‘You Work Like Animals’- Inside China’s Vast Prison Labor System

For three years on and off, Li Dianqi worked for about 17 hours a day making cheap clothing—from bras to trousers—in a Chinese prison. She worked for no pay and faced punishment by prison guards if she failed to meet production quotas. One time, a team of about 60 workers who couldn’t reach their quota were forced to work for three days straight, not allowed to eat or go to the bathroom. The guards would shock the prisoners with electric batons whenever they dozed off. Li described the prison, Liaoning Women’s Prison, located in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, Liaoning Province, as “not a place for humans to stay.” “They arrest you and make you work. You work like animals,” Li said. Li, now 69 and living in New York, was imprisoned at the facility from 2007 to 2010 for refusing to give up her belief in the spiritual practice Falun Gong. The Chinese regime has maintained an expansive persecution campaign against Falun Gong since 1999, after the practice surged in popularity to roughly 100 million adherents, according to official estimates.