It is common knowledge that tyrannical systems need a method of suppression to maintain power. Hitler had his concentration camps, and Stalin had his gulag. Similarly, since the dawn of the People's Republic, Chinese authorities have never hesitated to use the Laogai in their efforts to maintain domestic political control. The main task of the camps continues to be punishment and reformation of criminals in a manner useful to the state. More specifically, the Chinese Communist Party's economic theory posits that human beings remain the most instrumental productive force.
Violence can force submission, but psychological and spiritual acquiescence are best.
In effect, the Laogai is not simply a prison system. It is a political tool for maintaining the Communist Party's totalitarian rule. Some apologists for Beijing posit that the Chinese Communists may be an exception. They propose that the Laogai is not like the gulag, and that China's prison system mirrors that of the United States. Armed with this set of convenient beliefs, some scholars such as James Finerman of Georgetown University compare Chinese prisons favorably to those in America arguing that definite similarities exist between the two systems.