Peter

China’s Detention System Joins Forced Labor With Ideological Reform

At a Hoover Institution discussion, historian Frank Dikötter argued that China’s system of political detention has changed its methods but not its core purposes: forced labor and ideological reform. Orville Schell, Rowena He and Glenn Tiffert examined how imprisonment and the threat of it affect families, constrain speech and shape public memory, while Dikötter cautioned against assuming that exposing abuses will bring political change. The speakers also traced the system’s reach into international supply chains and surveillance technology.