This article is about slavery in China in the pre-modern era. For modern illegal slavery, see Human trafficking in China. For modern legal penal labour, see Laogai.
Earliest recorded form of the Chinese character奴, meaning "slave." It depicts a woman (女) at left, being 'held' by a hand (又), indicating how slaves of the era were often captive women held as concubines and sex slaves.[1][2]
Slavery in China has taken various forms throughout history. Slavery was nominally abolished in 1910,[3][4][5] although the practice continued until at least 1949.[6] The Chinese term for slave (simplified Chinese: 奴隶; traditional Chinese: 奴隸; pinyin: núlì) can also be roughly translated into 'debtor', 'dependent', or 'subject'. Despite a few attempts to ban it, slavery existed continuously throughout pre-modern China, sometimes serving a key role in politics, economics, and historical events. However slaves in China were a very small part of the population due to a large peasant population that mitigated the need for large scale slave labor. The slave population included war prisoners and kidnapped victims or people who had been sold.[7]: 145–147 [8]
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^Schottenhammer, Angela (1 August 2003). "Slaves and Forms of Slavery in Late Imperial China (Seventeenth to Early Twentieth Centuries)". Slavery & Abolition. 24 (2): 143–154. doi:10.1080/01440390308559161. ISSN0144-039X. S2CID143643161.