Babies for sale: children openly sold online in China
Child-trafficking rings have become 'more sophisticated', using the internet to sell abducted babies in China
Babies, many of whom have been abducted from their families, are being openly sold online in China, a BBC investigation has revealed.
Sellers are becoming "more sophisticated" as they use websites and online forums to sell children to prospective buyers.
Baby boys can be sold for up to 100,000 rmb (£10,500), double the price of a girl, as male children are valued more highly in Chinese culture.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
No official figures are released from Beijing, but the US State Department estimates that 20,000 children are abducted every year. The country's state media puts the number even higher, at 200,000, but Chinese authorities reject this figure.
"Once abducted, children are most often sold for adoption but some are forced to work as beggars for criminal gangs," the BBC's Martin Patience reports. "The vast majority of those abducted are simply lost forever."
The Chinese black market in children first came to the world's attention more than a decade ago, when police in Guangxi province discovered 28 babies in the back of a bus.
"They had been drugged to keep them quiet and then stuffed inside nylon bags, where one died from suffocation. The traffickers were caught and the leaders sentenced to death," writes Patience.
Last year, Chinese authorities uncovered four child-trafficking rings, leading to the arrest of more than 1,000 people who were caught using websites and instant messaging services to buy and sell babies.
Earlier this year, police busted a major child-trafficking network, rescuing 37 babies and a three-year-old girl in Shandong province. The children had been transported to prospective buyers in large suitcases and handbags, and many of them were ill and severely malnourished, CNN reports.
China's one-child policy has also forced some parents to sell their own children, to avoid receiving a severe fine. "There are too many babies born outside the family planning laws," said one doctor. "As long as the families make a deal and it's done right after birth, nobody needs to know."
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
'Make legal immigration a more plausible option'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
LA-to-Las Vegas high-speed rail line breaks ground
Speed Read The railway will be ready as soon as 2028
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Israel's military intelligence chief resigns
Speed Read Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva is the first leader to quit for failing to prevent the Hamas attack in October
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Sydney mall attacker may have targeted women
Speed Read Police commissioner says gender of victims is 'area of interest' to investigators
By Julia O'Driscoll, The Week UK Published
-
Why are kidnappings in Nigeria on the rise again?
Today's Big Question Hundreds of children and displaced people are missing as kidnap-for-ransom 'bandits' return
By Julia O'Driscoll, The Week UK Published
-
Deaths of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies hang over Sydney's Mardi Gras
The Explainer Police officer, the former partner of TV presenter victim, charged with two counts of murder after turning himself in
By Austin Chen, The Week UK Published
-
How the idyllic Galapagos Islands became staging post in world drug trade
Under the radar Ecuador's crackdown on gang violence forces drug traffickers into Pacific routes to meet cocaine demand
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Armed gangs, prison breaks and on-air hostages: how Ecuador was plunged into crisis
The Explainer Gangs launch deadly revenge after president declares state of emergency following escape of feared drug boss from prison
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
Ecuador tips toward chaos amid prison breaks, armed TV takeover
Speed Read New President Daniel Noboa authorized the military to 'neutralize' powerful drug-linked gangs after they unleashed violence and terror across Ecuador
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Prague shooting: student kills 14 people at university
Speed reads Police believe suspect, who killed himself, may have shot his father before carrying out mass murder
By Arion McNicoll, The Week UK Published
-
Ex-US diplomat confessed spying for Cuba to undercover agent, FBI says
Speed Read DOJ says former US ambassador Manuel Rocha perpetrated 'one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent'
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published