In answering the question on doing business with Chinese companies on Sunday’s Philosophy in Action Radio, I made an off-the-cuff comment about how China doesn’t have gulags.

At the time, I was thinking of massive extermination camps like those of Soviet Russia in the 1940s or the concentration camps of the Third Reich. Today, China doesn’t have anything that extensive, but it’s wrong to say that it doesn’t have gulags.

I knew that what I said was wrong the moment that I uttered it.. but the moment slipped away too quickly for a correction. That’s the danger of speaking extemporaneously!

The Chinese version of the gulag, still in existence today, is the Laogai. I’ve not read a ton on it, but here are some sources worth checking out:

• Laogai, the Chinese Gulag by Hongda Harry Wu
• Gulag Reform: Will China Stop Sending Its Dissidents to Labor Camps?
• The Chinese Laogai (by the head of the Laogai Research Foundation)