The United States State Department has designated China as one of the world's worst human trafficking offenders (Torbari). According to the report, China fails to achieve the minimum standards for eradicating human trafficking and makes insufficient attempts to do so. The report, which downgrades China to Tier 3, places it alongside Mali, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and Russia (Harris). Marriage in China has been upended by a combination of demographic changes, commercial factors, and cultural practices, increasing women trafficking. There is a lopsided gender balance; there are fewer marriageable women than men, forcing men to go to extremities in order to locate brides. Middle-class Chinese men have diverted their attention to Eastern Europe while bachelors that are poorer in the Chinese suburbs have begun to rely on mail-order women from South East Asia. The process has fueled sex trafficking in the country. This paper assesses and analyzes the issues, trends and consequences of women trafficking of women in China and give recommendations about how the issue can be controlled.
Type of Human Trafficking
There are different varieties of human trafficking that occur in China namely forced labor, sex trafficking, and exploitation, unlawful use of children as soldiers, domestic servitude and forced bonded labor forced begging, women trafficking amen and children from other countries to China. Despite that the country has taken some steps to address the situation, the issue has not been addressed adequately.
Why Women Trafficking is Rampant in China
Women trafficking in China is influenced by two factors. First, the country embarked on a one-child policy which is now defunct (Minter). Additionally, the culture of the Chinese is such that male children are preferred to female children, which has skewed gender ratio. In the countryside, the bias favoring boys to girls is higher than in the urban centers to the present, in some villages, the gender ration in some villages is 106:103 which has translated to the notorious aspect of bachelor villages in China. The rural areas have several marriageable men but the women are fewer. The one-child policy saw the young Chinese men travel abroad in search of wives recently. In industries, employers in the manufacturing centers are facing shortages of workers and increasing wages as a result of the shrinking working age population.
Secondly, gender imbalances in China have led to a rise in social problems. In the recent years have seen skyrocketing bride prices especially in the rural areas because women are scarce. A research conducted in 2011 revealed that dowry increased seventy times between the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, several families in China were forced to save for several years to enable their men to pay the right amount of dowry to enable them to carry their family-line. Going abroad is a viable opportunity for the men from well-to-do backgrounds bit the poor and uneducated bachelors in the rural village have few options.
Besides, most Chinese families see marriage as an opportunity for daughters to advance economically especially when a daughter is married to wealthy and undedicated men. Most of the wealth in China is concentrated in the urban areas, consequently, women move from rural village to cities to find bachelors that are more eligible. The trends have also contributed to bachelor villages in China.
Chinese men finding love in unexpected places far away from home have been spreading recently on the social media of the country and other global media. The Global Times reported a case where a divorced artist, Yuan Shinkai migrated from Beijing to Eastern Europe to find a wife. According to Shinkai, the Eastern European women are not attracted to the wealth of a potential bridegroom. Instead, they are concerned about the character of the man and his attitude towards a family. He cited that many of his friends are going to Eastern Europe to search for wives. The case of Yuan is a dark reality that is taking place in China and its neighboring countries.
The One-Child Policy Effects
As stated earlier, the primary driver of sex trafficking in China is the defunct one-child policy. Specifically, the one-child policy saddled China with demographic challenges. The traditional patriarchy society favored sons to daughters. The one-child policy made parents undertake gender-selective abortions, leading to a yawning gender gap. In addition, the policy put the fertility rate of China far below the replacement levels. The government of China estimates that the difference between the marrying women and marriageable women will rise to 30 million.
Apparently, unsavory entrepreneurs recognized the opportunities in the China's markets for brides and labor. Even before the wages for labor began rising in factories, forced labor, especially in government detention took a toll. Presently, some of the camps have been dismantled leading to a surge in the imported factory labor. Most of the women that work in factories come from North Korea.
Why the Government is Encouraging Childbearing
By 2050, the number of Chinese people above 65 of age will rise to 329 million, which is equivalent to the current population of the USA (Uhlenberg 159). As the Chinese people retire, fewer people will be available to replace them. Presently, for every five workers, and three are available to replace one retiree. After twelve years from now, the ratio will shrink from 1.6 to 1 (Chow). As a result of the demographic trends, marrying and having children has become a national imperative in China. In fact, the government has taken to issuing propaganda to encourage men to search for women from abroad. Beijing media even goes ahead to issue the countries that are the best candidates for the men. Some of the countries include Ukraine, a country that had experienced an economic downturn but with beautiful women, South Korea, Japan, and Russia.
Statistics
The women are trafficked as brides and the traffickers are paid lower prices than the ordinary prices paid to Chinese brides. In the North of China villages, the bride price skyrocketed to approximately 64,000 US dollars. The Vietnamese Brokers were offering a bride for 18, 5900 dollars for Vietnamese women. The Law enforcement of Vietnam reports that the trafficking process saw approximately 4,500 women from Vietnam becoming prey to traffickers between 2011 and 2015(Chow).Out of the women trafficked as brides, 70% of them ended in China. The other women that are trafficked to China include the Cambodian and Laotian women. The North Koreans are trafficked to China because of their pursuance for a better life. Locally, female children are trafficked with prospects of becoming wives in the future. To the present, the number of female children that are trafficked has is approaching tens of thousands.
Most Vietnamese women move to rural China for economic reasons but others are forced. Children as young as 12 are kidnapped and married to men as old as 35 in rural China. The trafficking statistics have not been documented adequately but according to the Ministry of Public security, approximately 18000 women have been trafficked to the country. In 2015, Cambodia reported that 85% of the women that are trafficking escapees to its country is from China (Chow). Vietnam is the most affected countries because it shares a rugged and isolated border with China.
Government Efforts to Control Women Trafficking in China
China government official assert that the government is committed to reducing trafficking but the loopholes in the law allow traffickers to operate (Koran and Griffiths) The Efforts of Chia to Crackdown on human trafficking have inconsistent because the last several years have seen a significant fluctuation in the number of arrests. In 2012, 80,000 traffickers were detained but two years later, the number of alleged human traffickers dropped to 194(US Gov).According to the USA State Department, the variation is attributed to the continued human trafficking conflation by the government, fraudulent adoptions with trafficking offenses and weak judicial due process and transparency. The pressures that fuel demand for foreign brides are far too strong than the government can control and the incentives for government crackdown are significantly weak.
Recommendations
It is good that the government has reversed the one-child policy because it has made the country more humane to its citizens. It is hard to reduce the financial incentives that encourage women trafficking in China (Minter). Devoting more resources and training to local law enforcement agencies can facilitate effective combat of traffickers. In addition, the government should hasten its reforms o residence permit laws because such laws leave the migrants vulnerable to coercion by criminals and local authorities
Conclusion
The primary causes are the massive gender gaps, intense pressure to marry because of the cultural demands, exorbitant dowry and unbridled capitalism in China has created a competitive market of women. Women have been assigned literal monetary values. The economic pressures force those with lower means to shop for women around at the lowest price for foreign brides becomes an ample opportunity for traffickers. To stop the issue, china must embark on doing more in the arrest and prosecution of criminals and changing cultural norms around marriage. If the Chinese people stop seeing marriage as a financial transaction, the trafficking can came to halts.
Works Cited
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