Jiabiangou Labor Camp (Chinese: 夹边沟; pinyin: Jiābiāngōu; literally "wedged between ditches") is a former farm labor camp (laogai) located in the area under the administration of Jiuquan City in the northwestern desert region of Gansu Province[1]. The camp was in use during the Anti-Rightist Movement in the years from 1957 to 1961[1]. During its operation, it held approximately 3,000 political prisoners, of whom about 2,500 died at Jiabianguo, mostly of starvation[1][2][3][4].
Jiabiangou was a camp for "re-education through labor"[1][2] that was used to imprison intellectuals and former government officials that were declared to be "rightist" in the Anti-Rightist Movement of the Communist Party[1][2]. Some inmates were sent to Jiabiangou on the grounds that they had relatives who had owned a business or held a position in the Kuomintang government[3]. Originally designed as a prison to hold 40 to 50 criminals, the camp was overcrowded with 3,000 political prisoners[1][2]. The camp is located 27 kilometres (17 mi) to the northeast of Jiuquan City[5], on the edge of the Badain Jaran Desert. As a consequence, agriculture in the camp area was limited to small patches of grassland in an oasis surrounded by salt marshes and desert[2]. Yet, no external food supplies were offered to the prisoners. The result was a famine that started in the fall of 1960[2]. In order to survive, prisoners ate leaves[2][6], tree barks[2][6], worms and rats[2][6], human and animal waste[3], and flesh from dead inmates[1][2][6]. The bodies of the dead were left unburied on the sand dunes surrounding the camp[2][5] as the surviving prisoners were too weak to bury them[2]. The starvation at Jiabianguo took place during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Great Chinese Famine (1959-1962), which is estimated to have caused many millions of excess deaths [7].
In December 1960, senior officials of the Communist Party learned of the situation in the camp and launched an investigation. As a result, amnesties were issued to the survivors and the camp's remaining population evacuated early in 1961[2]. In October 1961, the government ordered the closure of Jiabiangou as well as a cover up[1]. Authorities in Gansu[6] assigned a doctor to the fabrication of medical records for every dead inmate stating various natural causes of death, but never mentioning starvation[1].
Partially fictionalized accounts of firsthand recollections from 13 survivors of the camp have been presented in the book Woman from Shanghai: Tales of Survival From a Chinese Labor Camp by Xianhui Yang[8] (originally published as "Farewell to Jiabiangou", Chinese: 告别夹边沟; pinyin: Gàobié Jiābiāngōu, translated into English by Wen Huang with support from a 2007 grant from the PEN Translation Fund). The book was adapted into Wang Bing's 2010 film The Ditch[9]. Another account based on interviews with survivors is given in The Tragedy at Jiabiangou by Xu Zhao (2008), Laogai Research Foundation Publications (Chinese)[4].