Products Made in Chinese Prison Camps Illegally Exported to U.S.

The government-run forced labor prison camps of China might seem thousands of miles away to most Americans, but they are increasingly the source of some of the products in your home. New research has revealed that the consumer goods made in laogais, the Chinese name for these Soviet gulag-style slave factories, are making their way onto the American market at alarming rates. And many of the prisoners at laogais are political dissenters, religious minorities, and other people practicing free speech, imprisoned without a fair trial.

It's currently illegal (according to both China and the U.S.) for China to export any product made in a laogai to America. But the practice is pretty wide-spread, and has been growing unchecked for a number of years. The Chinese NGO the Laogai Research Foundation recently found that more and more laogais were advertising the products made by their prisoners on international export sites, several of which are available in multiple European languages. In total, their research uncovered over 400 listings for laogai-made products on international trade and export sites, waiting to be purchased by an American or European company who might have no way of knowing that product was made by enslaved political prisoners.

You can check out the full text of their report here. Just a quick glance through the names of all the trade sites laogai products were listed on shows the diversity of industries which may be tainted with Chinese forced labor-made goods -- apparel, food, beverages, electronics. There was no label which indicated the goods were made in a laogai, and no indication to U.S. or other companies that importing those goods would be illegal. They even found laogai products being promoted on China Commodity Net, a Chinese government-run website, in direct violation of Chinese, U.S., and international law.

Some groups have claimed that using prisoners for labor isn't such a bad thing. After all, prisoners here in the U.S. clean up highways and print license plates, right? Conditions in laogais are much closer to those of Soviet or even Nazi work camps than modern-day prisons. In their investigation, the Laogai Research Foundation found prisoners forced to handle asbestos and battery acid without protective gear and even witnessed prisoners forced to stand naked in a vat of tanning chemicals to tan leather. Is that how you want your leather jacket or shoes made? Not to mention the number of people in laogais who were sent there without a fair trial for actions most of the world would consider protected free speech. I'm not necessarily defending the use of prisoners for forced labor in any country, but the Chinese laogai system is a unique offender, both because if its size and its cruelty.

Since the export of these forced labor-tainted products is already illegal, the best remedy is for the U.S. and China to do a better job of policing the trade in laogai products. And to be honest, most of the work for that is going to fall on the U.S., because China has a huge economic stake in letting those laws be circumvented so they can profit off laogai goods in an international market. So it's up to us to make a statement -- will we refuse to use things made by enslaved and exploited Chinese prisoners?

Photo credit: lylevincent