Chinese Human Trafficking Ring Busted, Police Rescue Dozens of Children
Chinese authorities released information on Wednesday on the rescuing of 89 minors that had been victims of child trafficking. The youngest of the 89 victims was 10 days old while the oldest was 4 years of age.
In the country's latest crackdown on human trafficking, two separate operations occurred in both China and Vietnam.
The first operation took place on July 15 in Vietnam and resulted in the rescue of eight infants that were to be trafficked into China's southern regions of Guangdong and Guangxi.
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On July 20, another police crackdown took place in 14 of China's 22 provinces in the north, south, and east of the country. The operation involved 2,600 police officers.
From those operations, authorities arrested 369 individuals suspected to be part of two of the major child trafficking rings in the country.
The rescued children had been sent to orphanages due to the difficulties in detecting their parents, as some children are sold by their own parents, while other children are kidnapped from their homes.
Some families sell children out of destitution, while others sell for a profit. News emerged recently how one couple from China was so overtaken by their video game addiction that they said they sold their three children in order to fund their obsession.
The standard buyer of a trafficked child in China may want more children, or may purchase a child in the hope of using them for forced labor.
Other reported reasons for the trafficking of children include the purchasing of a child for sexual abuse, or the purchasing of a "daughter" to act as a future wife to a son.
It has been alleged by human rights advocates that China's black market sale of human beings thrives in a society where a large segment of the population still lives under the poverty line, and where the traditional cultural norm is for families to prefer male to female children.
That, coupled with China's one child policy, has led to a demographic crisis of great magnitude, wherein Chinese women and girls are becoming more scarce, particularly in rural villages.
It is projected that within 20 to 25 years there will not be enough brides for a fifth of the Chinese male population.
Thus, the purchasing of a baby girl could ensure a rural family a future wife for their son, while, the sale of a daughter may enable an impoverished family to feed itself.
These realities point to a cycle of poverty and inequality that lead to conditions where the trafficking of children becomes rampant.
The successful crackdowns this month have been widely publicized throughout China in an effort to stem criticism made earlier this year from a microblog campaign that suggested the Chinese government both ignored and blocked the efforts of parents to find their abducted children.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security stated on Wednesday that "two large criminal gangs involved in child-trafficking have been successfully destroyed, once again showing the public security organs' solemn commitment to the people."
