Chinese Inmates Forced to Farm Gold Online

Liu says he was one of scores of pris­on­ers forced to play online games to build up cred­its that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old, a for­mer prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for “ille­gally peti­tion­ing” the cen­tral gov­ern­ment about cor­rup­tion in his home­town, reck­ons the oper­a­tion was even more lucra­tive than the phys­i­cal labour that pris­on­ers were also forced to do.

“Prison bosses made more money forc­ing inmates to play games than they do forc­ing peo­ple to do man­ual labour,” Liu told the Guardian. “There were 300 pris­on­ers forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000–6,000rmb [£470–570] a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The com­put­ers were never turned off.”

Will this spawn a fair trade vir­tual goods economy?