Chinese Prison Labor

In your Sept. 14 editorial on free trade, you make the claim that the “conciliatory approach” of the Bush Administration has caused an important breakthrough in China’s human rights policies: Beijing is now “barring the use of prison labor for manufactured exports.”

You must be basing this claim on the Aug. 7 “Memorandum of Understanding” signed by the U.S. and Chinese governments. It’s a very clever document. In it, Beijing reaffirms what it has always said before: that it is against China’s regulations to export prison labor products. Beijing has repeatedly taken that position even when confronted with documentary and video evidence of massive and systematic exports of prison labor products.

In fact, even as that “Memorandum of Understanding” was being negotiated, the general manager of an automobile factory using prison labor in Liaoning province, Liu Dehao, was soliciting business by mail from foreign businessmen. That revelation is contained in a new Asia Watch report that adds to mountains of evidence documenting how China uses its prison labor force to compete in the global economy.

As a public relations gesture, Beijing recently issued a “White Paper on Criminal Reform in China.” It is enlightening to compare its claims against evidence provided by the recent Asia Watch report.

KENNETH P. HUTCHISON, Executive Director, Asian-American Free Labor Institute, Washington