回眸夹边沟：劳改农场如何成为死亡集中营？

A Survivor Looks Back at China’s Most Notorious Labor Camp

夹边沟农场计划任务书。

The English translation follows below.

1956年到1957年 ，在中共中央“百花齐放、百家争鸣”的“双百政策”以及随之而来的“大鸣大放”号召之下，中国的各界知识分子积极向党谏言，结果却被卷入“反右运动”，数十万人被划为“资产阶级右派”，他们的言论也被视作是“对党的恶毒进攻”。其中，约3000名“右派分子”被送到位于甘肃酒泉戈壁滩上的国营夹边沟农场，进行劳动教养。

被送到夹边沟农场的这些人，只是全国50多万右派分子中的一小部分，他们中的大部分人都没能活着离开夹边沟。酷刑般的劳动，加上规模空前的大饥荒，让夹边沟农场留下累累尸骨。那些死里逃生者，则终生背负着如深渊般黑暗的记忆。

2000年代初，得益于中国当时比较宽松的言论环境，一些夹边沟的幸存者开始发表回忆录和接受采访讲述自己的经历，希望以此警醒世人，让悲剧不再重演。同时，夹边沟的惨烈情况也吸引了一些记者、作家的注意。他们投入大量时间和资源，走访幸存者及遇难者家属，查阅资料，试图还原和重现这段历史。

《恍若隔世——回眸夹边沟》一书即是这段时期的成果之一。作者邢同义历时数年写成此书，通过挖掘隐藏于时间夹缝中的碎片，为读者拼凑出一幅关于夹边沟的相对完整和可靠的历史图景。邢同义曾任酒泉地委副书记和酒泉市人大常委会主任，这层身份使他得以接触到一些关键史料和人物，也使得这本书在当事人口述的基础上，还补充了重要的历史背景和信息。例如，通过后来的夹边沟林场场长，作者获得了当年建立夹边沟劳改农场（后改为劳教农场）的《计划任务书》，读者从中可以看到，一个纸面上看似设想周全、合理的劳改农场，如何在现实中却成为死亡集中营。

夹边沟地理位置图。

邢同义还通过当年酒泉县检察院的检察官，了解到当时因“抗拒劳教”而被起诉的四十多名“右派分子”的情况，这是目前关于“反右运动”的作品较少触及的内容。邢认为，这些人是“不幸者中的最大不幸者”，他们大多是因饥饿而偷吃、盗窃或者发表“反动言论”而被起诉。这一个个不幸者的故事，让宏大历史中的模糊面孔变得真实而清晰，也揭示出政治运动的残酷与荒诞。例如，邢同义在书中详细讲述了“右派分子”马述麒的故事。当时农场一头黑骟骡因与其他牲畜抢食而被踢伤，经精心护理仍不治而死亡。因为黑骟骡是重要劳力，农场为此写了一份详细的说明材料，还向酒泉县人民检察院提请以破坏生产罪逮捕当时担任饲养组组长的马述麒，指其偷吃牲口饲料才导致牲畜打架。而与此形成鲜明对照的，是大批因劳累和饥饿而死亡的右派分子，死后连一个坟头都没有，遑论像样的死亡报告。

《恍若隔世》中亲历者的讲述清晰揭示出，“反右”并非如官方所说，是一场不小心走过头的言论纠偏运动，而是当权者对于异议言论的蓄意打压；大饥荒也并非不可抗的自然灾害，而是极权制度下的一场人祸。书中不少受访者，包括作者自己，都将问题归结于共产党因犯了“左”的错误而将反右运动推向极端。但书中人物的经历表明，这些右派知识分子明明都是共产党的忠实拥护者。他们在中央号召下提出的建议，从反官僚、反特权，到警惕“党天下”，都恰恰是为了帮助党践行其掌权之初对全社会的承诺，结果却因言获罪。

通过这些个人讲述，我们可以看到，在1949年后政治运动频仍的中国，处于不同历史时期的人们，遭遇却如此相似，背后的极权逻辑也一以贯之。当社会中只有一种声音，当权者就可以垄断真相、“指鼠为鸭”, 只为讲好整齐划一的“中国故事”。近年的例证之一就是新冠疫情中的封控政策：民众在荒谬的封控之下艰难求生，官方却在另一边制造着举国体制战胜疫情的幻象，并将所有试图传播真相的人划为敌对者或境外势力。讽刺的是，反右运动中，有的人（例如书中的李景沆）是因为提意见不够积极而被打成右派，学校领导认为他“不说，却比说还要反动”。可见，在翻云覆雨的政治运动裹挟之下，人们连沉默的基本自由都被剥夺，就像2022年底不堪忍受而发起白纸抗议的人们，连举起一张白纸都成了罪过。

通过挖掘被埋葬的真相，邢同义让那些被官方长年屏蔽的、历史幕后的主角走到了前台，为无声者提供了发声的平台。如今，网络的存在让个人更容易分享自己的故事，但同时我们也面临更加严酷的言论审查和更具隐蔽性的政治宣传。即便如此，还是有无数为真相和自由而奔走的行动者，一次又一次冒着失去自由的代价，记录下我们这个时代的历史。这些珍贵的记录，让不同时空的普通人得以看到对方，意识到自身境遇的系统性，也将不断为人们争取自由的抗争提供动力和指引。

本期推荐档案：

邢同义：《恍如隔世——回眸夹边沟》

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Jiabiangou Labor Farm project task document.

A Survivor Looks Back at China’s Most Notorious Labor Camp

From 1956 to 1957, following the Chinese Communist Party’s call for “letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend,” intellectuals from all walks of life actively offered their opinions and advice to the Party. However, tens of thousands were soon labelled as bourgeois rightists, and accused of launching “vicious attacks against the Party.” Among them, around 3,000 were sent to the state-run Jiabiangou Labor Camp, located in the Gobi Desert near Jiuquan in Gansu Province, for Re-education through Labor.

Those who were sent to Jiabiangou were a small fraction of over 500,000 individuals labeled rightists across the country, but their fates were among the most cruel. Brutal labor and an unprecedented famine turned the camp into a mass grave for more than 2,000. Those who survived carried with them harrowing memories that shadowed the rest of their lives.

In the early 2000s, thanks to China's relatively relaxed environment for free speech, some survivors of Jiabiangou began publishing memoirs and giving interviews to share their experiences, hoping to alert the public and prevent such tragedies from happening again. At the same time, the horrific events at Jiabiangou also drew the attention of journalists and writers. They dedicated substantial time and resources to visiting survivors and the families of victims, researching archival materials, and attempting to reconstruct and bring to light this dark chapter of history.

Worlds Away: A Look Back at Jiabiangou is one such product of this period. The author, Xing Tongyi, spent several years writing it. By uncovering fragments hidden in the crevices of time, he pieced together a relatively complete and reliable historical portrait of Jiabiangou. Xing formerly served as Deputy Secretary of the Jiuquan Municipal Party Committee and Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Jiuquan Municipal People’s Congress. This background gave him access to key historical documents and individuals. As a result, the book not only presents oral accounts from those involved but also supplements them with important historical context and information.

For example, through the later director of the Jiabiangou Forest Farm, Xing obtained the “Project Assignment Document” for establishing the Jiabiangou labor farm. Readers can see how a seemingly well-thought-out and reasonable reform-through-labor farm on paper became a death camp.

The location of Jiabiangou Labor Farm on a map.

Xing also learned from prosecutors then working at the local procuratorate about more than forty Rightists who were prosecuted for resisting re-education through labor—a subject rarely touched upon in existing literature about the Anti-Rightist Movement. Xing considers these people “the most unfortunate among the unfortunate.” Most of them were prosecuted for stealing food due to starvation, petty theft, or making reactionary remarks.

Their tragic stories give real faces and clarity to otherwise vague historical figures, exposing the cruelty and absurdity of political campaigns. For instance, the book recounts in detail the story of Rightist Ma Shuqin. At the time, a black mule was injured during a fight over food with other animals and later died despite careful treatment. Because the mule was a vital source of labor, the farm submitted a detailed report and requested that the local procuratorate arrest Ma, who was head of the feeding team, on the charge of “sabotaging production,” alleging he caused the fight by stealing animal feed. In stark contrast, countless Rightists died from exhaustion and hunger, their bodies buried without graves, let alone any formal death records.

The firsthand accounts in Worlds Away make clear that the Anti-Rightist Campaign was not, as officially claimed, a well-intentioned but overzealous movement, but a deliberate crackdown on dissent by those in power. Similarly, the Great Famine was not an unavoidable natural disaster, but a man-made catastrophe under an authoritarian regime. Many interviewees in the book, including the author himself, attribute the problems to the Communist Party’s “leftist” mistakes that pushed the Anti-Rightist Campaign to the extreme.

But the experiences of the people profiled in the book show that these so-called Rightist intellectuals were, in fact, loyal supporters of the Communist Party. Their proposals—ranging from opposing bureaucracy and privilege to warning against “one-party dominance”—were precisely meant to help the Party fulfill the promises it made to society when it first came to power. Yet they were punished for speaking out.

Through these personal narratives, we can see that in post-1949 China, a country marked by successive political movements, people from different eras often suffered in strikingly similar ways, all rooted in the same authoritarian logic. When only one voice is allowed in society, those in power can monopolize the truth and “call a mouse a duck,” all in the name of crafting a unified “China story.”

A recent example of this is the strict lockdown policy during the COVID-19 pandemic: while ordinary people struggled to survive under absurd restrictions, the state propagated an illusion of national triumph over the virus, branding anyone trying to tell the truth as an enemy or foreign force. Ironically, during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, some people (such as Li Jinghang, mentioned in the book) were labeled Rightists not for speaking out, but for not speaking enthusiastically enough. School authorities accused him of being “more reactionary by staying silent than by speaking.”

This shows that in the unpredictable tides of political movements, even the basic freedom to remain silent can be stripped away—just like those in late 2022 who could no longer endure and joined the White Paper protests, where even raising a blank sheet of paper became a crime.

By unearthing buried truths, Xing brings the long-silenced protagonists of history to the forefront. Today, the Internet allows individuals to more easily share their stories, but we also face more stringent censorship and increasingly subtle political propaganda. Even so, countless people continue to risk their freedom to document the truth of our time. These invaluable records enable ordinary people across time and space to see and understand each other, to recognize the systemic nature of their own suffering, and to draw strength and guidance in the ongoing struggle for freedom.

Recommended archive:

Xing Tongyi: Worlds Away: A Look Back at Jiabiangou