Infants rescued
July 27, 2011
Police have also arrested 369 people in the six-month operation to break up a pair of "large criminal enterprises" involved in child trafficking across 14 provinces, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement.
"Two large criminal gangs involved in child trafficking have been successfully destroyed, once again showing the public security organs' solemn commitment to the people," it said. Children were sold for an average of about 40,000 yuan (6,210 US dollars), it added, but otherwise gave few details.
Children abducted from Vietnam
In the first case, the traffickers, who were mostly Vietnamese residents, abducted children from Vietnam and sold them in China's southern regions of Guangdong and Guangxi, the China Daily newspaper said, citing an unnamed officer from Guangdong's provincial department of public security.
In mid-July, police detained 39 suspects in connection with trafficking and rescued eight infants, aged 10 days to seven months, who had been drugged with sleeping pills, the newspaper said.
In another crackdown this month, police arrested 330 people suspected of involvement in the trafficking of baby girls, the newspaper said. The 81 infants rescued were aged 10 days to four months and are now in the care of institutions, the report said.
"One child policy" to blame
Some Chinese academics have blamed the country's "one child policy", which is aimed at controlling growth in China's population, the world's largest at 1.3 billion, for contributing to child trafficking. The policy generally limits people in urban areas to one child, while rural families can have two if the first is a girl. This has put a premium on baby boys, and baby girls have been sold off or abandoned as couples try for a male heir. Women are sold to men in remote areas who are unable to find brides due to the sex imbalance resulting from China's one child policy which has encouraged sex-selective abortions.
Police set up a special task force in February following the discovery of a child kidnap ring in the Guangxi region, the newspaper said. Another trafficking operation was broken up in the economically backward southwestern province of Yunnan this May.
The report said that police have uncovered 39,194 cases of human trafficking in China since April 2009, the majority of the cases involving women or children.
Abductions and human trafficking have become serious public concerns after a string of revelations shocked the nation. These included a shocking 2007 scandal in which thousands were forced into slave labour in brickyards and mines across the nation.
Activism spurs government crackdown
The issue leapt back onto the national agenda at the beginning of the year when a professor known for his activism on behalf of China's downtrodden classes launched a microblog that helps parents find missing children.
The campaign by Yu Jianrong, a professor of rural development, went viral as hopeful parents jumped at the chance of finding missing kids, prompting the government to issue a new crackdown pledge. The microblog allows parents to upload photos of missing children and seek help from other Web users in finding them.
Author: Shivani Mathur (Reuters, afp)
Editor: Manasi Gopalakrishnan