Talk:Slavery in China

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 September 2020 and 22 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Brittanyli. Peer reviewers: Siyuan Cheng, Reuentahl404, Ra5en.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:28, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

problems
In general, I agree with the criticisms of LlywelynII below.

I would also like to point out that the line "YA-TOU 丫頭. Slave girl, a female slave. Slave girls are very common in China; nearly every Chinese family owns one or more slave girls generally bought from the girl's parents,.." is complete nonsense. It may be someone's authentic Qing Dynasty observation, but they were mistaken. Servants, of course from poor families, were common in the upper and middle class. However poor servants are not slaves and could leave if there was a better opportunity.

Also the exclusion of Tibet appears very biased. Tibet had a slave-based economy prior to reunification in 1950. How can such a horrendous example be excluded?

The introduction to this article does not make it clear that, with the exception of Tibet, slavery was rare in China throughout most of it's long history. To not set a comparative context makes this article appear very biased.

--an eternal newbie

Modern slavery
Although slavery was legally abolished in 1910, cases still arise where people have been exploited as slaves, particularly in mines. shouldn't this be documented as well?

Also what about Tibet? Slavery existed there as well... / perhaps it should have its own article Cashie (talk) 23:56, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Two points here
 * 1, eunuchs =/= slaves Eunuchs are personal assistants to the Emperor and they only lose connection to their families because of such important service. That's a pretty big diff from slave labor. Prisoners =/= eunuchs and mostly aren't known to be castrated. And prisoner labor is also diff from slave labor. eg. There is prisoner labor in the modern world.


 * 2, More related to the stuff above. You can't have it both ways. Either Tibet isn't part of China and so this has nothing to do with slavery in China or Tibet is a part of China. The Communist Party in China abolished their tradition of slavery but it doesn't have enough of a hold on their governing structure /since Tibet is an autonomous region/ to ensure they don't continue those practices. This is Tibetan Slavery and it was their custom. Same goes for Xin Jiang.


 * I wanna paraphrase what others have said about slavery in the world: Slavery is everywhere and China isn't an exception but China hasn't been based on slavery and doesn't derive much history from such practices. /just the length of this article should show as much./ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.38.213.212 (talk) 20:25, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
 * 3, With respect, you don't really know what you're talking about. Chinese slavery was never as absolute as Greco-Roman or European versions. Eunuchs and prisoners were precisely 奴, which gets translated into English as "slave", despite having many points of difference with the institution as it developed in the West. As one example, slaves generally existed only by voluntary contract, contracts which could have provisions such as "I am to guard your house". One "slave" successfully fought his master's attempt to make him do other work by pointing to his paperwork.


 * Similarly, the short nature of this article just shows how little work has been done in the field and how little it interests both Chinese – who are mostly over it – and westerners – who have their own issues and ideas about slavery that the Chinese situation just doesn't fit with. CCP Marxist attempts to fit China into western timelines involving "slavery" and "feudalism" muddy the water even more: the Chinese version of this article claims with a straight face that the Roman Empire was the only slave-based society in world history and that it's an uncommon arrangement in human societies (presumably because it didn't develop similarly in China).


 * 4, Tibet is a territory administered by China and any slavery under the Qing or continued slavery following its reannexation goes here.

5. Indian slaves in China? No Chinese army in history including the Tang got anywhere close to the Indian border. The Tangs were smashed by the Tibetans,so there would have been plenty of Chinese slaves. Some of these could have landed in Indian territory. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.161.34.248 (talk) 12:11, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 5, there are modern slaves, such as the workers found in the brickworks just a few years ago. The situation is naturally publically deplored, but the level of independence by provincial bosses is such that such extreme corruption can happen. Worth mentioning. — LlywelynII  05:19, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Article expansion
Speaking of the paucity of information in this article: first, it could use more booi aha, and second, a few sources are here and here (search for "slave", "slavery" to find other pages). This author takes the extreme but arguable view that traditional obligations in Chinese society essentially involve the enslavement of women to their households, but she also makes less tendentious points about the availability and relative value of male/female slaves and the explanations. — LlywelynII  05:19, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

the great leap forward
Mention of this as forcing hundreds of millions of people into communes to work on the land in industrial projects with little or no human rights is slavery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.168.125.28 (talk) 12:16, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Slavery in Yunnan
How come there is no mention of the slave trade that was active in Yunnan until the late 1950s.

— Autonomous 07:51, 07 Feb 2011 (GMT)

Merging articles
Slavery in China should be merged into this article. The Slavery of China article contains no info that could not be merged. It seems redundant to have both.

Lusanders (talk) 05:52, 26 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't know if it's worth anything, since I'm an IP editor and this has been here for more than a year, but I definitely agree with this. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 15:07, 28 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I agree with this merge too. John Hill (talk) 20:54, 28 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Seems like an obvious merge—there doesn't seem to be any reason for the "History" article to be separate. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:56, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Addition to Article
This article contains a thorough history of slavery, but I felt that it was lacking in other areas of information. For example, how do people become slaves? Is there any way to escape being a slave? - Brittanyli (talk) 22:43, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi, you are right! This can be one of the area that should be mentioned in the Wiki. Beside that, We should also add one more area about how the slavery be treated. For example, any rule that they need to comply.__Ericsze555 (talk) 05:13, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

I have added information on the conditions to becoming a slave in China as well as details around the lives of the slaves. I believe that this adds to the article and creates a bigger picture as opposed to just the history and timeline of slavery in China. - Brittanyli (talk) 20:44, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Low quality of Modern section
The Modern section of the article contains few to no scholarly sources and the sources used contain tenuous relationship to the content - ex. neither the date 2020 or Trump are mentioned in the cited source, nor are the linked brands Nike, Apple or Gap mentioned. Better sources are needed. Qiushufang (talk) 03:10, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * the sources provided meet Wikipedia's standards for identifying reliable sources. i have fixed the placement of one source and added another. if there is to be a slavery in China article, then it only makes sense to at least include a small section on the 3,800,000 slaves currently in China. :^) 173.87.169.231 (talk) 06:28, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Nowhere in the source provided does it say Trump warned American businesses such as Nike, Gap, and Apple. The source given actually says it was activist groups. This is original research.Qiushufang (talk) 07:48, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately none of the sources provided provided adequate description of the content. Of the three sources cited for the sentence at the end of the Modern section, none actually make mention of "slave labor" in the body of their article.Qiushufang (talk) 20:12, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

I've more or less annihilated the section due to the poor quality of information in the modern section (and it was chronologically misplaced). Added some links to various political labour camps and human trafficking in China, which I think more adequately handle the topic. Skerbs (talk) 20:18, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding Modern Slavery?
I do not see a specific page on Wikipedia that writes about the current working conditions and wage in China. I am thinking about adding a new page that specifically discuss the poverty in China, working conditions in underdeveloped cities and rural areas. I would like to discuss the reasons and history why the situation has developed so far. HRSun04 (talk) 02:21, 15 September 2023 (UTC)