{"id":2030,"date":"2014-07-07T16:34:55","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T16:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=2030"},"modified":"2014-07-07T16:35:33","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T16:35:33","slug":"tienchi-martin-liaoreeducation-through-labor-has-been-swept-into-the-dustbin-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/tienchi-martin-liaoreeducation-through-labor-has-been-swept-into-the-dustbin-of-history","title":{"rendered":"Tienchi Martin-Liao:\u201cReeducation Through Labor\u201d has Been Swept into the Dustbin of History"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Tienchi Martin-Liao \/ December 4, 2013<\/span><\/p>\n

The CCP has abolished its system of forced prison labor, but some believe more legal reforms are necessary.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Model of a Laogai solitary confinement cell, from the Laogai Museum in Washington, DC. Photo: jcm_DC via Flickr.
\nOn November 15, at the Third plenary Session of the 18th CCP Central Committee, the Chinese Communist Party abolished its notorious system of laojiao (reeducation through labor). With its 56 years of history, the laojiao system was a part of the larger Chinese prison mechanism\u2014laogai (Reform Through Labor)\u2014and was originally modeled on the Soviet Union\u2019s Gulag, or forced labor camps.
\nAbove the entrance of Auschwitz one can read the Nazi-German phrase: \u201cArbeit macht frei\u201d (work makes you free). At the entrance of a Chinese prison, one can read the phrase: \u201cLaodong gei ni xinsheng\u201d (work gives you new life). In the first 30 years of the People\u2019s Republic of China, the criminal justice system had two objectives: Thought reform and forced labor. The communist party wanted to change all \u201ccriminals\u201d to \u201cnew socialist men and women\u201d and it believed that through physical labor a person\u2019s mind and thoughts could be renewed. That was the situation from the 50s through the 60s and 70s. Then, when Deng Xiaoping dropped Mao\u2019s communist dogma and marched the country forward to materialism, urging the people to \u201cbecome rich,\u201d his obedient subjects discovered that free prison labor could bring wealth. Consequently, thought reform lost its importance and forced labor became the main objective of the punitive system.<\/p>\n

Because of international criticism, the Chinese government abandoned the word laogai in 1990 and began to call its criminal facilities prisons. In 1994 it promulgated the criminal law and the laogai system was officially abandoned. Yet laojiao survived for another 19 years until November 2013. Now it\u2019s finally reached the end and become a historical term.<\/p>\n

Lao means labor, jiao means teach\u2014laojiao: \u201cReeducation through labor.\u201d When this system was in place, as an administrative measure, the police could detain any Chinese citizens who had supposedly committed a minor crime. The detention could last up to four years without a court trial. Theft, prostitution, traffic offenders, fraud, drug use and the like were all subject to this \u2018administrative measure.\u2019 Very often it was also used to detain Falungong practitioners or underground Christians, as well as other religious and political dissidents.<\/p>\n

Scholars and even government officials have criticized the laojiao system for a long time. Dissident writer and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo wrote an article in 2007 entitled \u201cLaojiao, a Draconian Measure that Should Have Been Repealed\u201d in support of legal scholars like He Weifang and Mao Yushi who were fighting to abolish the system. Similarly, a researcher at the high-profile Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the law specialist Liu Renwen, spent years appealing for the abandonment of laojiao. According to Liu, \u201cMeasures like criminal detention and reeducation through labor which deprive personal liberty, must be decided by the court, not by the administrative organ.\u201d Liu even said this when he talked to foreign media in 2012.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For detail please visit here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Tienchi Martin-Liao \/ December 4, 201 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,91],"tags":[1343,563,108],"views":1200,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2030"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2032,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030\/revisions\/2032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}