Human Trafficking Issue in China

Please find below a collection of news dealing with the recent trafficking issues in China. The following was gathered from multiple sources relating to this ongoing disaster.
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China rescued more than 24,000 abducted children and women last year. Some of these victims were sold for adoption while others were forced into prostitution as far away as Angola.

The Ministry of Public Security said that another 77 children were saved in a bust on a cross-province human trafficking network last week.

According to the Irish Times, the ministry told the annual parliament, the National People’s Congress, that the police rescued a total of 8,660 abducted children and 15,458 women in busts of 3,195 human trafficking gangs during 2011.

Agence France-Presse also notes that the trafficking of boy children is a particularly serious problem in China — and is blamed in part on the strict "one-child" policy. Couples unable to conceive a son, or male heir, can simply just obtain one.

Global Times, a state-run newspaper, interviewed Chen Qingwei, a police officer who helped crack down an infant trafficking case in Shandong. Qingwei said that couples who sold their babies were mainly from poverty-stricken areas.

"A boy could fetch a price as high as 50,000 yuan ($7,905)," Chen reportedly said, "with the price for girls at about 30,000 yuan ($4,743). This is far more than what parents could make by farming the land." (CNN)

Girls, in the meantime, were sold to foreign adoptive parents as "orphans," CNN reported, according to the Southern Metropolis News.

Times also wrote that several Vietnamese gangs were also smuggling children from Vietnam into China.

AFP reported that the public security ministry said that they had cracked nearly 3,200 trafficking gangs last year, including a ring that sent Chinese women to Angola to work as prostitutes.

"In November 2011, the public security ministry dispatched a police team to Angola... and detained 16 suspects and freed 19 Chinese women," according to AFP.

Girls and women also are abducted and used as laborers or as brides for unwed sons (Irish Times).

On the bright side, Times also writes that the ministry had cited its work in helping reunite children with their families using new technology, such as a DNA database and a Weibo microblog account.

The ministry also vowed sterner crackdowns against trafficking, says the Xinhua News Agency.
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This updated was posted by ShiShi Ma. The article sources are listed below:
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17330203
- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16072888
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8130900.stm