China’s Microbloggers Take On Re-Education Camps

• Author: Adam Minter

Over the last two years, as China’s microblogging culture has expanded observers inside and outside the country have found hopeful signs that the Communist Party is starting to respect and respond to public opinion voiced online. The most notable case comes from the town of Wukan, where, in December, villagers staged anti-corruption protests that quickly developed a national and supportive online constituency. The Party responded with elections for new local leaders.

Do these recent, allegedly populist, inclinations indicate a government more willing to shape policy to fit public opinion? Or are they just savvy public relations ploys designed to satiate angry online masses? The limits of what China's Web activists can accomplish became clear this week, when outrage erupted over the mother of a kidnap victim's political detention in China's notorious re-education through labor system.

The re-education through labor system dates to the mid-1950s, when it provided local law enforcement with the right to sentence political dissenters without judicial review. In the subsequent decades, the 1957 law that institutionalized the practice has been modified and expanded such that it’s mostly applied to petty criminals like thieves and prostitutes, as well as to petitioners and other political irritants. On Monday, Du Jian, a popular social-media marketing expert in Beijing, tweeted a (now-deleted) explanation of the system to Sina Weibo:

They don’t use judicial procedures; if they use them, it’s just a perfunctory. The bad points of the system are: underage youths and political petitioners are among the majority of the persecuted and the environment of re-education through labor is very bad ....

The maximum sentence under the system is four years of often brutal forced labor (ranging from farm to assembly-line work) supplemented by the occasional bit of coercive political indoctrination. Statistics vary on the size of the system, but according to the Bureau of Re-Education Through Labor Administration, in 2008, 350 facilities nationwide held 160,000 inmates.

The last five years have brought several high-profile calls to abolish the system. Some critics cite incompatibility with the Chinese constitution and international law. Others highlight that an unpopular and randomly implemented law enforcement system -- as a practical matter -- just isn’t a good way to maintain long-term social stability.

The controversial detention case that set off this most...