China has seen an increase in the trafficking of women and children in recent years, and the U.S. “Human Trafficking Report 2019” ranked China’s efforts to combat human trafficking higher than only Libya, Somalia, and Yemen, where trafficking is most prevalent.
On April 29, the Communist Party of China (CPC) authorities issued a circular on an “Action Plan against Human Trafficking” for the next decade. This reflects the seriousness of human trafficking crimes in China.
Human trafficking is a very sensitive topic in China. The Chinese Communist authorities will only turn on their propaganda machine if they think it will help to promote their own political achievements. The most typical example of this is that Gao Yanmin, who has been trafficked for more than 20 years, has been branded as a role model of “selflessness” and “great love” by the CCP’s official media.
Gao Yanmin was abducted when she was 18 years old (1994) and was resold several times before she was finally sold to the remote rural village where she now lives. She escaped twice and was recaptured, then beaten and subjected to even stricter custody; she also attempted suicide twice. After giving birth to two children, she had to give up running away and fighting. As the most educated person in the village, she became a substitute teacher at the village elementary school.
Afterwards, the Chinese Communist media suddenly became interested in her story, and she became one of the “Ten People of the Year in Hebei in 2006”, and her story was adapted into a movie called “The Woman Married to the Mountain”, which extolled her contribution to rural education by giving up her escape and struggle.
However, Gao Yanmin alone is by no means an isolated case; in her village alone, more than 30 women have been abducted and sold, many with similar experiences to hers.
The CCP’s Criminal Law defines the crime of abduction and sale of women and children as the act of abducting, kidnapping, buying, selling, extorting, transporting, or transferring women and children for the purpose of selling.
The CCP claims to have “incorporated the protection of women’s and children’s rights and interests and anti-trafficking laws, regulations and policies into the content of education and training”. But the implied logic seems to be that women and minors are trafficked because they do not know the relevant laws.
And on the official website of the CCP’s State Council Working Committee on Women and Children, the relevant gist is titled, “Improving the mechanism of education and rescue and help and placement for abducted women and abducted minors,” which is taken from the action plan above. In the Chinese Communist Party’s dictionary, the term “education and rescue” refers specifically to dissidents, religious believers, or criminals.
How serious is the problem of human trafficking in China?
The Chinese Communist Party media acknowledges that the problem of human trafficking in China has become increasingly serious in the last 20 to 30 years. But how serious is it? Official figures are never available, only individual cases and stories of how rescued people have been moved.
But the U.S. “Human Trafficking Report 2019” ranks China as the third least effective in combating human trafficking, just above Libya, Somalia and Yemen, where human trafficking is most prevalent.
The report says that “well-organized criminal groups and local gangs sex-trafficked Chinese women and girls within China”; “traffickers specifically sought out adults and children with developmental disabilities, as well as the more than 60 million children left behind by relatives as their parents moved to cities, forcing them to In China, there is a “Baby Go Home” civil website to find missing children. As of May 2, 52,556 people had been traced by “Family Finder” and 48,468 by “Baby Finder,” with a total of 101,024 still being searched for and 3,670 found.
According to data from the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, from 2009 to 2013, the Communist Party’s public security authorities destroyed more than 11,000 child trafficking gangs and rescued more than 54,000 trafficked children; in 2014, more than 30,000 women and 13,000 children were rescued.
Local Communist Government “Trafficking” of Slave Labor in Xinjiang
The U.S. “Human Trafficking Report 2019” specifically mentions systematic forced labor in Xinjiang: “Communist authorities arbitrarily detained more than 1 million Muslims in up to 1,200 ‘vocational training centers. ” and forced them into labor.
On March 7 of this year, a user, “Xinjiang Labor Representative,” posted on the Zhihu column platform to “wholesale” Uyghur workers, stating explicitly that “paramilitary management, no loss of personnel… …, well behaved, obedient and not lazy”, and claimed that there were cadres in the Xinjiang Human Resources and Social Security Bureau of the Communist Party of China personally leading the team, and even said that “if necessary, we can apply for official police officers to personally lead the team if there are more people”. The note at the bottom also states that the CCP’s “Xinjiang government commissioner team and senior leaders” can also help companies and labor companies coordinate with local authorities.
This advertisement is in line with Xinjiang’s labor transfer policy. According to a 2019 report in the CCP’s official media, Xinjiang authorities will vigorously promote cross-region and cross-province employment transfers that year, and plan to transfer 2.7 million rural laborers to employment, compared to 2.8 million the previous year.
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