Harry Wu (1937) was born in Shanghai to a well-off family and studied with the Jesuits before entering the Geological Institute in Beijing. He was arrested at the age of twenty-three and sentenced to forced labour without trial, from which he would not be released until almost twenty years later. In the mid-eighties he won a scholarship to work at the University of California and managed to go into exile in the United States. Since then he has been fighting to raise awareness of the Chinese prison system and the human rights violations that occur in that country. To this end, in 1992 he founded The Laogai Research Foundation, an NGO that he still heads and through which he continues to draw the attention of the international community to the lack of freedom in China, trying to force the democratic opening of its political system.

Wu has written several books about Laogai (China's network of labor camps and prisons), including Laogai: The Chinese Gulag (1992), Bitter Winds: Memoirs of My Years in the Chinese Gulag (1994), and Troublemaker: One Man's Crusade against China's Cruelty (1996).