The Laogai Research Foundation’s archives are the result of more than twenty years of often dangerous efforts to procure information on historical human rights abuses in China. Although it is our hope to digitize our entire archives, currently only a select number of documents are available.
The documents in this collection were chosen to show how the Chinese Communist Party established the Laogai System, what groups of people the Laogai System targeted, and how the Laogai System transformed during different eras of Chinese history.
Given that the Laogai System matured and solidified during the 1950s, much of our collection originates from that decade, e.g. the Central Committee’s May 1951 directive titled “Third National Public Security Conference’s Resolution to Issues of Organizing National Laogai Prisoners.” (p. 3) This directive details the structure and rationale of the reform through labor system and therefore informed subsequent directives. The Standing Committee’s August 1957 “Laodong Jiaoyang (Laojiao) Reeducation Through Labor,” (p. 5) details the structure and rationale of the reeducation through labor system.
Our documents from the Cultural Revolution demonstrate the erosion of a structured and hierarchical Laogai System as China devolved into quasi-anarchy. (p. 7) .Conversely, our documents from the immediate post-Cultural Revolution era demonstrate a concerted effort on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party to reassert total control over the Laogai System (p. 8).
Our digitized collection also contains documents that speak to the persecution of specific activities or people, e.g. “Exhibition of Incriminating Evidence against Counterrevolutionaries and Other Criminals,” which was compiled and printed for internal use by the Ministry of Public Security in October 1957, details the counterrevolutionary crimes of Catholic Bishop Kung Pin-Mei. (p. 9). Yet another document, written on March 22, 1973 by the Revolutionary Committee of Li County, details the punishment of Zhen Zechun (p. 8).
