his family. But as I did this, I felt humiliated and compromised in a way I never had before. Something inside me finally snapped. Whatever the consequences, I vowed then that I would no longer just stand by and watch the power of work be diluted. Since my last journey to Tibet in 1988, much has happened. there are fewer wild animals and trees, more prisoners and paper promises, but still no parks or real progress toward environmental protection. Peaceful demonstrations for Tibetan independence in Lhasa in 1987 became riots after Chinese soldiers fired into unarmed crowds, killing Buddhist monks and nuns. Observers estimate that at least 600 Tibetans have been killed and thousands of Tibetans imprisoned and tortured in the subsequent crackdown. The Chinese government instituted martial law in Tibet in March 1989, and as of this writing it has not been lifted. Three months later, the government in Beijing unleashed its tanks on the students occupying Tiananmen Square. And in December, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The most bizarre manifestations of China's ideological rule, such as the killing of all "unnecessary" animals, have disappeared. What remains is a steady consolidation of China's domination of the country, aided by naked political oppression. As Tibet's animal and plant resources are destroyed, Beijing is now gearing up to extract gold and minerals, including uranium. China's armed forces have established nuclear missile bases on Tibet's high plateau, and are now rumored to be preparing a high-level nuclear waste dump that would accept spent nuclear reactor fuel from China as well as Western Europe. Despite the attention focused on the plight of Tibet in the last year, no country has gone on record as supporting Tibet's right to independence for fear of angering Beijing. In the wake of the Nobel Committee's decision to award its peace prize to the Dalai Lama, China has made it as difficult as possible for any nation extending support to the exiled leader. The government in Beijing even threatened to cut all economic ties to Norway if its king attended the prize ceremony. Although the United States Congress passed a resolution condemning China's treatment of Tibet, President Bush refused to meet with the Dalai Lama, preferring instead to send emissaries on a secret mission to China. To this date, no U.S. President has ever shaken hands with the exiled head of state. In May 1989, I traveled to Dharamsala with my wife to meet the Dalai Lama and discuss a book we are preparing together called "My Tibet," to be published in late 1990 by the University of California Press. After several hours of interviews about the past, present, and future of Tibet's environment, we found him to be deeply concerned, well versed in the natural history of his country, and surprisingly hopeful and compassionate in his outlook. The Dalai Lama believes that behind every apparently bad event lurks some hidden goodness. With the right attitude, he avows, one's worst enemies aid us in becoming clear and strong. Despite the desperate situation in his country, the Dalai Lama consistently argues against taking up arms against the Chinese. He remains confident that Tibet will emerge from Chinese oppression with greater compassion and unity than ever before. It came as no surprise to us that a few months later, the Nobel Committee made special mention of the Dalai Lama's commitment to the environment, the first time a Nobel citation has made specific reference to the ecological crisis. As he looked at some of my pictures of Tibet's last remaining wildlife that I planned to include in the book, he commented on the way his people used to coexist with humans and animals before the invasion. "Some of that harmony remains in Tibet today," he told me, "and because it happened in the past, we have some genuine hope for the future.' Senator CRANSTON. Thank you very much. All of your materials will go in the record. It is a tragic situation that you have described very graphically. Thank you very, very much. Mr. Mosher, I want to give you a special welcome from California. STATEMENT OF STEVEN W. MOSHER, DIRECTOR, ASIAN STUDIES I want to confine myself to three points about the camp system because it is late in the day. I want to talk about its size. I want to talk about the location of the camps. And I want to talk about the use of the cheap labor of the camps-essentially free labor-to produce goods for export to other countries and specifically to the United States. We, of course, at The Claremont Institute look forward to working with you on this issue which is of great concern to Asian-Americans in our state. I have a map here which Mr. Triplett is going to hold up. Let me introduce a Chinese friend of mine. My report could not have been written without the assistance of Harry Wu of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Harry Wu has the distinction of having survived 20 years in the Chinese labor camps, the Chinese Laogai system. He not only survived, but survived to write a couple of wonderful books on that Chinese labor camp system, one a very personal account. I predict that Mr. Wu is going to be known within a few years as China's Solzhenitsyn. I have read his manuscript. I think it is wonderful. The camp system ranges from Manchuria in the north down to Hainan Island in the south, from Shanghai in the east all the way to Xizang in the west. A couple of numbers: The Chinese Government only admits the existence of three camps in Tibet. We have identified 15 camps now, and the number is still growing. On this map are marked 951 camps. The actual number we believe to be closer to 5,000. We are talking about an enormous gulag, an enormous Laogai system. Senator CRANSTON. How many people do you think are in those camps? Mr. MOSHER. We think at the present time in excess of 10 million people are in those camps: those who have been arrested and sentenced to formal labor reform; those who are undergoing labor reeducation for up to 3 years on the admintrative order of the police; those who are being held in detention facilities without being formally arrested-and reports are that they are held for many months, if not years, in detention-and those who undergo forced job placement. Once you are sent to the camps, there is a very real possibility you may never come back. China like the Soviet Union, has a system of internal exile. After serving your sentence, you are called before the camp commandant on the last day. The commandant says that you are now a free man. But you must continue to live in the camp, you must continue to work in the camp under the supervision of policemen, he says because we need your labor in the camp. You cannot go home. A 5-year sentence in many cases turns out to be a life sentence. Let us move now to the second map. I would like to briefly introduce Qinghe farm. Qinghe is very close to Tianjin City, located between Tianjin and Beijing to the north. Just to give you an idea of the dimensions of this camp, which is by no means China's largest, it is on an east-west axis 12.5 miles long. On a north-south axis it is 10 miles wide. Harry, if you could just point to the outline of the camp there. The total area of this camp, which is right there [indicating], is something close to 100 square miles. There are currently between 60,000 and 80,000 prisoners in that camp. Now 40 years ago this was a uninhabitable marsh. Roughly 1 million prisoners have passed through the Qinghe Labor Camp. Many of them, of course, are still there. They are buried there. We understand that some of the people recently arrested in Beijing have been sent to the Qinghe Labor Camp. Let us go on quickly to the third map. I have a map of South China-actually, I should say I have Harry's map of South Chinaon which are marked the specific locations of the hundreds of labor camps. I would like to call to your attention to the area right there by Mr. Triplett's hand, that enormous concentration of labor camps right there in Qinghzi Dui Province. We know that several years ago a decision was made by the Chinese Government to turn the Chinese labor camp system, the Chinese Laogai system, into part of China's export sector. Camp commandants have been tasked with the responsibility of earning profits in hard currency from the west. Indeed, we know that they are evaluated on their ability to turn a profit. They are forced to sign "job responsibility" contracts with the government, and if they meet their taxes assessed by the government they get a bonus. If they fail to meet earn the required profits, they are penalized. They have their pay docked. This same system is also used in China's population control program. I have testified on this point before. If a population control official meets his birth quota, he gets a bonus. If he fails to meet his birth quota, he is penalized. In China's population control program, this "job responsibility" system has resulted in late term abortions and forced abortions. In China's labor camp system, the "job responsibility" system results in camp commandants trying to squeeze out the last bit of production from these poor imprisoned souls by means of long working hours and low rice rations to maximize profit. Specific products: We have already talked about the grapes grown by prisoners in the northern part of China, but I would like to be a little more specific about this wine. We know that the grapes for this wine come in part from the Tuanhe Labor Camp 10 miles south of Beijing. We also know from a report just a few days ago that 300 plus detainees from last year's prodemocracy movement are in Tuanhe. So, the hands that picked the grapes for the wine which you see here on the table, one bottle of which was purchased in San Francisco and the other of which was purchased in Washington-it is being marketed nationwide-include some of the prodemocracy activitists we saw on our television screens last spring. I think that is as abhorrent, and I am certain you share my view. I have another example. The Yingte Tea Co., exports tea to the United States. You can go into any supermarket and buy this brand. The tea is produced by the Yingte Tea Co.; at least that is the label on the package. But the Yingte Tea Co. has another name inside of China. It is known as the Yingte labor reform camp. You see, all the camps have two names. They have an outside name for foreigners, and they have an inside name, the name used within the prison system. Finally, what should the United States do about this problem and why should it be done? Obviously, it is unfair to force American laborers, especially those who labor in the vineyards of California, to compete with de facto slave labor in producing wines and other products. That, I think everyone will grant. But it is also unfair to the Chinese in the labor camp system to allow the Beijing regime to squeeze them for their every last drop of energy to produce goods to earn hard currency in the United States. If the United States cuts back on the use of slave-made goods, of prisonmade goods, this will ease the pressure on the 10 million individuals who currently inhabit China's huge and growing gulag. Whatever the fate of China's MFN status at the hands of Congress, I would urge that at a minimum we consider putting conditions on MFN. I believe that one very appropriate condition would be a promise from the Beijing regime that it will not export any goods made in the Chinese labor camp system, the Chinese Laogai, to the United States. That is the first thing. A second condition would be a biennial review of MFN. Given the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation in China, it is appropriate to review China's MFN status every 6 months rather than waiting 1 year each time. I thank the Senator and, of course, the committee for their time. [The prepared statement Mr. Mosher follows:] PREPARED Statement of STEVEN W. MOSHER Stretching across the length and breadth of China, from the Northwest (Manchuria) in the north, to Hainan island in the south, from Shanghai in the east to Xizang in the west, is a vast constellation of labor camps and prisons. There are 3,000 or more facilities in all, holding at this time in excess of 10,000,000 prisoners. They are important to the economy, producing over $800 million worth of goods and services in 1988. Whether they operate factories, mines, or farms, each facility is not only required to be self-supporting, it is expected to turn a profit for the state. They produce goods both for the domestic economy and, increasingly in recent years, for export. Many of these prisoner-made goods, perhaps $100 million worth, were exported to the United States last year. Specific types of goods sold in the U.S. include textiles, wines, teas, and machinery. These camps are known as labor reform and labor reeducation camps, Laogai Ying in Chinese. When someone is arrested or simply disappears, his friends say that he has gone for Laogai-reform through labor. The Laogai system is a natural outgrowth of a political system that seeks to bring all Chinese under the control of government autocracy. Over the years, it has also became an important component of China's planned economy. For simplicity, we will refer the entire system as the Chinese Laogai or, following Solzhenitsyn, the Laogai gulag. The goal of Laogai is to reform prisoners into new socialist men. This is to be accomplished not only through thought reform-study of Party-approved documents and self-criticism-but also through hard labor. Harry Wu of the Hoover Institution, who himself spent 19 years in the Chinese Laogai camps, describes their plight as follows: "Given a minimal supply of food, forced to labor under difficult conditions, terrorized and hopeless, Laogai prisoners are required to abandon past religious, moral, and political convictions, 'reform' their ideological attitudes, and even change their basic human nature to conform to the standards set by the Chinese Communist Party. In the sweep of its aims, in the cruel methods of its implementation, and in its terroristic influence on the larger society, the Laogai system arguably outstrips any similar dictatorial instrument in human history.” 1 'Harry Wu, "The Labor Reform Camps of the People's Republic of China (unpublished paper in the author's possession dated October 10, 1989), p. 1. Hereafter as "Labor Reform Camps." AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW The Chinese Communists generally borrowed from the Soviets, replicating, among other things, the Soviet gulag, with some modifications to account for Chinese conditions, on Chinese soil. At the risk of some oversimplification, it may be said that the Chinese Laogai is the Soviet gulag with thought reform and a profit motive. As in the Soviet Union, many large-scale, labor-intensive infrastructural projects-roads, canals, dams, and railroads-have been accomplished with Laogai prisoners, especially in the early years after the Communist revolution. Among the projects completed in the fifties were a hydroelectric dam on the Huai River, the Heilongjiang river valley project, a drainage canal and hydroelectric plant in northern Jiangsu province, the Baotou-Lanzhou railroad project, the Chengdu-Chongqing railroad project, and the Lanzhou-Qinghai railroad project. In the 1960's, the Laogai administration, while continuing such labor-intensive projects as the construction of a network of state farms and highways in Xinjiang, Qinghai and Tibet, also undertook to build a large number of relatively modern factories, using the most advanced technology then available in China. Šuch "special, state-owned enterprises" as the Linfen Automobile Factory in Shanxi province, the Liangxiang Elevator Factory in Beijing, the Huadong Electric Welder Factory in Shanghai, the Zhaoyang Lead Plant in Guizhou province, and the Chngdu Machine Tool Factory in Siquan province date from this time.2 The products of such Laogai enterprises, well made and low priced, found a ready market overseas. Since the opening of China to the West, and the emphasis placed by the central government on export earnings, the Laogai administration has redoubled its efforts to produce for foreign markets. The population incarcerated in the Chinese Laogai increased throughout the fifties and sixties, then was rapidly reduced in the late seventies as Deng Xiaoping ordered the rehabilitation of the victims of earlier campaigns. Many who had been imprisoned for two or even three decades were released. The population of the Laogai reached a post-liberation low. The basic structure and mission of the system did not change, however, and its population of inmates began to increase once again as the eighties progressed. Each of the successive campaigns of the 1980's has sent a new wave of prisoners into the Laogai. Estimates of those who have been added in the crackdown on prodemocracy activists run from several tens of thousands to over one hundred thousand. The best summary of the Laogai's "achievements" is provided by the Beijing regime itself: "Over the past forty years, Laogai production using unskilled labor has included hydroelectric dams, roads, wasteland reclamation, bringing new land under cultivation, and building construction. In the area of skilled labor, [Laogai production] includes many different kinds of both light and heavy industry. In these enterprises the level of mechanization and automation has risen steadily. Some enterprises have received national medals of honor and the [Laogai] system also contributes to the international market.3 THE ORGANIZATION OF THE LAOGAI ARCHIPELAGO There are six basic kinds of organizational units within the Laogai Archipelago: 1) Prisons (Jianyu), usually located near large and medium-sized cities; 2) Labor Reform battalions (Laodona Gaizao Dui) usually located in the countryside; 3) reeducation Through Labor battalions (Laodong Jiaoyana Dui) 4) Forced Job Placement battalions comprised of "free workers," that is, exprisoners who have served their sentences and are kept on in internal exile; 5) detention centers for those people not yet charged. Women prisoners in each of these categories are kept in separate detachments in the same facility. (See Appendix 1) While prisons and detention facilities, including those for juveniles, are usually physically separate from other kinds of units, this is not always true in the case of Labor Reform battalions, Labor reeducation battalions, and Force Job Placement battalions, which are often found together. The Tuanhe Laogai camp, for example, contains within its boundaries a Labor Reform battalion of 3,000 prisoners, a Labor reeducation battalion of 2,400 prisoners, and a Forced Job Placement battalion of 1,500 "free workers."4 A given Laogai camp may have all three types of battalions, 2 See "Labor Reform Camps," p. 4. 3 Quoted in Harry Wu, The Labor Reform Camps of the PRC (Boulder, Co: Westview Press, forthcoming), manuscript p. 38. Hereafter cited as Labor Reform Camps of the PRC. 4 Michael Rank, Master of the Mind: Camp Punished with Reeducation," Reuters Dispatch, Beijing, July 16, 1982. |