Public debate is growing in China over the country’s decades-old practice of sending alleged troublemakers to labor camps for years at a time without formal arrest or trial. The fact that the system, known as “re-education through labor” (laojiao, or RETL), is being debated openly in China has been portrayed in some quarters as evidence of the increasing power of public opinion to bolster rule of law in the country.
But is there any evidence of substantive reform?
Controversy over laojiao broke out into the open recently following a social media storm over the case of Tang Hui, the mother of a young girl who had been kidnapped, raped and sold into prostitution by seven men.
Tang was sentenced by the police without a trial to 18 months of laojiao in August.Her offense? She had vigorously and publicly protested against police delay in responding to the crime and demanded death sentences for all the men involved.
(Two did receive death sentences and the others received lengthy sentences.) Public outcry not only led to Tang Hui’s release so that she could be “re-educated without detention,” but also fueled support for public discussion of the need to reform the system and, in the words of one Bloomberg report, “demonstrated the occasional power of microblogged public opinion.”
The notorious system of using laojiao as an administrative punishment for minor crimes was created in the mid-1950s, first to deal with persons who were not “politically reliable” but had not committed crimes for which they could be sent to jails or “labor reform camps.” It was quickly expanded to those who had committed minor criminal offenses and who were sentenced to “control” under police supervision in their communities. Laojiao was subsequently applied to “rightists” and other categories of offenders such as habitual criminals, employees who did not obey job assignments, and released criminals who had “endangered public order.”
