violence, torture such as sleep deprivation and hard labour and poor diet.

What was ‘Thought Reform’?

A type of mental torture where prisoners had to demonstrate that they had changed their way of thinking. It involved attending struggle sessions with other prisoners where you had to beat up other prisoners to prove you had changed.

‘the physical and mental liquidation of oneself, by oneself’

How did the prison system evolve by 1955?

The prison population increased in 1955 by 300,000 so a new layer of imprisonment was introduced called re-education through labour where victims were sent without trial and held indefinitely.

Number of victims?

The laogai system claimed over 25 million lives from 1949-76

What was ‘guanzhi’?

Placing people under public supervision where convicts would be under the control of local cadres who could force them to do menial tasks and be scapegoats during public campaigns.

How many people were under the ‘guanzhi’ system?

Luo Ruiqing claimed 740,000 people were under this system in 1953 but the figure is likely to be higher as local cadres took the law into their own hands.