Lecture Notes: History and Impact of the Laogai System in China

Overview

• Year: 1991
• Event: A former prisoner secretly films inside Chinese Laogai camps.
• Significance: These are the only uncensored images of the camps.

Laogai System

• Origin: Introduced by Mao Zedong
• Duration: Over 80 years
• Impact:
  • At least 50 million people passed through the system.
  • 20 million deaths.

Personal Accounts and Conditions

• Physical Abuse: Severe beatings for refusing to work.
• Living Conditions: Extreme hunger, leading to suicides.
• Uncertainty: Indeterminate duration of re-education.
• Psychological Threats: Fear instilled by police threats against families.

Historical Context

• Civil War Chaos (1942): Chinese Communist Party (CCP) fights Japan and Kuomintang.
• Yenan: Mao’s base for strategizing power seizure.
• Terror as Strategy: Mao uses fear to consolidate power.
• Intellectual Disillusionment: Intellectuals initially drawn to the socialist dream become disillusioned by the privileges of CCP leaders.

Campaign of Rectification (1942)

• Objectives: Intellectuals must serve the party; non-compliance leads to accusations of counter-revolution.
• Methods: Forced confessions, public denunciations, and self-criticism.
• Torture: Codified by Kang Sheng, includes beatings and forced written confessions.
• Purge: Cleansing the party of rivals, including high-ranking officials.
• Outcome: Mao’s ideology becomes the guiding principle of the CCP.

Establishment of Laogai Camps

• First Camps: Opened in 1946 in Lingzhou, Hebei.
• Expansion: Larger camps established, e.g., Chadian near Tianjin with 50,000 prisoners.
• Labor and Re-education: Camps used for forced labor and ideological reformation.
• System Components: Includes various types of camps such as labor, agricultural, and special camps for severe criminals.
• Family Impact: Families of prisoners suffer discrimination and societal exclusion.

Broader Repressions and Campaigns

• Agrarian Reform: Elimination of landowners, leading to millions of deaths through execution, lynching, or forced suicide.
• Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957): Identifying and persecuting “rightists,” involving forced self-criticisms and detentions.
• Great Leap Forward (1958-1962): Economic mobilization leading to massive famine, particularly impacting Laogai prisoners.
• Cultural Revolution (1966-1976): Mao’s effort to regain control, leading to widespread chaos, with Red Guards persecuting perceived enemies.
• Downfall of Opponents: Key figures like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping purged; mass relocations to countryside.

End of Mao’s Era

• Economic Collapse: Great Leap Forward causes economic failure and famine with millions of deaths.
• Rehabilitation Efforts: Post-famine, attempts to stabilize the party and economy, leading to some prisoner releases.
• Cultural Revolution Aftermath: Extensive persecution, massacres, and eventual military control.
• Death of Mao (1976): Signals potential for significant political change and end of certain repressive practices.

Key Figures

• Mao Zedong: Leader of the CCP, initiator of repressive campaigns.
• Kang Sheng: Head of security services, enforcer of torture methods.
• Zhou Enlai: Premier, involved in launching the Cultural Revolution.
• Liu Shaoqi: President, purged and killed during Cultural Revolution.
• Deng Xiaoping: Exiled during Cultural Revolution, later rehabilitated.

Legacy and Impact

• Laogai System's Role: Central to CCP's control and repression tactics.
• Surveillance and Control: Extensive monitoring, including family and work units, creating a pervasive atmosphere of fear.
• Ongoing Relevance: System remains a tool of political dominance under successive CCP leaderships.