A young couple from eastern China’s Hubei province, who sold their baby girl online for ￥65,000, has brought the country’s child trafficking battle to the forefront again. The case further highlights a rejection to the country’s latest push for its people to bare more children.
The accused, 19-year-old Gao and his partner, 20-year-old Zhang, sold their baby girl, through an agent, Zhu, from Hunan province, who they had contacted online. After finding a buyer for the child, Zhu pocketed ￥20,000 as his fee. Information regarding the case came from a Xishui police report released via Weibo (Chinese Twitter).
South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports the couple were under financial pressure, as they already had a 1-year-old son to take care of and could not afford another. Gao, a takeaway delivery driver, and his partner Zhang, together with agent Zhu have all been detained and are awaiting trial. No report has been released that states whether the buyer of the child had been contacted.
As stated by SCMP, authoritative measures see to it first as to whether the child, who has been sold, has other relatives who are willing to take care of the infant. If in the event there is no family or the family refuse, then the next step is usually adoption.
Aside from parents voluntarily giving up their children, kidnapping is rife and has been for a long time. According to an article by What’s On Weibo (WOW), around 70,000 children in China are kidnapped and sold on the black market each year. The article talks of “internal trafficking” becoming a “serious social problem”.
For many, the question remains; why is there such a domestic demand for the buying of children in China? China’s One Child Policy surfaces as the main cause for a resurgence of the problem. Parents who cannot afford their second child traditionally sell the infant to an agent who then goes on to traffic the child in whichever way is most profitable.
The publication “China’s Stolen Children: Internal Child Trafficking in the People’s Republic” by China by authors Anqi Shen, Georgious A. Antonopoulos and Georgios Papanicolaou, states that the trafficking of children has been going on for such a long time in China that, “the combination of socioeconomic, political and cultural factors set a complex picture that highlights the shortcomings of dominant ways of thinking about the phenomenon”.
WOW highlights the most recent topics regarding the topic on Weibo; #一起帮宝贝回家# “Help Our Babies Get Home”, as well as articles that actively share advice on how not to let your child get abducted.
Said to be “as profitable as the drug trade”, the demand for trafficked children domestically could also be coming from a strong demand for boys. In a court study, originally released by a reporter from China’s Southern Metropolis Daily, subsequently taken down from the Internet and quoted on Quartz; “Of the 380 trafficked children from the court cases, 248 were male and 120 were female. Daughters tend to sell for an average of ￥10,000, while sons go for much more, an average of ￥45,000”.
Then there are those who conceive with the intention of child trafficking. “A Hunan couple initially sold their second child for ￥6,000, out of economic necessity. But after the first time, they continued to conceive, and sold their third and fourth child for ￥20,000 and ￥10,000 respectively. The court ultimately sentenced the father to 6 years in jail and fined him ￥20,000 yuan”, the aforementioned case study also revealed.
While children who have been sold willingly by their parents end up for adoption, sadly, many children who are kidnapped have the same fate. Working in cahoots with the agents, illegal orphanages sell children to unknowing adoptive parents in China and abroad, which adds layers to the complexity of the problem.
With all of China’s problems regarding never ending child trafficking within her own borders, why is the country being encouraged to have more children, instead of addressing the latter? The Nanjinger last week wrote of a recent campaign in which the Chinese government is encouraging people to embrace the idea of having two children.
The main argument for the recent baby push is for sustaining the country’s ageing population and for boosting the economy. However, sharp rises in living and schooling costs in China are preventing people from doing so. If China’s middle classes are saying they cannot afford a second child, then how can its lower classes? Will the country’s demand for trafficked children drop off as it did during the 1960s?
