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Just pulled a disturbing fact off the web — the paper clips at your local Staples office supply store might have been produced by slaves in China.
That’s pretty loaded language, and I’m not sure I buy it altogether — but according to the interactive map at antislavery.org, Allied International Manufacturing, a former stationery supplier for Staples, contracted with prison officials in Nanjing to produce millions of paper clips. They got 60 women — mostly prostitutes, but including some political dissidents — to do the work.
In 1997, an American businessman videotaped the bloody-fingered women at work. The case wound up in court, Allied International Manufacturing was found guilty of violating U.S. laws against forced labor and fined $50,000.
I work in a newsroom and go through a lot of paper clips. I have no idea where they came from.
I also have friends with daughters from Nanjing.
That site has more on the Re-education Through Labor program here, and there are other reports elsewhere on the web.
On the other hand, I live in South Florida, so I can’t really point any fingers. The biggest industry around here is Big Sugar, which has long history of using slave labor, stretching through recent years up to the present day.
For some reason, this never seems to make national news, but maybe it should.
