15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You Must Read This if you are interested in human progress.., April 24, 2001
"For 19 years, I was one of those prisoners, held for vague offenses against my homeland. My captors said they wanted to reform me, but really, what they wanted was to work me until I dropped. I was lost in the camps that are strategically scattered all over China, where millions of prisoners produce good for Chinese industry. The authorities have different names for the different stages of their camps. I am an alumnus of three stages: reform through labor (laogai), reeducation through labor (laojiao), forced-labor placement (jiuye). For my purposes, I call the entire system laogai." Harry Wu
I have lived or traveled to many different countries excluding China. A friend ask me recently to go to China and I found myself strangely disinterested. China IS an interesting place, a place of the Great Wall, of delicious cooking, fine silk, martial arts, of the original pasta and gun powder, a country full of tradition and culture...so, what's the problem here, I asked myself. Then I remembered a book that really GOT to me...."Troublemaker" by Harry Wu.
As strange as it sounds, I don't want to go to a place where with a bald face, capriciously and callously, insanely and puzzlingly, people are mistreated. Sounds vague? Read on.
There are places in the world where atrocities against humans by other humans are still committed. They give it the name "human rights violation" but it should be called, "people being cruel, mean and destructive to other people." Africa comes to mind. And, North Korea too and other places in the world. It isn't just the developing countries. Even in the U.S., things like this happen. You don't think so? How about the Oklahoma city bombing? How about the dragging death of a black man in Jasper, Texas by some white men who chose the man just because of the different color of his skin?
China is no worse or no better than other places where human are mistreated and humans suffer, but I just did not want to go to China...I was creeped out after reading Harry Wu's book.
Harry Wu spent 19 years in a hard labor camp for making a statement against the Soviet strike down of an Hungarian political uprising. He was a student at the time and idealistic and still very much innocent. He criticized the Soviet's policies not knowing that the Chinese had backed Moscow on what happened in Hungary AND that for making this one statement, his life would be altered forever. When Harry got out of the laogai, the Chinese gulag, he was 42 years old and it was 1979. For ONE remark, he lost 19 years of his life as well as his wife and his youth. His remark was probably more benign than this Amazon.com review I am writing.
What can I say to you...find and read this book if you are interested in China. It will tell you about what goes on under the surface of every day life in China. It isn't about communism vs. democracy, free market vs. collectivism, it is about a human being being mistreated by the collective just because it can happen. Does this sound like science fiction? It sounds like "1984" that people's thoughts and views are sensored and punishments are doled out for them.
So each time you go to a discount store and buy silk flowers, each time you see a "made in China" label on some cheap trinket, you will know that it came from the labor of people shut off in laogais which are scattered all over China, just hidden from view, hoping to go unnoticed. And what of secret organ harvasting and sales? It is still going on: "prisoners" are executed sometimes for their vital organs. If you are young and healthy, then you maybe a target because your organs would be valuable to some rich old man in China or Hong Kong.
Find out what goes on in the world...many things besides the wonderful world of Amazon.com goes on. We are so previlleged to read and be "educated" and write and live this wonderful blessed life, but many of our fellow human beings are in hell on Earth. This book makes you remember this.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling reading; a book difficult to put down!, September 28, 1997
By A Customer
The Chinese have an enormous capacity to absorb and parrot back mistruths, without so much as a blush. I had lunch with one Chinese academic in Beijing not long ago who told me with a straight face that no one died at Tiananmen Square during the 1989 democracy protests. On the face of it, an absurd statement, and yet no less paradoxical than many of the things that the average Chinese says and often times believes. Harry Wu understands this enormous capacity of the Chinese people to adopt a more convenient view of reality, at least for conversational purposes, rather than to face the repression of the Beijing government. After all, Wu is a survivor of 19 years in the Chinese gulag, an unspoken penal system that few Chinese either know about or are willing to acknowledge. For the Westerner who is steeped in the history of the Mao years, China is indeed a puzzle. On the face of it, China resembles very much any other developing capitalist-oriented country. Americans, more than any other people, tend to equate capitalism with democracy. Yet, there are numerous examples of capitalist enterprise economies for which any thoughts of democracy and respect for individual liberties are but a dream. China is simply the latest and biggest example. Bereft of a free press, governed by an undemocratic clique, and endowed with the largest penal system the world has likely ever known, China mystifies us. Harry Wu exposes our myths and misconceptions and argues for Westerners not to brush aside the truths in the pursuit of Asian trade and market share. Many Chinese are antagonized by Wu. China is indeed a better place for the average Chinese than it was during the Mao years. Many Chinese seem to feel that if they just keep quiet, things will slowly continue to get better. Yet, millions of Chinese remain imprisoned, often times for "political" offenses that you or I would find laughable. In the meantime, China is run by unelected elite who, under the guise of capitalism, are allowed to profit from the proceeds of prison labor, while the average Chinese needs to guard his words carefully for fear of becoming a detainee in the "laogai," the Chinese prison labor system.
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