The Republic of China has been demoted to Tier 3 (rating of trafficking in persons report ) by the US State Department for the country’s government lack of efforts to prevent human trafficking. According to the US State Department, China “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so”. While the government has dealt with some issues such as cooperating with foreign countries to investigate overseas trafficking cases and supporting awareness to spread information about the issue. The matter of human trafficking is a consequence of the implementation of the one-child policy program in the early 80s to prevent the growing population in the country. When the country’s population started approaching near one billion, they established the one-child policy program nationwide under the Chinese Communist Party. The policy proved effective with the decrease in China’s fertility and birth rate. Although the policy solved one problem, there were other issues that surfaced. China’s establishment of the one-child program increased the rate of human trafficking in the country that in turn results in issues such as sex trafficking, infant smuggling, and forced labor.
By 1949 the government had already begun encouraging people to use birth control and family planning. But when the population just increased year by year, the government created a short term solution to decrease population. The policy made several contraceptive methods widely available, offered financial encouragement, employment opportunities, and sometimes forced abortions and sterilizations. Although there were some exceptions for couples in minority groups and families with a handicapped firstborn. The program created an unbalanced ratio of gender with more males in the country. Many Chinese families prefer sons over daughters according to traditional Chinese beliefs, daughters are not family after getting married. The sons inherit the family name, property and are responsible for taking care of their parents as a sign of filial piety. When the policy was established, people didn’t want daughters anymore resulting in an increase in abortions of female fetuses and the number of female children in orphanages. Most of these abandoned girls were adopted in the United States. As time went on, the gap between the two genders expanded which created the issue of restricted eligible females for marriage. Although the program was canceled in 2016, several consequences from the past policy are still going on. In 2013, the US State Department named China as one of the countries with the highest human trafficking cases in the world.
Sex trafficking is an ongoing issue in China for a long time now. This is caused by China’s one-child policy; one of the most controversial policies ever created in history. In spite of criticisms from several human rights organizations, the Chinese government enforced the policy for the country’s population planning program. Although the program was a success, the program led to an extreme imbalance in gender ratio and an aging labor force. The main factor of the increasing cases of sex trafficking in China and its neighbors is the one-child policy. Judging from the weak state laws and effort from the Chinese government for this issue, sex trafficking continues to be a serious case. Together with the one child, China’s cultural preference for sons than daughters contributed significantly to the issues due to the unequal ratio of high males and low females. Now China is a place of transit and destination for women, men, and children in the human trafficking industry. Reports show that not only females within their own country but most neighboring countries such as Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Singapore, and North Korea are a source of females for human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Most of these girls are lured with job opportunities and sometimes they were drugged and kidnapped by human brokers. According to some reports, these girls are sold into China ranging from $3,000 to $13,000 and forced to marry Chinese men. Many of these victims have testified to being rxxxd, locked up, and carry children by their “husbands” or male family members. Every year North Korean women leave their country to go to China with brokers that would sell them to Chinese households or force them into the sex industry against their will once they get there. The gender imbalance is even more evident in rural places as the demand for brides are even higher there. In some parts of China, there is still the traditional belief of men paying a dowry to the bride’s family and due to the low supply of eligible women, the dowry prices have been rising. This means that getting a foreign bride would be a cheaper choice for these men. The increasing popularity of the trafficking community created “professional marriage brokers who operate through mail-order bride websites”. The orders would include broker payments, dowry and legal fees that would add up to thousands of dollars which attract human traffickers. The most popular provinces in China for sex trafficking and forced marriage are Jiangxi, Henan, Anhui, Hainan, and Yunnan.
Child trafficking and smuggling in China is a serious issue but at the same time very vague. Although the Chinese government recognizes this problem, they consider this as a “ taboo topic”. They do not make any public official statistics about the number of children trafficked or sold to adoption agencies overseas. This topic not only known to be “taboo” within China but also outside of China due to thousands of overseas families who adopted children from China. In 2012, almost 3000 Chinese children were adopted in America only. There is no accurate number of how many children are smuggled from China or how many of them are sold for adoption domestically or internationally. The best estimate is that almost 200,000 children per year are sold to families to foreign countries through illegal markets. The Chinese government is starting to take action of these businesses by setting prison sentences for these trafficking cases. Most of these child trafficking cases involve where children are sold to families that cannot have children or where families prefer sons due to cultural beliefs. Furthermore, some children are sold to criminal gangs where they are exposed to drugs and abuse. The main reason child trafficking is a common issue is due to how easy and profitable the business is in the country. Most of these child trafficking cases occur because of poverty and loopholes of China’s laws. According to statistics, almost 30% of these cases were sold from their own parents because of financial issues. Connecting this issue back to the one-child policy are the undocumented children that were born without any record. Because of the restriction in the past, couples would keep their pregnancies and births hidden from authorities which means that most of these children are unregistered in their hukou (Chinese household document) as Chinese citizens. This makes it hard for them to receive a proper education, health care, open bank account, get married and find formal employment. Although recently, the Chinese officials have stated that there are going to allow the undocumented people to register in their hukou.
China’s flourishing economy over the past decades has secured the nation’s place as the second largest economy and importer in the world. The success of the economy is thanks to the country’s “domestic economy specializing in the production of labor-intensive, cheap goods for export”. Most of these domestic factories are where forced labor occurs frequently. They range from the production of goods to construction departments. While there are several urgent problems of forced labor, this issue is still not shown in the local media. The worst cases of these issues were of elderly people working in brick kilns. As the birth rate dropped due to the one-child program, there were less child and more adults which meant that most of the workers in the labor force were elderly. The Guangxi province, there was an estimated 50,000 illegal Vietnamese workers that were smuggled into the country by brokers. These brokers work together with Vietnamese gangs to bring them into the country. They then make a profit by taking a ration from the worker’s salary and also asking a fee from factories owners. In a factory in Changshu, Jiangsu province, there have been indications of child workers that have been forced in ways such as working overtime with pay, getting beaten if they don’t obey, and seizing their passports and mobile phones. Another case in 2016 was when the police saved six disabled workers from a brick factory who were victims of forced labor. Out of all these industries, the electronic industry was revealed to play a major role in this issue. It was revealed recently that several employees working in “Foxconn” (Chinese electronic manufacturer) were working with harsh conditions. The workers were students that were forced to work if they wanted to graduate. The students were told that the jobs were “internships”. Most cases like these came from leading electronic factories such as Apple, Acer, HP, Sony and etc.. There are also cases found in the construction industry where workers are victims of “withheld wages and non-payment, excessive and illegal overtime, and widespread lack of employment contracts”.
While one child policy program was widely criticized by the world, the Chinese government claims the program achieved success by preventing over 400 million births and helped the rapid development of their economy. The program made several changes that influenced the nation long term. Since couples were limited to having one child, it transformed the role of women in Chinese society. In the past, parents would only give opportunities to their sons but because of the restriction, they started to invest in their daughters as well. Girls were allowed to go to school and work in formal employment which was not a common activity in the past. These opportunities allowed women in China to take place in society. During the time of the program, the government provided incentives such as education opportunities, housing improvement, longer work leave, and interest-free loans. This means the increasing job opportunities and higher wages was a huge support to the extreme poverty that China experienced after World War 2. Although the program provides a short term solution for the issues, it resulted in long term issues that affect the country widely. The one-child policy restriction created severe problems of human trafficking. This is a serious problem that would impact the country hugely.
Human trafficking in China is still a widespread issue, but many of these issues are still unreported to authority. It has been reported that there are times where authorities are a part of these cases of human trafficking. They work with brokers where they gain profit in exchange for letting the cases go unnoticed. Because of the unreported cases and corrupted authorities, it is hard to know the accurate scale of China’s human trafficking situation. If the government does not start taking extreme measures, the problem is only going to increase. Not only the government’s lack of action is limited but also its reports of these cases. There are no official statistics of the human trafficking cases and there are several cases where it is not known to the public. The government limited understanding of this problem is not enough to set that will have a significant impact. In spite of collaboration with foreign and domestic organizations to fight against China’s trafficking cases, the issue just keeps growing. Even though the one-child policy program has ended, it has left the country with long term repercussions. Sex trafficking, child smuggling, and forced labor will still continue to be a part of China’s leading issues. If the media could help spread awareness about the seriousness of these issues, it would give more pressure to the government. Chinese officials would be encouraged to create better solutions if there was pressure not only within the country but also internationally.
2019-5-2-1556826134