Unknown numbers of people have been held as slave laborers in China’s “Laogai” (labor reform camps). Created by the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong, the Laogoi system was intended to “reeducate criminals” and has long used prisoners as a source of cheap labor. Labor and pro-democracy activists have been targeted for Laogai imprisonment: Fu Shengqi was held repeatedly between 1981 and 1995 on charges of counter-revolutionary propaganda, and was granted political asylum in the US in 1996.