Haocong Cheng, born in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, is a senior majoring in History. His honors thesis explores the theoretical framework of the Chinese Re-education through Labor (Laojiao) system from the late 1950s to the early 1960s and analyzes the gap between the system’s ideal and practice. Taking a vertical approach to understand the Re-education through Labor system in practice, he divides the detainees into three categories: prestigious ones such as the last emperor, Puyi; less famous elites including a CCP cadre and a professor of English; and ordinary people, including former detainees he interviewed. His thesis takes a horizontal approach to understand the practice of the system by looking at examples of Re-education through Labor camps in Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Beijing, and Gansu. Through probing a wide range of materials including memoirs, documentary films, declassified personal documents, and reportage literature, Cheng questions whether the practice of the penal system achieved the PRC’s goal to reform detainees and turn them into socialist citizens through a combination of education and manual labor.