It's weird how we decide what people deserve "liberation" and what people we just shrug our shoulders at and keep supporting, in one form or another, the government that is oppressing them.
Though the conditions of labor in China seem shocking to comfortable Americans, they are not, in general, "slave prison labor".
Say you want to build a new building. The workers are brought to the construction site, and they live on the site 24/7, taking shifts to sleep in a small cot. When they are not sleeping they are working (7 days a week). They do not see their families for months during the job. They work on site for several months, and will only receive pay after the building is done. If you have to leave the site for some reason (say a sick or dying relative, or you get sick yourself) before the building is done, you forfeit all your pay. You could have worked 6 months on a job, and if you hurt yourself, you go home without even $1.
It's a deplorable condition being forced to live where you work. It's a prison, even if voluntary.
I do know that the several thousand people my employer has in manufacturing there are not slave labor.
"Using their vast pools of free labour, China's prisons produce everything from green tea to coal, paperclips to footballs, medical gloves to high-grade optical equipment."
http://www.goiam.org/index.php/news/iam-news/2007-iam-news-a...
"Prison Labor is also being exploited in China, according to executive director of the Laogai Research Foundation Harry Wu, who said prison laborers make garments, electronic components, coffee mugs and toys that end up in U.S. stores. “The Chinese government continues to use forced labor to make goods, condones sweatshop conditions in its factories, and refuses to allow workers to create independent unions-- is it really any wonder that low-quality, harmful toys are being exported to the US and into the hands of our children?” said Wu, who spent 19 years in a Chinese prison.
Wal-Mart was singled out for their role in allowing the exploitation of cheap Chinese labor. “Wal-Mart bears a lion’s share of responsibility for pushing the toy industry into a region where product safety and worker safety inspection is virtually nonexistent,” said Bama Athreya, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum."
http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa45502.000/hf...
1998 FORCED LABOR IN CHINA - HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITEE ON INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS
I believe North Korea is facing another famine this year. Given the conditions in North Korea and the apparent iron grip its regime has on power is it better not to provide food aid? I can't decide for myself if it's better, for the long term, to let the nation starve and not help the people out or to feed them. I don't see a clear cut right or wrong way to view aid to North Korea. It's a disturbing case.