Forced Labor in Communist China
![handle is hein.journals/probscmu5 and id is 202 raw text is: CHINA
Forced Labor in Communist China
By KARL A. WITTFOGEL
T HE system of forced labor in Communist China
reflects, in part, earlier Chinese ways; in part, it
imitates the Soviet pattern. Yet, even where it con-
tinues a Chinese tradition, it embraces new Com-
munist features.
This is readily apparent in the two broad categories
of compulsory labor practiced in mainland China.
Corv&e labor, on which the Communist regime relies
heavily to man large state-directed projects, repre-
sents a carry-over, significantly modified, of the tradi-
tional system. To this has been added corrective or
reformatory labor, which is to China an essentially
new and alien form borrowed from the USSR.
The Corv6e
M AO'S regime established a legal basis for the use
of corve labor in Article 9 of the Common
Program of 1949, which specified the performance of
public service as one of the duties of every
citizen of the Chinese People's Republic. By contrast,
the wording of the 1954 Chinese Communist Consti-
tution is less frank, Article 16 merely stipulating that
work is a matter of honor for every citizen; but
actual practice since the adoption of the constitution
clearly indicates that the Communist regime is ex-
tending rather than reducing the scope of corvde labor.
Occasionally, the employment of labor conscription
is interlocked with relief measures, as in the 1954
drafting of huge numbers of Yangtze River flood vic-
tims into corve battalions dispatched elsewhere to
work on railway construction projects.' In such
1 Forced Labor (Report by the Secretary-General of the United Na-
tions and the Director-General of the International Labor Office),
United Nations Economic and Social Council, Doc. E/2815, December
15, 1955, p. 92 ft. (Hereafter cited as UNESC).
Dr. Wittfogel is Professor of Chinese History at the University of
Washington, Seattle, and Director of the Chinese History Project
jointly sponsored by that institution and Columbia University, New
York City. His latest book, Oriental Despotism and Hydraulic Society
(Yale University Press) is scheduled to appear this fall.
34
cases, the borderline between voluntariness and
compulsion may become somewhat obscure. In gen-
eral, however, large government-directed projects in
mainland China are carried out by means of manifestly
obligatory (honorific) labor, and Chinese Com-
munist publications make little effort to conceal the
fact.
Flood control and other hydraulic projects consti-
tute one of the principal areas in which the Com-
munist regime relies heavily on the corvee type of
forced labor. At the end of 1951, Minister of Water
Conservation Fu Tso-yi indicated that an average five
million persons were being mobilized annually to
work on water conservation projects.' Since then,
the regime's capacity to draft and organize forced
labor teams has evidently increased to a marked de-
gree, for the official New China News Agency (NCNA)
reported on May 16, 1955, that between February and
May of that year, 4.4 million civilian laborers had
worked on one segment of China's vast hydraulic sys-
tem, the Yangtze River dikes.
The same methods are employed, with modifica-
tions, in mobilizing labor for the construction and
maintenance of highways and railroads. For ex-
ample, NCNA reported (May 15, 1955) that 48,000
kilometers of highways . . . have been regularly
maintained and renovated by the organized masses,
and another 32,000 kilometers jointly maintained by
the people and highway workers. Also, a 100,000-
man construction force which worked on the Chengtu-
Chungking railway between 1950 and 1952 included,
by Communist admission, 84,000 mobilized civil-
ians, local unemployed, and soldiers; ' and 20,000
2 Jen-rin Jih-pao (People's Daily), Peiping, November 5, 1951.
(Data and quotations from Jen-rain Jih-pao, central organ of the
Chinese CP, are from the Chinese original. References to other
Chinese dailies are based on translations given in the three serial
compilations of the U. S. Consulate General, Hongkong [Current
Background, Survey of the China Mainland Press, Review of Hongkonj
Chinese Press], or in UNESC.)
3 Chungking Hsin-hua Jih-pao, December 7, 1951.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/probscmu5&div=46&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Forced Labor in Communist China
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