Why 'Made In China' Typically Means Slave Labor, Religious Persecution

Why 'Made In China' Typically Means Slave Labor, Religious Persecution

By Elise Hilton

All of us own something that says, “Made in China.” 

As the world’s largest economy, China churns out everything from tourist trinkets to sophisticated software. 

The People’s Republic is “on track to produce $17.6 trillion of goods and services this year,” according to Josh Gelernter at National Review Online. 

While that may be good news for the global economy, Gelernter says it’s very bad news for many Chinese. 

They are slaves.
China’s Communist dictators operate more than a thousand 1,000 slave-labor camps. 
The camps are called “laogai,” a contraction of “láodòng gǎizào,” which means “reform through labor.” 

They were conceived under Mao; unlike Stalin’s gulags, they never closed — though the CCP has tried to abolish the name “laogai.” 

In the Nineties, it redesignated the camps “prisons.” 

The conditions, though, don’t seem to have changed. 
Our picture of life in the laogai is murky, but here’s what has been reported: The prisoners are given uniforms and shoes. 

They have to purchase their own socks, underwear, and jackets. 

There are no showers, no baths, and no beds. 

Prisoners sleep on the floor, in spaces less than a foot wide. 

They work 15-hour days, followed by two hours of evening indoctrination; at night they’re not allowed to move from their sleeping-spots till 5:30 rolls around, when they’re woken for another day of hard labor. 

Fleas, bedbugs, and parasites are ubiquitous. 

The prisoners starve on meager supplies of bread, gruel, and vegetable soup. 

Once every two weeks they get a meal of pork broth. 

Chinese law allows for people to be sentenced for up to 4 years, with no judicial proceedings. 

Some of these people are truly criminals; others have been “convicted” of practicing religion or speaking out against the government. 

It’s been reported that many of the people in the slave-labor camps work in dangerous conditions: mining asbestos, working with battery acid with no protective gear, and being forced to stand naked in vats of chemicals used to tan animal hides.
Former inmates have this to say about the Chinese slave-labor camps:
Former Masanjia [one of the labor camps] inmates have been interviewed by the New York Times. They described “frequent beating, days of sleep deprivation, and prisoners chained up in painful positions for weeks on end.” 

One told the Times, “Sometime the guards would drag me around by my hair or apply electric batons to my skin for so long the smell of burning flesh would fill the room.” 

Another said, “I still can’t forget the pleas and howling.” 

About half of Masanjia’s inmates are in for refusing to renounce their religion — mostly followers of Falun Gong and Christians. 
Another note from China turned up in Brazil. 

It was written in English and just four words long: “I slave. Help me.” 
So many of the inmates of these camps are Christians that Gerlernter suggests that “Made in China” be changed to “Made by Chinese Christians.”