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Glimpses inside China's Gulag

It has often been claimed-even very recently that little is known about the tragic aspect of Chinese life that is known as "reform through labour" and China's immense prison network. It is a subject that Chinese government officials are loathe to talk about to visiting foreigners. Certain journalists are allowed to visit certain prisons Beijing No. 1 Prison, for example which provides window dressing aimed at deceiving foreign world opinion. References to "reform through labour" are taboo in China. In 1992, with characteristic cynicism, the Chinese Government published a 26-page White Paper entitled "Criminal Reform in China" in which "reform through labour" is described in glowing terms to the uninitiated: the prisoners are given humane treatment, their dignity respected, they have full access to higher education, and are taught how to become self-supporting honest citizens. However, two recently-published books tell a different story. JeanLuc Domenach's Chine, L'Archipel Oublie {China, The Forgotten Archipelago) is the most comprehensive, detailed and exhaustive account of the Chinese gulag system yet published. It took ten years of painstaking research and investigation during which Domenach interviewed a great number of former prisoners not only in Hong Kong but within China itself. To obtain first-hand information, he visited the remote regions of China where a great number of gulags exist. The Chinese gulag, which Domenach calls the "biggest enterprise of slavery this century," did not start when the Chinese Communists came to power in 1949 but long before, during the Jiangxi soviet. Between 1927 and 1934 the Chinese Communists constructed a policy of detention and confinement based on the three cardinal notions of confinement, atonement and forced labour. All those arrested were persuaded to "reform and renew themselves" by confessing their sins (crimes), denouncing their accomplices, "studying hard" and adopting a positive attitude. Only thus could they hope to obtain leniency and, in rare instances, release. However, in reality things are different. After arrest, the "reform" is carried out by various forms of coercion. And although Mao Zedong explicitly