New Ghosts, Old Ghosts: Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China

Seymour, James D.; Anderson, Michael

doi:10.4324/9781315702131

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…The concept of re-education has a long history in Communist China. In the 1950s, the state established the so-called "reform through labour" (laodong gaizao; 劳动改造), commonly referred to as laogai (Seymour and Anderson, 1998). The laogai system is part of the formal prison system, and inmates are convicted through legal proceedings.…”

Section: Political Re-education In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Thoroughly reforming them towards a healthy heart attitude’: China’s political re-education campaign in Xinjiang

Zenz¹

2018

Central Asian Survey

128

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Since spring 2017, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China has witnessed the emergence of an unprecedented reeducation campaign. According to media and informant reports, untold thousands of Uyghurs and other Muslims have been and are being detained in clandestine political re-education facilities, with major implications for society, local economies and ethnic relations. Considering that the Chinese state is currently denying the very existence of these facilities, this paper investigates publicly available evidence from official sources, including government websites, media reports and other Chinese internet sources. First, it briefly charts the history and present context of political re-education. Second, it looks at the recent evolution of re-education in Xinjiang in the context of 'de-extremification' work. Finally, it evaluates detailed empirical evidence pertaining to the present re-education drive. With Xinjiang as the 'core hub' of the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing appears determined to pursue a definitive solution to the Uyghur question. Since summer 2017, troubling reports emerged about large-scale internments of Muslims (Uyghurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz) in China's northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). By the end of the year, reports emerged that some ethnic minority townships had detained up to 10 percent of the entire population, and that in the Uyghur-dominated Kashgar Prefecture alone, numbers of interned persons had

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Section: Political Re-education In Chinamentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Thoroughly reforming them towards a healthy heart attitude’: China’s political re-education campaign in Xinjiang

Zenz¹

2018

Central Asian Survey

128

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“…One of the objectives of the criminal punishment of reform through labor (laodong gaizao, often shortened to laogai) was to bring inconsistent thinking and behavior into conformity with Maoist ideology. It built on the Maoist notion that consciousness is determined by one's work, and so a proletarian consciousness could be cultivated through hard manual labor, whether industrial or agricultural (Bakken 2000(Bakken , 2005Dutton 1992Dutton , 2005bDutton and Xu 1998;Mühlhahn 2009;Seymour and Anderson 1998).…”

Section: Rationalizing Deprivation Of Liberty In the Maoist Periodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detention and Its Reforms in the prc

Biddulph¹,

Nesossi

Sapio

et al. 2017

China Law and Society Review

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This article reviews forms of detention and their reforms in the People’s Republic of China (prc). We examine the changing scope and uses of both administrative and criminal detention powers in the reform period and the impact of changing politics, ideology, and law in reform of both detention powers and institutions.In Part 1, we focus on the continuities and discontinuities in the ideology of punishment, the perceived role and uses of detention in shaping society and in social control. In Part 2, we explore the factors relevant to the reform or abolition of range of administrative detention powers. We seek to understand how reforms have occurred, where they have stalled and where they are now possible. We ask how relevant these considerations are to the reform of criminal detention powers and find some distinctive features, not least of which is the comparative rigidity brought about by legal codification. We also note that reform to some administrative detention powers has been accompanied by an expansion in the criminal justice system. Our analysis illustrates that not only is there a wide range of people that the Party-state considers deserve to be placed outside of society, but also that in contemporary China detention is still considered to be a very useful form of social management and control.

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“…As Mao had argued in 1939, "China's colonial and semi-colonial status created a vast number of unemployed 2 Many scholars have turned to government cadres to complicate the oft-invoked binary between the Communist Party and the Chinese people (Cai 2000;Oi 1989;Shue 1988;S. For secondary scholarship on enemies, see Dikötter (1997); Dutton (1992); Fu (2005); Mühlhahn (2009); Seymour and Anderson (1998); Williams and Wu (2004); H. Wu (1992). In reformatories, these mid-level employees were indeed mediating actors.…”

Section: Resistance As Victimizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An extensive discussion and bibliography is available inWilliams and Wu [2004].) For secondary scholarship on enemies, seeDikötter (1997);Dutton (1992); Fu (2005);Mühlhahn (2009);Seymour and Anderson (1998);Williams and Wu (2004); H Wu (1992)…”

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confidence: 99%

Thought Reform and the Unreformable: Reeducation Centers and the Rhetoric of Opposition in the Early People's Republic of China

Smith¹

2013

J of Asian Stud

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This essay explores records from Beijing's efforts to intern and reform the city's "lumpenproletariat" after 1949. Connecting these reports to central government directives about national thought reform policy, I show that reeducators and their superiors discoursed in detail about the existence of resisters, who opposed and defied the government, but whom reformatory staff explicitly labeled as non-enemies. The case of Beijing reformatories suggests that anti-state, but non-counterrevolutionary resistance was an important symbolic and rhetorical category, central to the Chinese Communist Party's articulation of its own purpose. In the context of reeducation, opposition to the party-state constituted evidence of a founding "truth": feudal, imperialist, and capitalist oppression had so damaged the Chinese nation that only a radical and revolutionary transformation could save it. Over the course of the 1950s, reading and analyzing resistance in this way led policy makers to redefine "The People" as well as the social place of individuals accused of activities like prostitution, begging, and petty crime.

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New Ghosts, Old Ghosts: Prisons and Labor Reform Camps in China

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

‘Thoroughly reforming them towards a healthy heart attitude’: China’s political re-education campaign in Xinjiang

‘Thoroughly reforming them towards a healthy heart attitude’: China’s political re-education campaign in Xinjiang

Detention and Its Reforms in the prc

Thought Reform and the Unreformable: Reeducation Centers and the Rhetoric of Opposition in the Early People's Republic of China

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