In an interview on Communist China

Your final book,China after Deng Xiaoping: the Power Struggle in Beijing since Tiananmen, is more about modern-day China.

Yes, the author is from Hong Kong. He was a newspaper correspondent for many years and he’s written lots of articles about the current situation. Later he was punished by the Chinese for telling the truth. The Chinese media is completely controlled by the Communist Party Propaganda Department. If you violate the rule of the department you will be punished. What Willy Wo-Lap Lam is doing is talking about the power struggles going on in the highest levels.

And would it be dangerous for him to write a book like this? What would happen if he went back to China?

He can’t go back to China. If he went back he would be persecuted for talking about state secrets. He’s talking about the political bureau and high level

They would see him very much as a troublemaker, which is the title of a book you have written about yourself. There are some definite similarities here.

Well, yes, that’s my personal experience. I was in a Chinese prison camp for 19 years but it’s over. I was released in 1979 and I came to the US in 1985. But later on I was rearrested by the Chinese government for going back to China to look at the labour camps and they sentenced me to 15 years back in prison. They charged me with stealing state secrets.

But you were released after a high-profile international campaign.

Yes, people like Hillary Clinton got involved to release me. But I am still not allowed back to China until 2010. I only care about Chinese labour camps. I only wanted to talk to a doctor who I thought was involved with the Chinese government in removing organs from the prisoners when they died. We don’t know how many prisoners are executed every year. Is my wanting to know more about the situation violating some kind of state secret?

Today I am 72 years old. I just want to tell people if you want to maintain the Chinese Communist Party rule in the country you definitely have to set up labour camp systems. That is their way of keeping control over people who speak out. The Soviets had the gulag system and the Soviets helped the Chinese set up the labour camp or laogai systems as they are called.

So why don’t we tell people about it? We talk about the gulags and the Holocaust, but the Chinese labour camps don’t get spoken about. We’re talking about around 50 million deaths.

You are still obviously very much involved in campaigning against human rights abuses in China. All of your book choices are about raising awareness. But the Chinese government would argue that they are reforming albeit slowly.

Yes, but the laogai camps still exist! We should care about that. There are endless museums to commemorate the Holocaust. What about the people who died in China? But the world just cares about economics and doing business with China. I was very surprised when the Chinese President was an honoured guest at the White House. Why don’t they invite Fidel Castro!