Chinese police have broken a human trafficking ring which kidnapped 18 Vietnamese women and sold them into marriages in the southeast of China. From The China Post:
The women had been working in China’s Guangxi region that borders Vietnam and were lured to Fujian with the promise of better jobs, the [Xinhua] report said. After they were kidnapped, the ring leader, surnamed Zhang, sold them to farmers in remote Yunxiao county for between 20,000-30,000 yuan (US$2,900-US$4,400), it said.
The International Herald Tribune adds:
China has said that it is making progress in fighting human trafficking, especially from Southeast Asian nations. It has resorted to harsh punishments to deter it, including the death penalty.
The trafficking in women is driven by poverty and a skewed sex ratio in parts of the Chinese countryside, which make it difficult for many peasants to find wives.
The shortage of women in rural parts of China is the product of the Chinese cultural preference for boys combined with the government’s one-child policy, as reported here on CDT. See also CDT’s previous posts on China’s gender imbalance and sex-selective abortions.
