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Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery

Poverty drives the unsuspecting poor into the hands of traffickers

Published reports & articles from 2000 to 2025                                         gvnet.com/humantrafficking/China.htm

People’s Republic of China

The Chinese government faces numerous economic development challenges, including: (a) strengthening its social safety net, including pension and health system reform, to counteract a high domestic savings rate and correspondingly low domestic demand; (b) sustaining adequate job growth for tens of millions of migrants, new entrants to the work force, and workers laid off from state-owned enterprises deemed not worth saving; (c) reducing corruption and other economic crimes; and (d) containing environmental damage and social strife related to the economy's rapid transformation.

Description: Description: Description: China

 

Economic development has been more rapid in coastal provinces than in the interior, and approximately 200 million rural laborers and their dependents have relocated to urban areas to find work.  [The World Factbook, U.S.C.I.A. 2009]

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation. Although the majority of trafficking in the PRC occurs within the country’s borders, there is also considerable trafficking of PRC citizens to Africa, other parts of Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America. Women are lured through false promises of legitimate employment and forced into commercial sexual exploitation largely in Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan. Chinese women and men are smuggled throughout the world at great personal financial cost and then forced into commercial sexual exploitation or exploitative labor to repay debts to traffickers. Women and children are trafficked to China from such countries as Mongolia, Burma, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, Romania, and Ghana for purposes of forced labor, marriage, and sexual slavery.   - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009   Check out a later country report here or a full TIP Report here

 

 

CAUTION:  The following links have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in the USA.  Some of these links may lead to websites that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false.  No attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content.

HOW TO USE THIS WEB-PAGE

Students

If you are looking for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this page and others to see which aspects of Human Trafficking are of particular interest to you.  Would you like to write about Forced-Labor?  Debt Bondage? Prostitution? Forced Begging? Child Soldiers? Sale of Organs? etc.  On the other hand, you might choose to include precursors of trafficking such as poverty and hunger. There is a lot to the subject of Trafficking.  Scan other countries as well.  Draw comparisons between activity in adjacent countries and/or regions.  Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources that are available on-line.

Teachers

Check out some of the Resources for Teachers attached to this website.

HELP for Victims

International Organization for Migration
10 85 32 18 34
Country code: 86-

 

*** FEATURED ARTICLE ***

A Human Harvest: China’s organ trafficking exposed in shocking documentary that alleges the illegal trade is now worth a staggering US$1 billion a year

John Carney for Daily Mail Australia, 6 April 2015

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3027088/A-Human-Harvest-Chinas-organ-trafficking-exposed-shocking-documentary-alleges-illegal-trade-worth-staggering-1-billion-year.html

[accessed 20 June 2015]

The damning evidence they uncovered suggests that tens of thousands of innocent people have been killed on demand to supply an ongoing illegal organ transplant industry

They believe the organs come from members of the Falun Gong movement – a quasi-religious group with millions of followers, which is banned by the Chinese Government.

‘I can testify that this hospital forcibly removed organs, such as livers and corneas,’ says former worker Annie of allegations that members of the banned Falun Gong movement were killed for their organs.

Some practitioners were still breathing after their organs were removed, but they were thrown into the hospital’s incinerator anyway.'

China Arrests Nine for Human Trafficking

Xinhua News Agency, July 25, 2007

www.christiantoday.com/article/china.arrests.nine.for.human.trafficking/11849.htm

[accessed 28 January 2011]

Chinese police raided a human trafficking ring and arrested nine people for kidnapping and selling children in northwestern and central China, state media reported on Wednesday.

The traffickers snatched more than 20 children and sold some in Hongtong county in the northern province of Shanxi, where kidnapped teenagers and children were found working as slaves in brick kilns in a widely publicised scandal, the Xinhua news agency said.

Xinhua said two of the kidnappers, Wang Aizhong and Li Caimei, tricked kids to get on to their motorcycle on their way to school or broke into houses to snatch babies.

The refugees forced to be sex slaves in China

Richard Spencer in Seoul, Telegraph,  01 Oct 2005

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/1499675/The-refugees-forced-to-be-sex-slaves-in-China.html

[accessed 28 January 2011]

The women who flee North Korea believe nothing could be worse than their dictatorship's famine and labor camps.  But many change their minds after they cross the Tumen River into the "safety" of China, smuggled by middlemen who promise safe passage.  "I was locked into a house and raped every night," said Kim Chun-ae, a matronly 51-year-old. "My teenage daughter was sold three times by traffickers. She was 'recycled'."

China police crack human trafficking ring: report

Agence France-Presse AFP, Beijing, Jul 13, 2008

www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2008/07/15/2003417506

[accessed 17 August 2014]

Police have arrested 18 people suspected of kidnapping children and women in southwest China and trafficking them across the country, state press reported Monday.  Eight victims, including one child who was kidnapped and sold only seven days after being born, were rescued, the Beijing News said.  Police began investigating the crimes when several children in Yunnan province began disappearing in May, the report said.

Trafficking of women and children remains a problem in China with many sociologists blaming the nation's "one child" family planning policy for fuelling the crime.  Under the policy, aimed at controlling the world's largest population of over 1.3 billion, people who live in urban areas are generally allowed one child, while rural families can have two if the first is a girl.  This has put a premium on baby boys, while baby girls are often sold off as couples try for a male heir.

 

*** ARCHIVES ***

Apple is lobbying against a bill aimed at stopping forced labor in China

Technology, The Washington Post, 20 November 2020

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/20/apple-uighur/?mc_cid=60f050d218&mc_eid=d85860e8b9

[accessed 23 November 2020]

The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act would require U.S. companies to guarantee they do not use imprisoned or coerced workers from the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, where academic researchers estimate the Chinese government has placed more than 1 million people into internment camps. Apple is heavily dependent on Chinese manufacturing, and human rights reports have identified instances in which alleged forced Uighur labor has been used in Apple’s supply chain.

The new bill would make it more difficult for U.S. companies to ignore abuses taking place in China and give U.S. authorities more power to enforce the law. One provision in the bill requires public companies to certify to the Securities and Exchange Commission that their products are not made using forced labor from Xinjiang. If companies are found to have used forced labor from the region, they could be prosecuted for securities violations.

Uyghurs for sale

Xiuzhong Xu , Cave , Leibold , Munro, & Ruser, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 1 March 2020

www.aspi.org.au/report/uyghurs-sale

[accessed 2 August 2020]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY -- Since 2017, more than a million Uyghurs and members of other Turkic Muslim minorities have disappeared into a vast network of ‘re-education camps’ in the far west region of Xinjiang, in what some experts call a systematic, government-led program of cultural genocide. Inside the camps, detainees are subjected to political indoctrination, forced to renounce their religion and culture and, in some instances, reportedly subjected to torture. In the name of combating ‘religious extremism’, Chinese authorities have been actively remoulding the Muslim population in the image of China’s Han ethnic majority.

The ‘re-education’ campaign appears to be entering a new phase, as government officials now claim that all ‘trainees’ have ‘graduated’. There is mounting evidence that many Uyghurs are now being forced to work in factories within Xinjiang. This report reveals that Chinese factories outside Xinjiang are also sourcing Uyghur workers under a revived, exploitative government-led labour transfer scheme. Some factories appear to be using Uyghur workers sent directly from ‘re-education camps’.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has identified 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that are using Uyghur labour transferred from Xinjiang since 2017. Those factories claim to be part of the supply chain of 82 well-known global brands. Between 2017 and 2019, we estimate that at least 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang and assigned to factories through labour transfer programs under a central government policy known as ‘Xinjiang Aid’ (援疆).

It is extremely difficult for Uyghurs to refuse or escape these work assignments, which are enmeshed with the apparatus of detention and political indoctrination both inside and outside of Xinjiang. In addition to constant surveillance, the threat of arbitrary detention hangs over minority citizens who refuse their government-sponsored work assignments.

U.S. human trafficking report: China, Iran, N. Korea worst offenders

Nicholas Sakelaris, United Press International UPI, 20 June 2019

www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/06/20/US-human-trafficking-report-China-Iran-N-Korea-worst-offenders/8501561036183/

[accessed 20 June 2019]

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday human trafficking is a strain on humanity that violates basic human rights. He named China, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela and Cuba among the worst offenders.

Those countries all scored the lowest on the 2019 Trafficking in Person report released by the U.S. State Department.

Chinese police free more than 1,100 human trafficking victims after targeting Southeast Asian networks

Zhuang Pinghui, South China Morning Post, 21 June 2019

www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3015603/chinese-police-free-more-1100-human-trafficking-victims-after

[accessed 24 June 2019]

China said on Friday that it had rescued 1,147 foreign victims of human trafficking, including 1,130 women and 17 children, in a joint operation with five neighbouring countries.

Gangs from China and neighbouring countries lured victims into China many of whom were sold as brides to Chinese men, said Guo Lin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security.

The ministry started working with police from Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand last July and by December had detained 1,332 suspects, including 262 foreign nationals.

They are accused of 634 cases of human trafficking, organising 126 fraudulent marriages and falsely obtaining marriage, employment or tourist visas to bring victims into the country.

2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: China

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 30 March 2021

www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/china/

[accessed 27 May 2021]

PROHIBITION OF FORCED OR COMPULSORY LABOR

There is evidence of forced labor exacted by the use of force, threats of detention or other abusive practices against workers laboring in the camps, large industrial parks, and residential locations in Xinjiang. There are also reports of individuals “graduating” from “vocational training centers” and then being compelled to work at nearby facilities or sent to factories in other parts of China.

PROHIBITION OF CHILD LABOR AND MINIMUM AGE FOR EMPLOYMENT

During the year there were reports of children working, often unpaid, in factories, at schools, and as athletes and models. Abuse of the student-worker system continued. There were multiple reports of schools and local officials improperly facilitating student labor in factories producing electronics and apparel.

Freedom House Country Report

2020 Edition

freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2020

[accessed 26 April 2020]

G4. DO INDIVIDUALS ENJOY EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND FREEDOM FROM ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION?

While workers in China are afforded important protections under existing laws, violations of labor and employment regulations are widespread. Local CCP officials have long been incentivized to focus on economic growth rather than the enforcement of labor laws. Exploitative employment practices such as wage theft, excessive overtime, student labor, and unsafe working conditions are pervasive in many industries. Forced labor and trafficking are also common, frequently affecting rural migrants, and Chinese nationals are similarly trafficked abroad. Forced labor is the norm in prisons and other facilities for criminal, political, and religious detainees. Since 2018, according to research by scholar Adrian Zenz, authorities in Xinjiang have begun to place minority populations in different forms of forced or low-paid labor, including workshops linked to internment camps and large industrial parks or village-based factories for those not detained.

Ex-Detainee Describes Torture In China's Xinjiang Re-Education Camp

Rob Schmitz, National Public Radio NPR, 13 November 2018

www.npr.org/2018/11/13/666287509/ex-detainee-describes-torture-in-chinas-xinjiang-re-education-camp

[accessed 22 November 2018]

The ethnic Kazakh grew up in the mountains of China's rural Xinjiang region, just miles away from the border with Kazakhstan. When he was 11 years old, his parents died. A man from his village lured the young orphan to a nearby city with the promise of work and then sold him to a criminal gang of ethnic Uighurs, the predominant ethnic minority in Xinjiang, who managed a network of child thieves throughout China.

"There were a lot of other children who had been kidnapped," Samarkand recalls. "Most of the others were trained to be pickpockets. They wanted me to be a beggar, so they injected me with medication that made my legs go numb. They held me down and broke both of my legs."

Samarkand says they took him, newly crippled, to the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou to beg on the streets. By the time he turned 16, Samarkand says gang leaders had trained him to sell crystal methamphetamine. That's when police caught him selling drugs, broke up the syndicate and sent him and 40 other kidnapped orphans to a rehabilitation center in the northeastern Chinese city of Tianjin. The police paid for multiple surgeries to help heal Samarkand's legs before sending the boy to a boarding school in Xinjiang.

Now 30, Samarkand walks with a limp and still bears the scars of his youth up and down his legs. He says those Chinese police in Guangzhou were the only people who had helped him after his parents died.

Police free 16,517 women and children from human traffickers in Beijing,China

John Burger, Dallas Human Trafficking Examiner, October 24, 2010

www.examiner.com/human-trafficking-in-dallas/police-bust-frees-16-517-women-and-children-from-human-traffickers-beijing-china

[accessed 29 January 2011]

MY TAKE ON THE STORY - The main problem with combating traffickers in Asia is the lack of law enforcement. ... There are anti-slavery and trafficking laws on the books in almost every country in the world, but it comes down to enforcing those laws and eliminating corruption.

Freeing 16,517 slaves is a BIG deal. Arresting nearly 16,000 suspects is huge in the fight against traffickers. What happens to these suspects and the number that that are prosecuted will determine the greater long-term effect these arrests will have against human trafficking. With a major bust like this in Beijing, maybe public opinion and policy are finally starting to overcome the corruption.

Taking Down Child Trafficking Rings

Web Editor: Bao Congying,  China Radio International CRI Beyond Beijing, Sept. 26, 2010

english.cri.cn/8706/2010/09/26/2041s596417.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Zhao Xiaoyi was another suspected human trafficker the police seized in the recent crack down. In the police interrogation room, the man sounded remorseful.

"When I broke into the room, I could see the despair, the terror in her eyes. I will never forget the way she looked at me. I didn't dare to look back. I just couldn't look at her."

Zhao Xiaoyi was describing how a mother looked when he broke into her home and abducted her baby. It was on the afternoon of December 16, 2009, and Zhao and four of his accomplices knocked on the door of Ms. Shi's home on Jinghuliangzhuangg South Street, in the Erqi District of Zhengzhou.

"I heard someone at the door and I asked who it was. He said he was a neighbor and wanted to borrow some kitchen ware."

Ms. Shi opened the door, holding her ten-month-old baby in her arms.

"Immediately as I opened the door, three men broke in. They pushed me inside. One of them covered my mouth while the other two held me down to prevent me from moving. I was terrified. I pleaded them to take anything they wanted except for my baby. All they wanted was my baby. I tried to stop them but they beat me and tied my hands and feet. Then they wrapped my baby in a piece of cloth and vanished."

In broad daylight Zhao had broken into Ms. Shi's home and taken her baby.

Three Chinese jailed for human trafficking

Ghana News Agency GNA, Accra, 23 June 2009

www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=164179

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Summing up its judgment, the court noted that the prosecution had been able to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. It held that James and Sam engaged in human trafficking by obtaining tickets and other travelling documents for the victims and through deceits, lured them to Ghana to work in a restaurant, which never existed.

According to the court the victims on their arrival had their passports and other travelling documents confiscated by James who in turn threatened, deceived and exploited their vulnerability. According to the court proceeds of the sex trade were used to purchase contraceptives, douches and other materials to facilitate their trade. It dismissed claims by the convicts that the victims and other Chinese nationals meet at the restaurants to sing. "During the singing that was when the men selected the victims for sex," the court noted.

It therefore concluded that the convicts through their intentions induced the victims into sex trade and declined to give them their travelling documents as well as proceed from the sex trade.

China Vows Action on Trafficking

Original reporting in Cantonese by Ho Shan and in Mandarin by Xi Wang, Radio Free Asia RFA, 2009-05-21

www.rfa.org/english/news/china/chinatrafficking-05212009114049.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

China says it has rescued more than 400 kidnapped women and children from human-trafficking gangs during a crackdown last month, but parents of missing children say government efforts have barely scratched the surface of a growing social problem.

But parents in the southern city of Nanning said 200 children were still missing in their region, and police had prevented parents from staging a public protest to draw attention to the problem.

DEMAND FOR CHILDREN - She said boys were often sold to people as sons, while the girls ended up filling a traditional rural role, that of daughters-in-law who are raised in the same household before marriage to one of the family's sons.

NK Defectors Describe Horrors of Human Trafficking

The Dong-A ILBO, May 01, 2009

english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=060000&biid=2009050137348

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Bang Mi-sun, who came to the South in 2004, spoke first. She said she fled the North to feed her two children after her husband starved to death in 2002.

“I thought that if I went to China, I could eat heartily and lead a better life than in North Korea. What waited for me was a wretched life,” she said.   “I was sold to a disabled Chinese man for 585 dollars at a human trafficking market and resold to another man.”

Bang was caught by Chinese police and repatriated to North Korea. There, she was subjected to severe corporal punishment and forced labor.   “I was put in a detention camp and flogged. I was battered so badly that I cannot walk well now,” she said.

Trafficking victims try to remake lives

Monica Rhor, Associated Press AP, Houston, April 13, 2009

austin.twcnews.com/content/news/237679/trafficking-victims-try-to-remake-lives

[accessed 17 August 2014]

nwasianweekly.com/2009/04/trafficking-victims-try-to-remake-lives/

[accessed 30 January 2019]

Like dozens of other workers from Vietnam and China, Tiep Ngo had been lured to the Daewoosa clothing factory in American Samoa by hollow promises of good pay. She left behind her child, her husband and her parents and paid $5,000 for her job contract, only to be starved, beaten and cheated of wages.   For nearly two years, Ngo labored in the stifling, overcrowded factory, subsisting on meager portions of rice and cabbage and longing for her family.

Human trafficker sentenced to death in China

The Australian, 18 December 2008

www.missionandjustice.org/human-trafficker-sentenced-to-death-in-china/

[accessed 17 August 2014]

China has sentenced to death the head of a human trafficking ring that lured dozens of women with promises of work, then kidnapped and sold them across the country, state media reported today.

The traffickers had promised their victims jobs packaging tea and sunflower seeds, even taking them to "a fake factory where the ring members pretended to be managers and workers", Xinhua said.   The victims were then sent to other provinces on the pretence of purchasing raw materials, but were sold as "wives" to local people, the agency added.

Officials crack down on human trafficking ring

Central News Agency CNA, Oct 10, 2008

www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2008/10/10/2003425457

[accessed 29 January 2011]

The National Immigration Agency (NIA) recently cracked down on a Taiwanese human trafficking ring that was smuggling children from China to the US using passports purchased from Taiwanese parents.

In its investigation, the agency discovered that the crime ring had bought the identity of Taiwanese children from parents who were in financial difficulty.

The parents sold their children’s IDs for NT$90,000 each, the agency said.   The investigators had discovered that the crime ring employed the strategy seven times in the first half of this year, smuggling 18 children to the US.

Police foil human trafficking in Golden Triangle

China Daily, 2008-12-12

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-12/12/content_7297128.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

The migrants, hailing from villages near Liaoning province's Chaoyang and Dandong - the main border between China and North Korea - were discovered in Xishaungbanna, a part of southwestern Yunnan province close to the porous borders with Myanmar and Laos.

The migrants, who have now been sent back to their villages, were brought to Yunnan with promises of jobs but were being tricked to cross the border by casino operators in Myanmar, where they would be forced to construct roads, an unnamed official was quoted as saying.

Burmese brides for sale

Way Yan, Mizzima News, Ruili, 28 October 2008

www.bnionline.net/index.php/feature/mizzima/5247-burmese-brides-for-sale-.html

[accessed 18 August 2014]

Wah Wah was one of the women that Ma Phyu and her gang had sold into slavery.  Wah Wah was sold to a Chinese man living in Sandong, near Beijing, at the price tag of Chinese RMB 20,000 (approximately US$ 2,900). A few weeks later, Wah Wah managed to flee from the clutches of her buyer and made her way back to Ruili earlier this month.  The hapless young lady had nowhere else to go but to return back to her perpetrators, and Ma Phyu was happy when her commodity arrived back in her hands for resale. However, when she tried to sell her to another Chinese man, Wah Wah vehemently refused.  But the traffickers, having already struck a deal and received some advance money, tried to force Wah Wah to accept her newest companion.  As dusk fell over Ruili on that fateful day, Wah Wah was taken by taxi along the road to Namkhan, Burma, a few miles away. Accompanying her in the vehicle were several members of the human trafficker's family.  Eventually, they stopped the taxi next to a paddy field beside the highway in the vicinity of Man Heiro, still in Burmese territory and about 20 miles from Ruili.  "Before leaving Ruili, they were drunk with beer. She was taken to a paddy field near the highway. Then Kyaw Swa started raping her. After that, Bo Bo stabbed her repeatedly. She died from five stab wounds. Then her corpse was left in the nearby drainage," recalls a source from the Chinese police investigation team of the incident.

Behind the scenes in Beijing

Catherine Sampson, Guardian, 3 August 2008

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/03/china.olympicgames2008

[accessed 29 January 2011]

At the bottom of the heap are the street children. At a residential school, I met some of the children plucked from the streets. An 11-year-old boy who preferred that I call him by his English name, Nicholas, told me that he had lived with his younger brother and older sister in Henan. His father was frequently in trouble and a mother was both pitifully poor and unable to cope with her uncontrollable children. One day the boss of a beggar gang arrived scouting for children. He offered the mother 3 yuan (20p) per day per child if she would allow him to take them away to beg, which she did. He said he would hand over this money in a lump sum once a year at Chinese New Year.

During the months that followed, Nicholas said, he earned between 100 and 600 yuan per day (between £7 and £40) for his boss. Nicholas kept trying to run away. When the boss beat his younger brother for not earning enough, Nicholas swore at his boss. Because of this, when the boss took the children home at spring festival, he gave Nicholas' mother only 30 yuan (£2) for her son's labour. - htsc

Birth Controlled: China's Stolen Children Reviewed

Juli Weiner, Huffington Post, July 14, 2008

www.huffingtonpost.com/juli-weiner/birth-controlled-emchinas_b_112530.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

The film investigates human trafficking panoramically, following everyone from the traffickers themselves (both reformed and active), parents searching for their kidnapped son, parents trying to sell their daughter, a boy who himself was kidnapped, and the detective who's working a seven month old case with few clues, no witnesses, and no leads. But the most pervasive of any facet of the trade is the furtive Chinese government, which does everything in its (far-reaching, for sure) power to silence the families of over 70,000 children a year who are being "snatched from the streets."

Talk outlines risks in international adopting

Ashton Shurson, The Daily Iowan, Issue date: 3/25/08 Section: Metro

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 4 September 2011]

In November 2005, police in China uncovered a baby trafficking ring involving six orphanages and babies primarily from the southern part of the country.  It is unclear how the children were obtained, but defendants claim the babies were abandoned while prosecutors in the case accused the Hengyang Social Welfare Institution of knowingly buying abducted babies.

Organ trafficking: a fast-expanding black market

IHS Jane's, 05 March 2008

www.traffickingproject.org/2008/03/organ-trafficking-fast-expanding-black.html

[accessed 26 June 2013]

China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Brazil, the Philippines, Moldova, and Romania are among the world's leading providers of trafficked organs. If China is known for harvesting and selling organs from executed prisoners, the other countries have been dealing essentially with living donors, becoming stakeholders in the fast-growing human trafficking web.

Children rescued from human-trafficking gang

Xinhua News Agency, Xichuan, Henan Province, 2008-01-03

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-01/03/content_6368154.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

"The gang members had abducted nine children, all boys between two and eight years old, since April, and sold them to rural families," said Wang Jianmin, Nanyang Municipal Commission of Politics and Law secretary.  He told Xinhua the family gang was led by Ye Zengxi, 55, his son and daughter-in-law. Also involved was Ye's brother Ye Xiaolin. The gang used Ye's 12-year-old nephew to lure other children away from their parents' view with toys or food, and then whisked them away by motorbike.  Eight of the children were sold to rural families who wanted boys, while another was held captive awaiting a buyer before the police rescue.

Action plan to fight human trafficking finalized

Zhu Zhe, China Daily, 2007-12-13

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-12/13/content_6317457.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Ministry figures show that about 2,000 to 3,000 cases of women and children being sold are reported to police across the country every year. The International Labor Organization estimates the number of trafficking victims in China ranges from 10,000 to 20,000 a year.

Those trafficked are usually victims of sexual and labor exploitation; and the issue received particular attention after the exposure of a brick kiln slave labor scandal in Shanxi Province this summer.

Official figures in August showed that 1,340 people, about 400 of whom were children or mentally handicapped, had been rescued from forced labor since June, many of them in Shanxi.

Du Wednesday reiterated that there would be zero tolerance for the crime and called for more cooperation among neighboring countries as trafficking is an international issue.

Last year, 209 people who were trafficked to China were repatriated to Vietnam and Myanmar, according to the ministry. Girls and women in Yunnan Province and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region also face the risk of being abducted to neighboring countries such as Thailand for sex exploitation.

China claims progress fighting human trafficking

Ben Blanchard, Reuters, Beijing, Dec 12, 2007

www.reuters.com/article/idUSPEK11308820071212

[accessed 29 January 2011]

There has been a rise in trafficking cases involving Myanmar women in China in particular in recent years.  The women are mostly smuggled through the porous border into the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan and then taken to central and north China, where poverty and a skewed sex ratio means many farmers cannot find wives.  Late last year, China jailed six Myanmar nationals for selling 23 Myanmar girls to Chinese peasants as wives.

Trafficking in China

Mark P. Lagon, Director, Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, Congressional Human Rights Caucus Briefing, Washington, DC, October 31, 2007

2001-2009.state.gov/g/tip/rls/rm/07/94466.htm

[accessed 18 July 2013]

Early this summer reports emerged of over one thousand farmers, teenagers and children, including some who were mentally handicapped, forced to work for little or no pay in scorching brick kilns, enduring beatings and confinement in worse than prison-like conditions. This was a form of modern day slavery that shocked not only the international community, but prompted an outcry among Chinese citizens and a forceful reaction from the authorities.

The trade of women and girls for sexual exploitation is another clear trafficking challenge for the Chinese government. Although prostitution is illegal, the burgeoning illicit sex industry creates a vulnerability for sex trafficking. Women and children are trafficked into the country from North Korea, Vietnam, Burma, Mongolia, and Thailand. Chinese women are also trafficked abroad for sexual exploitation. The government's main challenges in this area include their punishment of victims, poor victim protection services, and lack of transparency in criminal law enforcement by not fully disclosing what the government is doing to enforce laws against TIP.

Human trafficking documentary premieres in Beijing

humantrafficking.org, October 04, 2007 -- Adapted from "Human trafficking documentary premieres in Beijing", SignOn San Diego, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 21 September 2007

www.humantrafficking.org/updates/715

[accessed 29 January 2011]

uk.reuters.com/article/idUKPEK21207020070921

[accessed 26 April 2020]

In China, where the 30-minute documentary will be shown several times on MTV China's channel in October and November, human trafficking cases involving sex and forced labor are increasing, officials have said.  Chinese police detained 47 people accused of trafficking babies earlier in the month and rescued dozens of infants being traded because of rural families' desire for children in a country that strictly enforces population control.  This followed a scandal earlier in the year involving hundreds of farmers, teenagers and children being kidnapped, beaten and forced to work in brick kilns.

Goff said one of the most important underlying causes for human trafficking was 'demand'.  'The demand that we all represent for cheaper and cheaper consumer products and labor and the demand for paid sex,' he said.

Gang trafficking over 60 babies cracked

Xinhua News Agency, Nanjing, 2007-09-07

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-09/07/content_6090460.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Lang also confessed that they usually buy a baby girl at 1,500 yuan (US$200) but sell it for 8,000 yuan, while a baby boy usually costs them 8,000 yuan and can fetch 20,000 yuan for them.

Investigations found that the gang of human traders headed by Shen and Lang have bought 27 newborn babies in Yunnan during 16 trips and then sold them in Shandong.  Forty out of more than 60 babies who were trafficked by the gang have been rescued by police so far, while police were trying to find the others.

Human trafficking

China Daily, 09/06/2007 – page 9

www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2007-09/06/content_6085316.htm

[accessed 18 August 2014]

Cases of forced labor and sexual exploitation have been on the rise, posing a threat to social stability and our nation's welfare.  In a worst scenario, hundreds of migrant workers and under-age people were found in June having been trafficked to work in illegal brick kilns in Shanxi and Henan provinces.  The plight of those victims drew much concern from the government and the society, and triggered a massive national crackdown on illegal brick kilns.

Panel set to target human trafficking

Wang Zhuoqiong, China Daily, 2007-09-04

news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-09/04/content_6658574.htm

[accessed 18 July 2013 -- HT]

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-09/04/content_6077823.htm

[accessed 30 January 2019]

The government plans to set up the first national mechanism for combating trafficking to protect women and children from forced labor and prostitution.  The joint effort by 21 ministries - including the ministries of public security, labor and social security, education and supervision - aims to provide sustainable and long-term solutions to human trafficking.  It will be led by a leading group reporting directly to the State Council, Yin Jianzhong, a senior official of the anti-human trafficking office of the Ministry of Public Security, said.  Meanwhile, the National Plan of Action on Anti-trafficking of Women and Children (2008-12), which is being drafted, will be unveiled by the end of this year, Yin said.

More forced into prostitution, labor

Wang Zhuoqiong, China Daily, 2007-07-27 – page 1

www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-07/27/content_5444409.htm

[accessed 18 July 2013]

Forced labor and sexual exploitation have increased as the trend in human trafficking in China has taken a turn for the worst.

The number of forced laborers and the sexually exploited has risen partly because of the loopholes in the legal and labor systems, he added.  The Criminal Law on human trafficking protects women and children only and leaves out grown-up and teen males. It doesn't have provisions for punishing those trafficking people for forced labor or prostitution, Yin said.

'Alarming' Trade in Human Organ Trafficking

Reuters, Manila, June 7, 2007

www.reuters.com/article/2007/06/07/us-crime-trafficking-philippines-idUSMAN28233220070607

[accessed 13 June 2013]

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) expressed alarm on Thursday over rising cases of trade in human organs in Asia, and said globalization had increased risks of human trafficking.

Reed said many trafficking cases in Asia "end up in situations of forced begging, delinquency, adoption, false marriage, or most recently, as victims of the thriving trade in human organs".  He said trafficking for organs was on the rise in China and in many impoverished states in Southeast Asia, like Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Group works to rescue victims of human trafficking

Khun Sam, BurmaNet News, 2 Mar 2007

www.burmanet.org/news/2007/03/02/irrawaddy-group-works-to-rescue-victims-of-human-trafficking-khun-sam/

[accessed 29 January 2011]

www2.irrawaddy.com/article.php?art_id=6783

[accessed 27 May 2021]

Currently, we are trying to rescue three women who disappeared after being lured to jobs in China,” Ja Awng told The Irrawaddy on Friday.

According to Ja Awng, 26-year-old Maran Hkawn, a mother of three children, and 37-year-old Ma Lum, a mother of four children, who both lived in the village of Mung Baw, Namdu Township, northern Shan State, were lured by a job offer from a Chinese national to work in a restaurant somewhere near the border and left for China in June 2006. Since then the two have disappeared and neither of their families know their whereabouts.

Another 23-year-old Kachin woman, Mun Ja of Kutkhai Township, who worked at a Chinese restaurant in a village near Rulli in Yunnan Province, disappeared in early January this year along with the owners of the restaurant. Vendors reportedly said the owner had taken the woman to another location in China.

Ja Awng said many human trafficking cases take place on the China-Burma border. She said the KWA rescued two victims last year. The KWA and the KIO gave 8,000 yuan (US $1,032) to Chinese police to rescue a 3-year-old Burmese girl from a Chinese house in a village near Rulli, she said.

Victims of Human Trafficking Speak

The Dong-A ILBO, December 15, 2006

english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=040000&biid=2006121564548

[accessed 29 January 2011]

WOMEN WHO ARE SOLD INTO SLAVERY - Ms. G (age: 26), a former nurse from the North who made it across the border to China in February was appalled after she was sold to a family. She was the only woman in the house with 62-year-old father, 32 year-old oldest son and other three men. Her worst fears turned into reality when the father and four sons each demanded her to share their bed every night. She was forced to go through this ordeal, even when she was sick or had her period. She did not have anyone to turn to, because there was not even a village nearby. She put up with this life for about eight months.

Protecting young women from human trafficking in Viet Nam

Steve Nettleton, UNICEF, LANG SON, Viet Nam, 7 December 2006

www.unicef.org/infobycountry/vietnam_37406.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

www.unicef.org/protection/vietnam_37406.html

[accessed 26 April 2020]

In 1991,  Phuong was lured to the border by traffickers and taken against her will to China, where she was dragged to a house in a small town and sold to become an older man’s wife.

“I didn’t know how old he was or the name of the place we lived,” she said. “I lost my freedom. I had to go everywhere with his family or else I was locked in a room. I had to work hard. When I was tired or sick, they didn’t let me stop working.

Vietnam, China boost ties to combat human trafficking

Lien Chau, Thanhnien News, August 28, 2006

www.thanhniennews.com/society/?catid=3&newsid=19385

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

Trafficked young girls have been forced into the sex trade or forced to marry older men.  Vietnamese and Chinese police raided more than 30 human trafficking gangs in July and August alone this year.

Three Women Arrested in Muse for Human Trafficking

Narinjara News NN, 7/23/2006

bnionline.net/index.php/news/narinjara/279-three-women-arrested-in-muse-for-human-trafficking.html

[accessed 18 August 2014]

According to confirmed sources, some human trafficking syndicates have been dispatching young women from Burma to China, where they are sold for large sums of money.

China issues plan to combat human trafficking

Xinhua News Agency, July 13, 2006

english.people.com.cn/200607/13/eng20060713_282517.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

The Chinese government announced Wednesday it has submitted for approving a plan to fight human trafficking to meet its obligations to a 2004 agreement among six Asian countries.

At a meeting in Beijing of the Coordinated Mekong Ministerial Initiative Against Trafficking (COMMIT), Wan Yan, a member of the COMMIT China office, said, "We have submitted the action plan and are awaiting approval. If passed, the plan will help to clarify the responsibilities of all the relevant ministries in combating human trafficking."

The governments of China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam adopted a comprehensive and strategic Sub-regional Plan of Action to jointly combat human trafficking in 2004, under which member states each devise a national plan of action.

More co-operation needed in war on human trafficking

Viet Nam News, Ho Chi Minh City, 04-07-2006

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 4 September 2011]

Reviewing the human trafficking trend in the region, Thailand’s Susu Thatun, programme manager of the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region reported that nearly one-third of the global trafficking trade of about 200,000-225,000 women and children are trafficked annually from Southeast Asia.

While in the past women and children have been reported as trafficked victims, Thatun said that boys and men have also been identified as victims as well into the sex trade, heavy labour, begging, marriage, and the fishing industry.

VN, China battle human trafficking

Le Hung Vong, Viet Nam News, Ho Chi Minh City, 22-06-2006

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 4 September 2011]

More than 550 Vietnamese women and children were trafficked to China in the last two years, the Vietnamese police said yesterday in a report released at a workshop held on cross-border trafficking between the two countries.

The police said the victims were deceived by members of organised crime gangs in both countries who promised them good jobs in big cities in Viet Nam or abroad. But many of them ended up being sold to brothels in China.

China for global cooperation to fight human trafficking

Beijing, 6 June 2006

zeenews.india.com/news/world/china-for-global-cooperation-to-fight-human-trafficking_300500.html

[accessed 18 August 2014]

China said today that human trafficking cases within its borders have declined and that it is willing to work together with other countries to do more to prevent women and girls from being forced into prostitution, marriage or labour.

Mekong region govts to co-op against human trafficking

Xinhua News Agency, Phnom Penh, May 7, 2006

news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-05/07/content_4517342.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

en.ce.cn/World/Asia-Pacific/200605/07/t20060507_6891299.shtml

[accessed 30 January 2019]

Since the signing of the historic COMMIT Memorandum of Understanding in Yangon, Myanmar in October 2004, by Ministers of the six countries, the Governments have been active in laying the foundation for a network of cooperation to stop traffickers and prosecute them, protect victims of trafficking and assist them return safely home, and launch efforts to prevent others from sharing the same fate.

Secret Chinese Concentration Camp Revealed

Brian Marple, The Epoch Times, Mar 10, 2006

www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-3-10/39083.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

www.linkedin.com/pulse/secret-chinese-concentration-camp-revealed-pj-wilcox-author

[accessed 8 September 2016]

The Epoch Times was granted an in-depth interview with the journalist described in this report. A former Chinese journalist that worked for an overseas television station has revealed in an interview the existence of a secret concentration camp dedicated to the persecution – and possibly organ-harvesting – of Falun Gong practitioners.

The violent machine

Harry Wu, Founder & Executive Director, Laogai Research Foundation, New Internationalist #337, August 2001

www.newint.org/features/2001/08/05/violent/

[accessed 29 January 2011]

As a survivor of 19 years’ imprisonment in a Chinese labour reform camp, a mechanized system for physically, mentally and spiritually crushing human beings, I feel compelled to investigate and decry them. History dictates that all authoritarian regimes must maintain a mechanism to suppress political dissent and consolidate control. In China today this is the Laogai – an institution of fear, control and modern-day slavery. From the Mandarin, the word ‘Laogai’ translates literally as ‘reform through labour’ and describes a system of forced-labour camps spanning China from the highly industrialized prison-factories of the eastern coastal cities to the isolated, fenceless farms of the west.

Combating Human Trafficking in China: Domestic and International Efforts [PDF]

Abraham Lee, Testimony before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, March 6, 2006

www.cecc.gov/sites/chinacommission.house.gov/files/documents/hearings/2006/CECC%20Hearing%20Testimony%20-%20Abraham%20Lee%20-%203.6.06.pdf

[accessed 18 August 2014]

III. REFUGEE VULNERABILITY - The combination of extreme hunger, potential economic opportunity and easier access motivates refugees to abandon family and risk their lives to enter China. It also provides human traffickers the perfect opportunity to exploit this desperate situation. Although the numbers are difficult to quantify, reports indicate that as many as 70%-80% of all North Korean women who enter China illegally are victims of trafficking.

Combating Human Trafficking in China: Domestic and International Efforts [PDF]

Ambassador John R. Miller, Testimony before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, March 6, 2006

www.cecc.gov/sites/chinacommission.house.gov/files/documents/hearings/2006/CECC%20Hearing%20Testimony%20-%20John%20Miller%20-%203.6.06.pdf

[accessed 18 August 2014]]

Ms. Cha went to look for work in China when she could no longer feed her three children. Twice she was arrested by Chinese authorities, forcibly repatriated, and sent to a North Korean detention center. In China, her youngest daughter fell victim to traffickers as well. Ms. Cha traveled from village to village in China looking for her daughters, and eventually fell into debt bondage to a Korean-Chinese man who “purchased” her younger daughter to return to live with them and forced them both to labor on his farm.

China’s One Child Policy Exacerbates Slavery, Panel Concludes

Monisha Bansal, Cybercast News Service CNS News, March 07, 2006

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 4 September 2011]

The Chinese government is making progress in combating human trafficking, but its one-child policy is still responsible for a gender disparity that is encouraging Chinese men to purchase young women from North Korea as wives, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China reported Monday.

Trader denies recruiting workers for prostitution

John Ravelo, Saipan Tribune, Aug 27, 2005

www.zoominfo.com/p/Jim-Barry/595655311

[accessed 20 January 2016]

www.saipantribune.com/index.php/a46b3e7d-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e/

[accessed 8 September 2016]

Barry said all the workers were promised legitimate jobs with pay rate of $7 per hour.When they arrived, though, the defendant allegedly made them work as prostitutes.

Although the women wanted to leave, they were allegedly forced to stay, as the defendant told them they have no way of settling their debts and purchasing airfares back to China except by working as prostitutes.

Facing the future with 40 million bachelors

Hamish McDonald, Correspondent in Beijing, The Sydney Morning Herald, March 10, 2004

www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/09/1078594367697.html?from=storyrhs

[accessed 29 January 2011]

China faces a future of crime and instability as a generation of 40 million men is left frustrated by a lack of brides, thanks to the practice of selective abortion of female foetuses, a population official has warned.  Men left on the shelf would resort to prostitutes or pay huge prices for brides, while trafficking in women and girls kidnapped from rural areas and other countries would increase.

China already has a significant problem in trafficking of women and girls, internally and from countries such as Burma. Many North Korean women who flee to China are captured by gangs and sold as brides to Chinese farmers.  Boys are also kidnapped and sold to families without male heirs for adoption.  Police said they had freed 42,215 kidnapped women and children in the past two years.

How Can I be Sold Like This? [PDF]

Donna M. Hughes, National Review, July 19, 2005

www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/trafficking_nk_refugees.pdf

[accessed 29 April 2012]

Women and children are increasingly the majority of refugees crossing the river into China. If they can locate a friend or relative's house, they have a chance at finding a safe haven. But if the ethnic Korean Chinese traffickers find them first, they are abducted and sold, either to men as informal wives or concubines or to karaoke clubs for prostitution. Their price and destination are determined by their age and appearance.

Border police rescue 37 in anti-human trafficking drive

Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, July 13, 2005

www.humanrights-china.org/news/2005-7-13/2005713104306.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

The women were saved thanks to a joint operation between Guangxi and Viet Nam authorities, the release said, calling the rescue a good start to a two-month joint anti-abduction campaign from July to September.

STRONG EFFORT NEEDED TO GAIN CHINESE WORKER RIGHTS

Harry Kelber, The Labor Educator, February 25, 2005

www.laboreducator.org/strikebag.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

[scroll down]

STRONG EFFORT NEEDED TO GAIN CHINESE WORKER RIGHTS - China’s 800 million workers, nearly one-fourth of the world’s labor force, are denied the most basic freedoms.  China routinely ignores and violates international standards against forced labor and child labor and refuses to allow workers to form independent unions. Chinese workers are poorly paid and work long hours under often-dangerous conditions

CECC Roundtable Panelists Discuss Issue Of Forced Labor In China's Laogai

Laogai Research Foundation LRF, Washington DC, 6/23/2005

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 4 September 2011]

When a product is labeled "Made in China," it may hide the fact that it was made in the Laogai by Chinese prisoners. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to identify which products are made, either entirely or in part, in the Laogai. Due to the complexity of international markets and the circuitous system of sub-contracting, it is often very difficult to discern whether a product is a forced labor good.

Activists decry brutal Chinese factories, WalMart, Nike sited

Gay Alcorn, Reuters, Washington DC, May 18-24, 2000

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 31 August 2011]

The report, Made In China, investigated 16 companies including Nike, the world’s largest retailer; Wal-Mart; and Timberland.  At a Qin Shi factory where Wal-Mart handbags were made, undercover investigators found young women working up to 14 hours a day, seven days a week for 3 cents an hour, and almost half were in debt to the company because of deductions for board.  Most workers were young women, with a Nike contractor in a Lizhan factory advertising for females only, age 18-25. Complaining about conditions or getting pregnant led to sackings.  American partners are more than willing to look the other way, Mr. Wu said.

Program Launched To Stem Kidnapping Of Girls

Xinhua News Agency, Nanjing, Feb. 4, 2005

news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-02/04/content_2547796.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

english.sina.com/china/1/2005/0204/20586.html

[accessed 11 July 2017]

A new program to prevent the kidnapping of Chinese girls and young women with the purpose of exploitation in labor has been inaugurated in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

China Stops Baby Trafficking Ring

Louisa Lim, BBC News, Beijing, 3 February, 2005

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4232231.stm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

The report says some of the babies had been abandoned by their parents, but increasing numbers of children are also being abducted - particularly from migrant worker families who cannot afford childcare.

Seduction, Sale & Slavery: Trafficking In Women & Children For Sexual Exploitation In Southern Africa - 3rd Edition, [PDF]

Jonathan Martens, Maciej ‘Mac’ Pieczkowski, Bernadette van Vuuren-Smyth, International Organization for Migration (IOM) Regional Office for Southern Africa, Pretoria, May 2003

At one time this article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]

[accessed 4 September 2011]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - The major findings may be summarized as follows:

Triad-linked Chinese or Taiwanese agents recruit Chinese women by promising work in Chinese-owned businesses in South Africa, or the prospect of studying in English language schools. Women may even pay to be smuggled out of China. When recruited to work in Chinese-owned restaurants, clubs, or on fishing vessels in South Africa, they are forced into sex work indefinitely. If they come to South Africa to study English, they are often allowed to complete their courses before being told that they have a US$12 500 debt that they must repay by doing sex work. In either case, these Chinese women have no freedom of movement, and their traffickers take their earnings.

China executes 3 baby traffickers

China Daily, 2004-12-11

www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/11/content_399387.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

China has executed three baby traffickers who sold 11 infants in nation where family planning rules allow couples normally to have just one child.  The three were executed in Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan, Xinhua news agency said.  "Many babies kidnapped by them are still missing and there is no way to rescue them," a judge with the Kunming Intermediate People's Court was quoted as saying.

China, UNICEF Join Hands to Protect Girls

Xinhua News Agency, June 2, 2004

english.china.org.cn/english/China/97138.htm

[accessed 26 April 2020]

A few hours after she was trapped by human traffickers, Chen Jing was able to see through their plot, sought help from police and escaped.  The 15-year-old girl from Renshou county in the outback of the southwestern Sichuan Province told Xinhua in an interview Tuesday that a booklet had taught her how to tell devils from the kind-hearted and how to help herself in case of emergency.  The booklet, which tells in simple words and vivid pictures how rural girls should protect themselves from human traffickers, is compiled by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), All-China Women's Federation and the Ministry of Public Security and is provided for free to country girls like Chen Jing who want to find a job in cities.

"I sensed danger when I was escorted to a train with an unknown destination, and was told they would keep my documents and money for me -- the booklet says human traffickers always do that," said Chen.  The alert girl managed to borrow a cell phone from a stranger, reported to the police and was saved before the train started.  "I just followed the instructions in the booklet, and was lucky to survive," said Chen, who has just found a job as housemaid for an urban family in Chengdu.

Human Trafficking an Increasing Problem in China

Han Qing, Radio Free Asia,  Mar 16, 2004

en.epochtimes.com/news/4-3-16/20435.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Human trafficking of women and children in China has increased to over 42,000 reported cases from 2001 to 2003, according to official statistics.  According to the Chinese Official Media, Xin Hua News Agency, over a period of three years, police in China has solved about 20,000 cases of illegal sales of women and children. A total of 22,000 suspects have been arrested. Many young girls from the rural areas have been sold to various areas and forced to marry or become sex slaves. Young boys have been sold to childless families or families with only one child due to the One Child Policy in China.

More Than 200 Children Missing in Kunming City

The Epoch Times, Translated from the Chinese Edition, May 14, 2004

en.epochtimes.com/news/4-5-14/21423.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Since 2001, almost 200 children, mainly boys aged between one and six years old, have gone missing in Kunming City. Incidences of child trafficking and selling have occurred at Kunming City’s Guandu and Xishan areas. The rate of disappearances is also on the rise. In 2001 23 children who went missing. This rose to 30 the following year and 67 last year. As of April 3 this year 21 children have been reported missing.

Slave Labor in China

Falun Dafa Clearwisdom.net, 2002 to 2009

clearwisdom.net/emh/129/

[accessed 29 January 2011]

[ Links to articles re: Forced labor camps in China ]

Slave Labor Experience at Forced Labor Camps

China Letter-News and Human Rights, March 24, 2004

uygurletter.blogspot.com/2004/03/slave-labor-experience-at-forced-labor.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

I profess not to know a great deal about either the Falun Movement, it's practices or treatment by officialdom but I did find this first hand experience of a Falun Dafa practioner inside Chinese jails rather an eye opener. Not because it demonstrates the lack of rights afforded political prisoners as I think we all know that exists but for the forced labour being used to produce goods for "free world" companies.

WHAT I'M READING TODAY: State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 2003

Adam Hersh, Globalize This! -- posted February 26, 2004

plec.blogspot.com/2004/02/what-im-reading-today-state-department.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Here's what I found out about what is going on in China: The report mentions no less than 40 times by my count (I may have missed some) the cheery sounding reeducation-through-labor camps widely used in China (and it ain't talking about an AFL-CIO activist training). Rather, Chinese citizens (some 250,000 of them) were confined without judicial process and force to work "in facilities directly connected with penal institutions...[or in some cases] they were contracted to nonprison enterprises. Facilities and their management profited from inmate labor." Who were these prisoners? Activists for religious freedom, democratic reform, labor rights, women's rights, people who fall out of favor of the party, people who protest to demand back pay for wages that are withheld (more on this below), and generally people who rake too much muck.

Slavery, Prostitution Effect of China's One-Child Policy

LifeSiteNews, Beijing, March 9, 2004

www.lifesitenews.com/news/slavery-prostitution-effect-of-chinas-one-child-policy

[accessed 6 January 2015]

"Such serious gender disproportion poses a major threat to the healthy, harmonious and sustainable growth of the nation's population and would trigger such crimes and social problems as abduction of women and prostitution," Li said. His predictions are already reality -- police there freed more than 42,000 kidnapped women and children in 2001 and 2002. Many were believed to be sold for the purpose of prostitution or as slave wives.  Chinese officials say they have no intention of changing the one-child policy -- a measure put in place to ensure the population remains below 1.6 billion until 2050.

The Sky is Falling

Hannah Beech, Xupu, Time Magazine, July 28, 2003

www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2047279,00.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2047279,00.html

[accessed 26 April 2020]

Hundreds of girls have been kidnapped from Xupu in the past few years, including more than a dozen from Hu's village of barely 200. Some girls?lured into cars by promises of candy or fancy clothes or merely a joyride to the city?are never heard from again. Others, like Hu, eventually find their way back home. But Hu was so traumatized by what had happened that she refused to leave her house for more than a year after her return, spending her days sequestered in a dark room filled with piles of coal. Finally, she fled last year to the boomtown of Shenzhen, where she now toils in an electronics sweatshop. Although the 16-hour shifts are exhausting, they're nothing like the conditions at the brothel, where she was forced to service a stream of men for no pay.

How China Hides Its Slave Labor From the Free World

Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com, Jan. 11, 2003

www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?172574-The-reason-that-one-should-make-a-conscious-effort-not-to-shop-at-walmart/page3

[accessed 6 January 2015]

[scroll down to 12-18-2008 01:04 PM]

For years, he had been one of the estimated 50 million blue uniformed “troublemakers” who had worked in the camps under totally inhumane conditions. Some of them literally worked themselves to death.  The forced labor had turned out for the American market such items as rubber-soled shoes, boots, kitchenware, toys, tools, men’s and women’s clothing, and sporting goods.

'GETTING WISE' - A manager at Shanghai’s Laodong Machinery Plant, where hand tools were made, boasted that because the U.S. Congress had recently made “quite a fuss” about the prison camps, he and his bosses had devised a way to get around the problem.  “We always go through the import-export company,” he said, meaning they set up companies to handle the shipment of goods. That way, as Wu explains it, “nobody quite knows where the goods came from.

Chinese Police Rescue Nine Children from Traffickers

Radio Free Asia, November 15, 2003

en.epochtimes.com/news/3-11-15/14732.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

MIGRANT WORKERS' CHILDREN TARGETED BY KIDNAPPERS - Police in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen said Thursday they had rescued nine abducted children and arrested six suspects in connection with what is believed to be one of the largest child trafficking rings the city has seen.  The crackdown came after 10 children aged between three and four years old were kidnapped in the city, which is home to a large population of migrant workers, since the beginning of the year, a police statement said. The tenth child has not yet been accounted for.

Dying to Leave

Thirteen, New York Public Media, September 25th, 2003

www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/dying-to-leave/human-trafficking-worldwide/china/1451/

[accessed 26 December 2010]

www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/uncategorized/human-trafficking-worldwide-china/1451/

[accessed 18 February 2018]

VICTIMS - Chinese women and children are trafficked for sexual exploitation to North America, Europe, and other Asian countries. In the U.S. several women working for an international ring — reportedly responsible for trafficking as many as 100 victims a month — were arrested in Houston, Texas, for transporting Chinese women into the country for prostitution. Los Angeles and New York are other common destination cities. In 1999, the Immigration and Nationalization Service estimated that up to 5,000 trafficked Chinese women were in L.A.

Many internationally trafficked Chinese men and women are also subjected to forced labor worldwide. They typically work in sweatshops or restaurants in slave-like conditions in order to pay off debts to smugglers.

Internal trafficking also takes place in China. Abducted women are taken to provinces far away from their homes and sold to men who have trouble finding local women to marry. A Chinese human rights NGO estimates the number of women sold as brides to be more than 50,000. In one documented case, a wife and mother of two, while traveling for work, was drugged and eventually sold as a bride for $1,500. The gender imbalance in China is a major reason for trafficking of women into forced marriages. After China adopted the one-child policy in 1979, the number of females dropped because of selective abortion or infanticide. In parts of rural China, males outnumber females by 20 to 40 percent.

China is a destination country for trafficked women from Vietnam. Since China and Vietnam have restored diplomatic relations, about 10,400 Vietnamese women have been sold in China for prostitution or as brides for Chinese men. Last year Chinese police rescued two Vietnamese women and turned them over to their country’s authorities. The traffickers were later sentenced to jail for between four and 17 years.

China Declares ‘Zero Tolerance’ on Human Trafficking

People's Daily, September 25, 2002

www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Sep/44041.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Many of the women are bought by farmers who cannot find wives in the normal way. But recently the trade has taken a far more disturbing turn with women and children being sold into prostitution, said UNICEF official and senior project coordinator, David Parker.

The so called "Elimination of Trafficking: Zero Tolerance Plan," which is set to last four years, will seek to find an effective working system to eliminate the "demand market" of population marketing through education, case reports and crackdowns, said Zhu Yantao, an official with the Ministry of Public Security.

Harsh Chinese Reality Feeds a Black Market in Women

Elisabeth Rosenthal, The New York Times, June 25, 2001

www.vachss.com/help_text/archive/reality_feeds.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

When a man offered Feng Chenyun temporary work in another city, she jumped at the chance. Barely literate and desperately poor, Ms. Feng had two children, 10 and 16, and it was nearly impossible to scrape together school fees from her small plot of rice and rape seed.

Her husband was working as a migrant laborer 1,000 miles away, in Guangdong Province. At 37, she had never left her county in Sichaun Province and was feeling restless.

"I went with him because he was offering me work," she said, recounting from her small dark home the start of a tale that still brings tears three years later. "I just wanted to get out and earn a bit of money."

Instead, Ms. Feng was kidnapped, drugged, placed on a train and sold for about $1,500 as a bride to a brick maker in faraway Xinjiang Province—becoming one of the tens if not hundreds of thousands of poor Chinese women who are sold on a black market each year.

China's Infant Cash Crop

Hannah Beech, Xicheng,Time Pacific, January 29, 2001 | NO. 4

www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2047449,00.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2047449,00.html

[accessed 26 April 2020]

Girls, two-week-old bundles with shocks of black hair, cost $25 each. Boys, traditionally favored, sell for $50. The chicken trade, by contrast, brings in only $2 for the plumpest fowl. In a mountainous region where drought has stymied farmers, the baby trade is feeding citizens in a way that Yunnan province's cracked red earth no longer can. Some mothers, who have no knowledge of birth control, are giving up "extra" children that violate the nation's family-planning policy. Others, from the most desperately poor villages, have turned into full-time baby machines, squeezing out children-for-sale in the shadows of their dirt-floor shacks. "Before, we made money by raising pigs," says a 23-year-old woman who sold two children just days after they were born. "But it takes a year to raise a pig and it's expensive to feed. A baby takes only nine months and doesn't cost any money.

Millions Suffer in Sex Slavery

United Press International UPI, Chicago, April 24, 2001

humanrightscivics1.wikifoundry.com/page/Sex+Slaves

[accessed 6 January 2015]

Statistical estimates indicate 300,000 women have been sold into the sex trade in Western Europe in the last 10 years, and since 1990, 80,000 women and children from Myanmar (formerly Burma), Cambodia, Laos and China have been sold into Thailand's sex industry.

China arrests prostitution gang

BBC News, 28 April, 2000

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/729337.stm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

Police in China have arrested 79 gang members suspected of abducting women from rural areas and forcing them into prostitution.  Hundreds of young women and girls are said to have been lured with promises of jobs in Chinese cities. Some of the victims were as young as 12-years-old.

Vietnamese Women Are Kidnapped

Samantha Marshall, The Wall Street Journal, Hanoi Vietnam, August 3, 1999

www.wright.edu/~tdung/bride_vn.htm

[accessed 29 January 2011]

www.wsj.com/articles/SB933633318281546817

[accessed 26 April 2020]

Jobless and destitute, Nguyen Thi Hoan felt her luck was about to change. She had just arrived here one sultry June morning two years ago, and almost at once a kindly woman offered her a job in a candy factory.  It was a trap. Within hours, Miss Hoan was spirited across the Vietnam-China border at Lang Son, 100 miles away, by one of the gangs that kidnap young women and sell them to be brides in China.

For several days, the 22-year-old was trucked and traded around southern China, changing hands four times before finally meeting the man who would be her husband. "I am writing while wiping away tears," she told her family in a letter she mailed secretly. "Please come here and save me."

New weapons against child trafficking in Asia

International Labour Organisation ILO, WORLD OF WORK, No. 19, March 1997

www.ageofconsent.com/comments/numberthirteen.htm

[accessed 20 January 2016]

In Asia, trafficking in children both between and within various countries is on the increase. In recent years, large numbers of children from Cambodia, China, Laos and Myanmar have been forced to work as prostitutes in Thailand. Both girls and boys from poor rural areas are lured by professional recruiters and traffickers with promises of legitimate jobs in Thailand's booming economy.

Child Labour Persists Around The World: More Than 13 Percent Of Children 10-14 Are Employed

International Labour Organisation (ILO) News, Geneva, 10 June 1996

www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/press-and-media-centre/news/WCMS_008058/lang--en/index.htm

[accessed 9 September 2011]

www.scribd.com/document/366840945/Child-Labour-Persists-Around-the-World

[accessed 30 January 2019]

"Today's child worker will be tomorrow's uneducated and untrained adult, forever trapped in grinding poverty. No effort should be spared to break that vicious circle", says ILO Director-General Michel Hansenne.

Among the countries with a high percentage of their children from 10-14 years in the work force are: Mali, 54.5 percent; Burkina Faso, 51; Niger and Uganda, both 45; Kenya, 41.3; Senegal, 31.4; Bangladesh, 30.1; Nigeria, 25.8; Haiti, 25; Turkey, 24; Côte d'Ivoire, 20.5; Pakistan, 17.7; Brazil, 16.1; India, 14.4; China, 11.6; and Egypt, 11.2.

Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 30 September 2005

www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/china2005b.html

[accessed 29 January 2011]

DATA COLLECTION - The Committee regrets the limited statistical data on sexual exploitation and cross-border trafficking included in the State party’s report, both with regard to mainland China and Macau SAR. It is further concerned that the data refers almost exclusively to the number of women and children rescued rather than those abducted, and that data often refers to different time periods, which hampers the accurate assessment and monitoring of the situation regarding the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

The Protection Project - China

The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), The Johns Hopkins University

www.protectionproject.org/human_rights_reports/report_documents/china.doc

[Last accessed 2009]

www.protectionproject.org/country-reports/

[accessed 22 February 2016]

FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE TRAFFICKING INFRASTRUCTURE - As a result of China’s one-child policy, unwanted female children are prone to abandonment, trafficking, and even infanticide. Girls are also disadvantaged in the areas of education and job opportunities. Such discrimination increases girls’ vulnerability to trafficking.  Girls are sold to rural families who already have a son but want a daughter to help with the housework; others are sold to be raised as child brides for farmers in remote regions. Because of the selective abortion of girls in China, some researchers estimate there are 111 males for every 100 females in the country, making it difficult for poor farmers to find wives.  The lack of Chinese women in turn fuels trafficking from Vietnam to China, as does the reported lack of available Vietnamese men for Vietnamese women.

Human Rights Overview by Human Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide

www.hrw.org/asia/china

[accessed 29 January 2011]

*** EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE ***

Freedom House Country Report - Political Rights: 7   Civil Liberties: 6   Status: Not Free

2018 Edition

freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2018

[accessed 26 April 2020]

G4. DO INDIVIDUALS ENJOY EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND FREEDOM FROM ECONOMIC EXPLOITATION?

Exploitative employment practices such as wage theft, excessive overtime, student labor, and unsafe working conditions are pervasive in many industries. Forced labor and trafficking are also common, frequently affecting rural migrants, and Chinese nationals are similarly trafficked abroad. Forced labor is the norm in prisons and other forms of administrative detention for criminal, political, and religious detainees. Authorities in some parts of Xinjiang reportedly continued to require Uighurs to provide unpaid labor for public works projects during 2017.

2017 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 20 April 2018

www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2017/eap/277073.htm

[accessed 19 March 2019]

www.state.gov/reports/2017-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/china-includes-tibet-hong-kong-and-macau/

[accessed 25 June 2019]

PROHIBITION OF FORCED OR COMPULSORY LABOR

Persons with mental disabilities were subjected to forced labor in small workshops and factories. Police raided two workshops in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast in July and freed more than 30 enslaved laborers, according to media reports.

In 2013 the NPC abolished the Re-education through Labor system, an arbitrary system of administrative detention without judicial review. Some media outlets and NGOs reported that forced labor continued in some drug rehabilitation facilities where individuals continued to be detained without judicial process. It was not possible to independently to verify these reports.

PROHIBITION OF CHILD LABOR AND MINIMUM AGE FOR EMPLOYMENT

Abuse of the student-worker system continued; as in past years, there were allegations that schools and local officials improperly facilitated the supply of student laborers.

Human Rights Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, March 8, 2006

2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61605.htm

[accessed 7 February 2020]

TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS – Internal trafficking was a significant problem. Ministry of Public Security (MPS) statistics show that during the first 10 months of the year, there were 1,949 cases of trafficking involving women and children. Over this same period, there were 3,574 women and children rescued compared with 8,949 women and children rescued in 2004.

Some experts suggested that the demand for abducted women was fueled by the shortage of marriageable brides, especially in rural areas. The serious imbalance in the male-female sex ratio at birth, the tendency for many village women to leave rural areas to seek employment, and the cost of traditional betrothal gifts all made purchasing a bride attractive to some poor rural men. Some men recruited brides from poorer regions, while others sought help from criminal gangs. Criminal gangs either kidnapped women and girls or tricked them with promises of jobs and higher living standards, only to be transported far from their homes for delivery to buyers. Once in their new "family," these women were "married" and raped. Some accepted their fate and joined the new community; others struggled and were punished; a few escaped.

Kidnapping and the buying and selling of children continued to occur, particularly in poorer rural areas. There were no reliable estimates of the number of children trafficked. Domestically, most trafficked children were sold to couples unable to have children; in particular, boys were trafficked to couples unable to have a son. In 2004 media reported arrests in the case of 76 baby boys sold in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, and a case of 200 children, mostly boys, who were kidnapped in Kunming, Yunnan Province. In December, 16 people were arrested in connection with the kidnapping of 31 baby girls, whose ages ranged from newborn to three months old. Reports stated the babies were to be sold to foreigners for $100 to $500 (RMB 807 to RMB 4,037) each. The kidnapping ring was believed to have been in operation for two years Children were also trafficked for labor purposes. Children trafficked to work usually were sent from poorer interior areas to relatively more prosperous areas; traffickers reportedly often enticed parents to relinquish their children with promises of large remittances their children would be able to send to them.

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