Stanley Lubman writes for The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2012
Public debate is growing in China over the country’s decades-old practice of sending alleged troublemakers to labor camps for years at a time without formal arrest or trial. The fact that the system, known as “re-education through labor” (laojiao, or RETL), is being debated openly in China has been portrayed in some quarters as evidence of the increasing power of public opinion to bolster rule of law in the country. But is there any evidence of substantive reform?