D&B Profiles Wang Dan’s Last Laogai: Liaoning Province Jinzhou Switch Factory

 

Wang Dan spent his first four-year sentence in Beijing’s notorious Laogai for political prisoners, Qinzheng Prison. After his second "conviction" in 1996, he was held in the Liaoning Province Jinzhou Prison. This Laogai previously operated under the commercial name "Liaoning Jinzhou Xinsheng (New Life) Switch Factory." This camp is also a well-known Laogai enterprise. It too was profiled in the 12-volume set Directory of China’s National Enterprises.

"Liaoning Jinzhou Switch Works, located at the coast of the Bohai Sea, is a public enterprise specializing in producing high and low voltage electric switches and complete sets of switching equipment. It is also one of the member enterprises of both the Automation Equipment Corp. and Northeast Electronic Transmission Equipment Manufacturing Corp. The works, founded in 1952, covering an area of 538,000 square meters, has fixed assets of 65 million yuan [NOTE: US$7,784,000], 780 sets of equipment and more than 5,000 employees including 400 engineers and technicians. It also has the multiple capacities of casting, forging, plating, insulating, painting, machining, cold-working and mould-manufacture assembly, etc.

 

 

"The works can produce 58 series including 265 kinds of products, some of them have reached the advanced international levels in the 1980s, such as high-voltage circuit breaker and panel, etc. ... During 1984-1990 its 7 kinds of products won

‘Superior Quality Product’ granted by the state, the Ministry and Liaoning Province respectively for 14 times, among them, type SN-1011 indoor high-voltage low-oil content circuit breaker won the National Gold Medal in 1985 and the same product type SN-101 also won the National Gold in 1991.... Since 1985, the works has been selected as an "Advanced Enterprise" by Liaoning Province and Jinzhou City for 5 times. It became National Second-Grade Enterprise in 1989."*

The D&B entry for this camp is reprinted below:

SOURCE: Directory of Key Manufacturing Companies in P.R. China 1995/96, p. 748.

In April 1998, Wang Dan was taken from his cell at Jinzhou Prison and put on a plane for the United States to become another political exile.

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*Directory of China's National Enterprises, Compiled by the Commission for Directing State Enterprise Management of the State Council Beijing; China Reform Publishing House, Vol.12. p.538.

 

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