Such profit-making institutions are obviously exploitative of the cultural prejudice that exists and has been mentioned and only strengthens it. Those who profit from such arrangements are not improving, and are not trying to improve, a bad situation, they are relying on it, reinforcing it, and laughing all the way to the bank.

Agreed, they should close them down immediately and send those dwarfs back into the Chinese labor force where their talents can be fully appreciated. Though the pimp that begs them out probably won't provide free room and board like the Empire.

@Alex: something like that happened when slavery was abolished in the US.

Just wondering, how do you know who runs this place and is exploiting them? Are these assumptions, or do you have information.

What I read about it was that they operate it themselves and get paid... not that there's someone else behind it all taking their money and putting them back in their cages at night.

@jopasny: exploitation has nothing to do with cages, it has to do with using people. I seriously doubt whether the folks who run it as a business do it for a simple salary.

I didn't mean they literally have cages... but ok, I'm also a little skeptical about who actually runs the show, however, I haven't seen or read anything that indicates it's done in a shady (or shadier than normal Chinese business) way. 3000 yuan/month is a pretty normal salary, so they make enough money. I was more or less wondering what you heard or saw that indicated someone is behind the scenes exploiting them?

It's a private business that makes a profit by exhibiting disadvantaged people and pandering to longtime, widespread cultural prejudice, thereby reinforcing that prejudice.
On the other hand, the Dwarf Empire might well provide an environment, opportunity and encouragement for these people to organize.
On the salaries/wages: the question is one of human dignity, not cash.

Yeah, I'd agree that moral scale it's not exactly up to par, but that's based on what I would expect back home, not in China. If I went it wouldn't be to point at the little people and throw peanuts at them though. By the sounds of it, it seems like it was pretty hard for them outside of the "kingdom". It's imperfect at best, but maybe the better alternative.

Not sure where your back home is, so I don't know anything about the morality there.
Racial segregation was an alternative to equal opportunity in the US, as was apartheid in South Africa, until people wouldn't put up with it any more. Equal opportunity is an ongoing project - the alternatives of today are exactly the ones that aren't satisfactory, & lead to the creation of a new alternative which does not yet exist. Nothing stands still. The record of this is called History, and there has not yet been anyone in the record who was not a participant, though there have been many who weren't very clear about what they were doing, and nobody who was completely clear, the devil usually being in the details.

yes we thought we would drag afganistan and iraq to our ways and look where that got them and us