Comparison of United States incarceration rate with other countries
The incarceration rate of the People's Republic of China varies depending on sources and measures. According to the World Prison Brief, the rate for only sentenced prisoners is 118 per 100,000 (as of 2015). The rate for prisoners including estimations for the number of pre-trial detainees and those in administrative detention is 164 per 100,000 (as of 2015). In a 2010 interview Harry Wu, a U.S.-based human rights activist and ex-Chinese labor camp prisoner, estimates that "in the last 60 years, more than 40–50 million people" were in Chinese labor camps, but that period includes the mass incarcerations of the 1950s or the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and is not representative of modern China.
Slavery in the 21st century
In China's system of labour prisons (formerly called laogai), millions of prisoners have been subject to forced, unpaid labour. The laogai system is estimated to currently house between 500,000 and 2 million prisoners, And to have caused tens of millions of deaths. In parallel with laogai, China operated the smaller Re-education through labor system of prisons up until 2013. In addition to both of these, It has been alleged that China is also operating forced labour camps in Xinjiang, imprisoning hundreds of thousands (possibly as many as a million) of muslims, uyghurs and other ethnic minorities and political dissidents.