Laogai: Prison Nation - Inside China's Ruling System
28/03/2023
After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Mao Tsetung established a system of labor camps for systematic repression, known as Laogai, an abbreviation for "Reform Through Labor". In such camps, forced labor and physical and mental torture were used to bring about a so-called mental reform, re-education in the spirit of the Chinese Communist Party. Millions of Chinese were affected. Many were executed. In hundreds of camps, the Party took advantage of the prisoners' free labor to build the economy. Self-criticism and denunciation were often the only way to escape martyrdom. Successive waves of purges culminated in the Cultural Revolution, which saw massive human rights abuses, political assassinations, massacres, and exiles in remote parts of the country. Using unreleased archive footage, the documentary tells the story of the invention, development and improvement of China's totalitarian system of surveillance and repression up to the present day, never told before.
TV Show Information
Camille Sannes
as Self - Narrator (voice)
Ai Weiwei
as Self - Interviewee
Ren Wanding
as Self - Interviewee
Wang Juntao
as Self - Interviewee
Li Shuying
as Self - Interviewee
Wei Zidan
as Self - Interviewee
Ping Hu
as Self - Interviewee
Wei Jingsheng
as Self - Interviewee
Gulbahar Haitwaji
as Self - Interviewee
Xiao Qiang
as Self - Interviewee
Tong Yi
as Self - Interviewee
Teng Biao
as Self - Interviewee
Liao Yiwu
as Self - Interviewee
Cai Changguo
as Self - Interviewee
Song Yongyi
as Self - Interviewee
Xu Youyu
as Self - Interviewee
Mai Gang
as Self - Interviewee
Feng Guojiang
as Self - Interviewee
Chen Pokong
as Self - Interviewee
David Li
as Self - Interviewee
Liu Qing
as Self - Interviewee
Wang Dan
as Self - Interviewee
Mao Zedong
as Self (archive footage)
Deng Xiaoping
as Self (archive footage)
Xi Jinping
as Self (archive footage)
Jiang Zemin
as Self (archive footage)
Liu Shaoqi
as Self (archive footage)
Zhou Enlai
as Self (archive footage)
Kang Sheng
as Self (archive footage)
Lin Biao
as Self (archive footage)
Philippe Bozo
as Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Jean-Pol Brissart
as Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Marc Brunet
as Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Bernard Demory
as Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Yumi Fujimori
as Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Michel Laroussi
as Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Martial Le Minoux
as Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Tony Marot
as Self - Additional Voice (voice)
Jean-Pascal Quilichini
as Self - Additional Voice (voice)
