Seven steps toward the Chinese dream

6. Abolition of LAOJIAO

One of the most hailed moves of China's reform package, both at home and abroad, is the abolition of the controversial "re-education through labor" policy, known as laojiao in Chinese. It was included in the long list of reforms unveiled by the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Nov 15.

Formally established by a central government administrative regulation in 1957, laojiao is a special measure of administrative, rather than criminal, detention. Its purported aim is to punish those who commit offenses not serious enough to require criminal punishment.

Laojiao has undergone significant changes over the years. The earlier lists of targets included politically unreliable individuals. Later, the spectrum of laojiao was expanded to tackle a number of social evils, such as drug addiction, prostitution and gambling. Most recently, so-called illegal petitioning was added to its list of offenses.

"The abolition of laojiao is a triumph for Chinese legal practitioners, and most significantly the Party has shown a genuine interest in acting on people's will, in rectifying social injustice and improving the rule of law," said Zhou Yongkun, a law professor at Soochow University in Jiangsu province and one of the most vociferous critics of the laojiao system.