human trafficking and smuggling in china
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This article was downloaded by: [University of California Davis]On: 11 November 2014, At: 15:57Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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Human Trafficking and Smuggling inChinaCindy Yik-Yi ChuPublished online: 09 Dec 2010.
To cite this article: Cindy Yik-Yi Chu (2011) Human Trafficking and Smuggling in China, Journal ofContemporary China, 20:68, 39-52, DOI: 10.1080/10670564.2011.520842
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Human Trafficking and Smuggling inChinaCINDY YIK-YI CHU*
This article studies human trafficking and smuggling in China. For more than a decade,
Sinologists and observers have already recognized the ever-growing phenomena of human
trafficking and smuggling in China. Firstly, this article examines the causes, nature, and
impact of human trafficking and smuggling. Secondly, this article pays special attention to the
human trade in the two most seriously affected Chinese provinces, namely Fujian and
Yunnan. Thirdly, this article discusses the efforts by both the Chinese authorities and NGOs to
tackle human trafficking and smuggling. Nevertheless, it concludes that there is still a very
long way to go before China can manage these issues. This article is significant because
human trafficking involves prolonged exploitation of men, women, and children, which is
going to haunt the Chinese for a very long time. While Chinese societies have appeared to
become modernized, human trafficking has constituted a ‘contemporary form of slavery’.
I. Introduction
This article studies human trafficking and smuggling in China. Despite the rapidgrowth of the Chinese economy, national wealth, and world status, China has manyprolonged and serious problems which have proven difficult to resolve. For more thana decade, observers and Sinologists have already pointed out the ever-growingphenomena of human trafficking and smuggling in China. Firstly, this articlediscusses the causes, nature, and impact of human trafficking and smuggling. Itintroduces the United Nations’ definitions of these problems which exist not only inChina but also across the globe. Secondly, this article pays particular attention to thehuman trade in the two most seriously affected Chinese provinces, namely Fujian andYunnan. It states that the causes of the problems are historical and concern China’sone-child policy. Thirdly, this article examines the efforts by both the Chinese
*Cindy Yik-yi Chu is Professor of History at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her books include The Diaries of theMaryknoll Sisters in Hong Kong, 1921–1966 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), The Maryknoll Sisters in HongKong, 1921–1969: In Love with the Chinese (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and its Chinese translation(Hong Kong: Chung Hwa Book Co., 2007), Foreign Communities in Hong Kong, 1840s–1950s (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2005), China Reconstructs (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003), and Yapian zhanzheng dezai renshi [A Reappraisal of the Opium War ] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2003, in Chinese). Chu haspublished numerous articles in journals and edited volumes in the United States, Germany, Hong Kong, and Korea.She specializes in modern and contemporary China, Hong Kong history, Chinese foreign relations, Sino-Americanrelations, and Catholic history.
Journal of Contemporary China (2011), 20(68), January, 39–52
ISSN 1067-0564 print/ 1469-9400 online/11/680039–14 q 2011 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/10670564.2011.520842
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authorities and NGOs to tackle human trafficking and smuggling. Nevertheless, itconcludes that there is still a very long way to go before China can handle theseissues. This article is significant because human trafficking involves prolongedexploitation of men, women, and children, which has haunted the Chinese for a verylong time.Human trafficking has constituted transnational organized crime and is a
contemporary expression of the ancient crime of slavery. A relatively new usage ofthe word ‘trafficking’, the phenomenon has come to be identified with coercion andlong-term exploitation of men, women, and children. A report by the StateDepartment of the United States in 2004 estimated that around 800,000–900,000persons were being trafficked worldwide every year.1
The United Nations (UN) has tried to seek international support to fight against thecrime, and to demand justice for victims. Human trafficking is currently aninternationally recognized criminal offence, and has received tremendous attentionand worldwide recognition of the urgent need to combat it. The UN states that anenormous number of people have been trafficked illegally across national borders,and that they have eventually ended up in the businesses of multiple criminal gangs.Some of them might have initially agreed to the travel, which has led to themisconception that trafficked persons should have expected what would happen toand become of them. Also, the common perception has been that these people leavetheir homeland mainly because of poverty and distress.In one sense, the reality has been quite the opposite: trafficked persons can never
imagine the sufferings they will have to endure almost endlessly. If they had knownbeforehand, they would not have agreed to travel; and many of them do not evenagree to such movement in the first place, as they may have been kidnapped andforced into a hopeless situation. This also raises the question of how much the publicknows about the treatment of trafficked persons after they reach their destinations.Seldom do people realize the intensity and extensiveness of the exploitation whichtrafficked persons undergo. These crimes concern economic exploitation of labor,sexual assault, and physical torture. If the trafficked persons had originally agreed tothe transportation and paid huge sums of money, they finally realize they have trustedthe wrong people and now face conditions much worse than they endured at home.Among the trafficked victims, women suffer from sexual exploitation (79%), menfrom bonded labor (18%), many from domestic servitude, and children frommanipulation into begging and the sex trade.2
II. Definitions of human trafficking and smuggling
II.1. Trafficking in persons
The UN General Assembly resolution 55/25 of 15 November 2000 adopted theUnited Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women
1. Amparo Trujillo, trans. Egla Blouin, ‘Slavery in the 21st century’, Americas 56(2), (March/April 2004), p. 60.2. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Human Trafficking FAQs, available at: http://www.unodc.org/
unodc/en/human-trafficking/faqs.html.
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and Children’.3 As then Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan warned, human trafficking,especially that of women and children for forced labor and exploitation, had been‘one of the most egregious violations of human rights’ which troubled the UN.4
According to the ‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons,Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Conventionagainst Transnational Organized Crime’, human trafficking is the
recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of thethreat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, ofthe abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving ofpayments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over anotherperson, for the purpose of exploitation.5
The Protocol aims at preventing and combating human trafficking, with particularemphases on women and children; protecting victims and upholding their humanrights; and facilitating cooperation between nations to achieve the above objectives.6
The Protocol adds that exploitation means at least ‘the prostitution of others’,‘other forms of sexual exploitation’, ‘forced labor or services’, ‘slavery or practicessimilar to slavery’, servitude, and even ‘the removal of organs’.7 Moreover, it stressesthat the consent of a trafficked victim to the exploitation is irrelevant so long as s/hehas been subjected to such abuses.8
II.2. Human smuggling
The ‘Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air,Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational OrganizedCrime’ defines human smuggling as the ‘procurement, in order to obtain, directly orindirectly, a financial or other material benefit, of the illegal entry of a person into aState Party of which the person is not a national or a permanent resident’.9 In thisregard, the UN seeks to prevent and struggle against smuggling of migrants, toprotect the rights of smuggled persons, to forge collaboration between countries so asto strengthen border controls, and to maintain direct communication between bordercontrol agencies.10
As the UN points out, differences between human smuggling and trafficking mightoverlap and are usually inconsiderable.11 It is very difficult to distinguish whether acase is smuggling or trafficking in persons and the associated offences. The obscurity
3. ‘General Assembly resolution 55/25 of 15 November 2000’, in United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto (New York: UnitedNations, 2004), p. 2.
4. ‘Foreword’, Ibid., p. iv.5. Annex II: ‘Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children,
Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime’, Ibid., p. 42.6. Ibid.7. Ibid.8. Ibid., p. 43.9. Annex III: ‘Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, Supplementing the United
Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime’, in United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UnitedNations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Protocols Thereto, pp. 54–55.
10. Ibid., pp. 54, 59–60.11. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Human Trafficking FAQs.
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is due to these reasons: some trafficked persons have begun their trips by agreeing tobe smuggled illegally to the desired countries, but they end up ‘deceived, coerced orforced into an exploitative situation later in the process’.12 For example, theysubsequently work for minimum pay for the transportation cost. Moreover, traffickersmight describe circumstances similar to that of smuggling to potential victims, andthus interested persons pay fees equal to that of smuggled individuals. Traffickers lieto these people and their outright motive is exploitation and the fees are ‘part of thefraud and deception and a way to make a bit more money’.13
Smuggling can be the original intention of criminals, who later believe thattrafficking produces much more profit and change their course of action. Criminalsmight smuggle and traffic persons through the same routes and transportationmethods.14 Therefore, this article discusses human smuggling and traffickingtogether because the two phenomena involve the same criminal networks, means, andvery often contribute to identical crimes and social consequences. Human traffickinginvolves identifiable human victims, who are under physical, psychological, andfinancial control of criminals in the smuggling process, in transit locations, and indestination countries.15
II.3. Problems of transnational criminal offences and continued violence
In human trafficking, traffickers have the knowledge of the means and process of themovement, and have total control over what happens. Along the trafficking chains,traffickers can profit at various points by selling victims to higher-level traffickers, orto places for exploitation, like factories or brothels. Upon arrival at destinations,trafficked persons are sold or forced to work for the profit of the traffickers.Trafficking constitutes transnational criminal offences; very often children stay inforeign places as slave laborers, and women as sex workers.To make matters worse, most profit is generated from continued violence to force
victims into compliance. Human trafficking is a very serious and violent crime,resulting in severe human rights violations. Here, what are being trafficked are notgoods (say drugs), but human beings who are being treated or sold like goods. In2004, it was estimated that about 800,000–900,000 people were being traffickedworldwide every year. Traffickers regard human trafficking as a more lucrativebusiness than trafficking in drugs and goods.Trafficking in persons between countries demonstrates that many governments do
not have strict and effective policies concerning the transportation of people acrossnational borders.16 The worst case is that governments have lost control over bordermovements. Trafficking has become a global issue, involving governments andinternational organizations. Because of its extensiveness and the ability of traffickers
12. Ibid.13. Ibid.14. Ibid.15. Jacqueline Oxman-Martinez and Jill Hanley, ‘Human smuggling and trafficking: achieving the goals of the
UN Protocols?’, in Cross Border Perspectives: Human Trafficking, (20 February 2003) (Campell Public AffairsInstitute, Maxwell School of Syracuse University), no page numbers.
16. Ronald Skeldon, Myths and Realities of Chinese Irregular Migration, IOM International Organization forMigration Research Series, no. 1 (Geneva: International Organization for Migration, 2000), p. 8.
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to penetrate deep into society, it has been a very difficult issue to tackle. Moreimportantly, the amount of atrocity that might involve also adds to the gravity of theoffence. If the problem is not tackled quickly, it might contribute to the deteriorationof social well-being, and to the increase of people who suffer from this present formof slavery. With globalization, the snakehead networks have become increasinglycomplicated and the smuggling routes have been hard to trace, together facilitatingthis human trade.
III. Trafficking and smuggling in China
Human trafficking and smuggling in China have drawn universal attention because ofa number of factors.17 Firstly, the problems are extremely tough to resolve. Humantrafficking and smuggling in China involve complicated routes, highly organizednetworks, and long-distance travel. Authorities across the world have found itdifficult to control the transportation patterns, which have changed from time to timeand have been tremendously sophisticated. Secondly, there have been concerns thatthe Chinese have been much abused during the passage. Deaths have been reportedand outrageous mistreatment has resulted. Thirdly, the smuggled people pay hugesums of money to reach their destinations, and the profit from trafficking has beeneven higher. Such enormous profit has made it even more tempting to expand thetrafficking and smuggling trade. There have been fears about the unimaginablepotential of the expansion of the crimes.Criminal syndicates usually control the trafficking business, which is highly
lucrative as it is targeted at the wealthy nations of the West. Most of the time,trafficking can lead to ‘situations of bonded labour and virtual slavery’, which causeimmense suffering to the victims concerned.18 Smuggled people have contributed tolabor in the black market, and this has led to the reduction of the general income ofresidents of destination countries. At the same time, trafficking has involvedkidnapping and exploitation. Making matters worse, trafficking has led to a rise incrime in destination places. Many investigators believe that Chinese people andgangs are the main controllers of the worldwide trafficking business.19
Fujian, a southern province, has been a hotbed of trafficking and smuggling inChina. For more than a century, Fujianese had been moving to the West both legallyand illegally. Fujian has a commonly acknowledged emigration history, and thisdeveloping coastal province has a concentration of China’s ‘human snakes’, namelytrafficked and smuggled persons.20 There are many reasons accounting for such ahistorical phenomena in Fujian. Unlike places where the victims are, in the majority,poor, the Fujian case has been somewhat different. According to a 2000 Newsweekarticle, smuggled Fujianese were ‘seldom poor and desperate’, but they simplyfollowed the tradition of being ‘eager to get rich’.21 There was a myth or tradition to
17. Ibid., p. 5.18. Ibid., p. 9.19. Ibid.20. Melinda Liu and Leslie Pappas, ‘Bound for “paradise”; Fujian’s emigration culture is deeply ingrained. Its
migrants aren’t poor, just eager to get rich’, Newsweek (International Edition), (3 July 2000), p. 21.21. Ibid.
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go abroad, to earn money and send it back home, and then to become rich amongFujianese peers. There has been pressure from families and society to earn enoughoverseas, to return, and then to become bosses at home. A former glass-factoryworker said, ‘If you don’t have someone who’s found work overseas, you have no“face”’.22 Therefore, prestige in the neighborhood has contributed to the illegalsmuggling, which has turned out to be very risky. People have died on route or beendetained in overseas prisons; but deaths have not stopped the smuggling business.Smuggling has been on the international agenda for quite some time. In 1993,
human smuggling became a world news item ‘when the Golden Venture, a decrepitfreighter stuffed with 286 Chinese, most from the Changle area in southern China, ranaground off Queens, New York’.23 In that incident, ten people died and ‘GoldenVenture’ revealed the prolonged crimes involving an uncountable number ofvictims.24 In the early 1990s, the American Immigration and Naturalization Servicereported that 90% of the illegal immigrants in the United States were from Fujian.25
Such an overwhelming influx of smuggled persons from one single area had not beenseen before. The ‘snakeheads’ were those in Taiwan and New York City, who hadclose relations with the Fujianese communities in the United States. Also, thesmuggled persons usually enjoyed better living standards at home and could afford topay to go to the United States. They were mostly young and unmarried men.Ten years later, in 2003, the trade still continued, and the cost was US$60,000
per head.26 By the turn of the twenty-first century, New York’s Chinatown hadwitnessed a significant growth of the Fujianese population. Fujianese opened andworked in shops, restaurants, and employment agencies. They were the ‘new blood’of Chinatown.27 A combination of factors enabled the smuggling of Fujianese to theUnited States. These factors included economic motivation, the successfulcoordination between smugglers, the work of local recruiters in Fujian, and thegrowth of international transportation networks.28 Collaboration between varioussmuggling parties and careful planning made the smuggling business easy.As explained in previous paragraphs, historical factors explain why most of the
smugglers have been Fujianese.29 The Fujian Province had a long history ofsmuggling by sea, and had been the breeding ground for secret societies and forpeople traveling abroad. Such a long history could be dated back to the seventeenthcentury when conflicts between the Qing rulers and the Ming loyalists led to hugemigration to Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Since then, Fujian has become the outpostfor outward migration. Also, this history has its legacy even in the contemporary
22. Ibid.23. David W. Chen, ‘For many Chinese, America’s allure is fading’, New York Times (Late Edition, East Coast),
(7 September 2003), p. 1.24. Ibid.25. Sheldon X. Zhang, ‘Task force orientation and dyadic relations in organized Chinese alien smuggling’,
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 13(4), (November 1997), p. 321.26. Chen, ‘For many Chinese, America’s allure is fading’, p. 1.27. David Kyle and Zai Liang, Migration Merchants: Human Smuggling from Ecuador and China, Working
Paper No. 43 (San Diego: Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California-San Diego, October2001), p. 14.
28. Ibid., p. 15.29. Sheldon X. Zhang and Mark S. Gaylord, ‘Bound for the golden mountain: the social organization of Chinese
alien smuggling’, Crime, Law & Social Change 25(1), (1996), pp. 5–6.
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period. Fujianese live in major American cities, and Fujianese peasants, not alwaysdue to poverty, but with the aim of getting richer, want to join their clans or relativesin the United States.
IV. The ‘snakehead’ network
Chinese smuggling has been global in nature and has been highly technical in itscommunication network. The Chinese were able to make fake passports and visas forany country, and this seemed to be the case all over China. In 2001, the cost of acounterfeit Chinese passport was US$5,000, and it was also possible to produce fakeChinese citizen resident cards. The traffickers and smugglers were the ‘snakeheads’,who had the most updated information on law enforcement, political environment,and smuggling routes for people.30 Due to geographical propinquity, the number ofillegal immigrants to Taiwan rose from an annual average of 1,500 in the 1990s toover 2,500 in 2003.31 Moreover, Taiwan was involved in the smuggling of Fujianeseto the United States. Taiwanese and Fujianese shared a similar dialect, and that madethings easier. The operation from Taiwan began in 1991 when Taiwanese ocean-going ships smuggled Chinese across the Pacific. The Taiwanese business was highlyprofitable as it involved lower overheads and more convenient logistics. Withoutpassports, Chinese were smuggled by sea.32 Another route was to travel to Guangxiand Yunnan, which are southern provinces of China, and to move to Burma(Myanmar), and then to Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries before arrivingin the United States. Bangkok was an important transit point because the smuggledpeople stayed there for quite some time. Mexico was another major transit pointalong the smuggling route. So were places in Central America, for exampleGuatemala and Panama; people who were smuggled into Central America would betransported to Mexico.33
The smuggled persons could be shipped in cargo ships; some even died during thejourney. In January 2000, authorities found 15 Fujianese in a giant freighter, whichreached Seattle, and 30 Fujianese in cargo ships which reached Long Beach.34 In theSeattle case, three dead bodies were found in a cargo container from Hong Kong.Similar incidents also happened in Canada and Europe. The most notorious eventtook place in June 2000 when 58 Fujianese were found dead due to suffocation in alocked truck in Dover, Britain.35
The smuggling and sale of children have also happened in China. In March 2003,there were reports of 28 baby girls from two to five months old being smuggled in theback of a bus in Guangxi Province.36 The babies were to be sent to other parts ofChina, to childless families in cities which had better resources and could raise baby
30. Kyle and Liang, Migration Merchants, p. 15.31. Kathrin Hille, ‘The stalemate between China and Taiwan perpetuates tragedy of human trafficking’, Financial
Times (Japan Edition), (26 September 2003), p. 2.32. Kyle and Liang, Migration Merchants, p. 17; Zheng Wang, ‘Ocean-going smuggling of illegal Chinese
immigrants: operation, causation and policy implications’, Transnational Organized Crime 2(1), (Spring 1996), p. 49.33. Wang, ‘Ocean-going smuggling of illegal Chinese immigrants’, pp. 54–55.34. Kyle and Liang, Migration Merchants, p. 18.35. Ibid.36. Elisabeth Rosenthal, ‘Baby girls for sale’, New York Times Upfront 136(6), (8 December 2003), p. 13.
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girls to take care of aging parents in the future. Some baby girls ended up in remoteareas and would be raised as child brides for farmers, who could not get married intheir villages. Some of these smuggled babies might also be adopted overseas. Thesebabies were being sold like goods or animals owing to China’s one-child policy, andto the fact that rural families preferred boys to girls. Having sold a baby girl totraffickers, a family can try again to have a baby boy. Sons were a treasure while girlswere a burden in the villages of Guangxi and in many places in rural China.37
According to the one-child policy, a second birth would lead to a fine of US$3,500,which was an extravagant amount of money to a peasant family. Most often, theabandoned babies were girls, but there was a minority of baby boys being left behinddue to deformity or other health reasons.Disaster happened in this incident in March 2003: ‘The girls had been swathed in
quilts and then stuffed, two to four together, into nylon bags’.38 The result was that:‘When the police, following a telephone tip, raided the purple vehicle, one girl hadalready died of suffocation; the rest were blue from lack of air’.39 The police arrested20 traffickers, and the babies came from one distributor. When poor families soldtheir baby girls, they could earn money and have a second chance to have a baby boy.Even early in the 1990s there were reports of three different routes for smuggling
Chinese into the United States. The first route was to travel to Mexico or Canada, andthen to smuggle illegally into the United States. The second route was to fly fromplaces outside China to several cities in the United States, which involved the use offake documents. Finally, the third route was to smuggle large numbers of people infishing trawlers and freighters into the United States.40 Even in the late 1990s,smugglers belonged to two categories—‘big snakeheads and little snakeheads’.41 Thebig snakeheads invested money and supervised the entire smuggling process, andthey were overseas Chinese running the operation. The little snakeheads wererecruiters in the local communities in China, and earned their income throughlocating customers and collecting installments.42 Generally, the big snakeheads werebusinessmen with wealth, connections, power, and updated information.43 Most bigsnakeheads were American citizens or green card holders, and some might even stayin China longer than in the United States.44 The differences between big snakeheadsand small ones were: big snakeheads could enter and leave China freely and werewell-connected with government authorities along the trafficking routes, whereas thelittle snakeheads lived in the localities, establishing connections and contributing tothe ever-growing networks within the country.45
37. Ibid.38. Elisabeth Rosenthal, ‘Bias for boys leads to sale of baby girls in China’, New York Times (Late Edition, East
Coast), (20 July 2003), pp. 1 and 6.39. Ibid.40. Sheldon Zhang and Ko-lin Chin, ‘The declining significance of Triad societies in transnational illegal
activities: a structural deficiency perspective’, British Journal of Criminology 43(3), (2003), p. 474.41. Ibid.42. Ibid., pp. 474–475.43. Ibid., p. 475.44. Sheldon Zhang and Ko-lin Chin, ‘Enter the dragon: inside Chinese human smuggling organizations’,
Criminology 40(4), (November 2002), p. 749.45. Ibid., p. 750.
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A smuggling network is an operation force which has committed to the task ofdelivering the people to their destinations and thus has received huge profits.46 Thesetask forces can include recruiters, coordinators, transporters, document vendors,public officials, guides and crew members, enforcers, and debt collectors.47 Largetrafficking networks have existed in China, which can organize various groups ofsmuggled persons together, traveling at the same time but eventually to differentdestinations.48 An example of such a reported incident is: there was a group of 60Chinese being smuggled by sea to South Korea in October 2001. They included 49Fujianese from the Fuzhou region (Lianjiang, Changle, and Mawei). The rest of themwere ethnic Koreans who came from Heilongjiang and Jilin Provinces in northeastChina. The smuggled Fujianese traveled to Liaoning, with the plan of moving onsomewhere else. There was another group of smuggled Chinese from Jiamusi citymoving southward to Zhejiang Province. Not long afterward, these two groups ofsmuggled persons met at the port of Ningbo in Zhejiang Province and were smuggledtogether on a South Korean ship to the open sea. It was an unworthy endeavor as 25Fujianese died on the trip to South Korea. Under the instructions of the South Koreancaptain, the dead bodies were thrown into the sea.49
Human smuggling has involved organized crime groups, which can transport‘human cargoes’ across the Pacific from one continent to another, with worldwidenetworks of smugglers and connections. Even in the 1990s, the United States reportedthat ‘Chinese human smuggling rings’ had connections in 51 countries for smugglingpeople and manufacturing fake documents.50 Complex networks of a global naturehave been highly efficient and have been responsive to difficulties and challenges ofall kinds.51 It has been pointed out that worldwide smuggling networks require‘logistical support from finance, planning to operation’, which are impossible forindividuals or small snakeheads to handle and manage.52 There were estimations thatmore than half a million Chinese were smuggled into the United States from 1984 to1993, and between 50,000 and 100,000 of them every year since 1994.53
Los Angeles was a major transit point or destination for many traffickers andsmugglers. If the smuggled persons traveled through Mexico, they reached LosAngeles first before they moved on to other cities such as New York. If the smuggledpersons traveled by sea, Los Angeles and its adjacent ports were also major ports ofarrival for these illegal immigrants.54
V. Trafficking in Yunnan; and the issue of gender imbalance
Trafficking has been most serious in the southernmost counties of Yunnan:Jiangcheng and Menghai. These two counties have had the highest number of
46. Ibid.47. Ibid., pp. 751–754.48. James K. Chin, ‘Reducing irregular migration from China’, International Migration 41(3), (2003), pp. 57–58.49. Ibid.50. Zhang and Chin, ‘The declining significance of Triad societies in transnational illegal activities’, p. 476.51. Ibid.52. Ibid.53. Zhang and Chin, ‘Enter the dragon’, p. 739.54. Ibid., p. 742.
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trafficking cases both inside Yunnan and from Yunnan to other Chinese provinces.55
From 1995 to 2000, the Public Security Department of Jiangcheng County received45 reports of trafficking of women and children.56 However, far more cases were leftunreported. As for Menghai County, the Public Security Department there handled51 cases from 1996 to 2000, involving 85 trafficked persons.57
The women and children were trafficked for forced marriage and adoption,respectively. The numbers of women suffering sexual exploitation were increasing.They might be trafficked to other Southeast Asian countries, such as Malaysia andThailand. Traffickers were able to attract victims with false promises of good jobsand pay. Some women were tricked because of poor education and many of thembelonged to national minority groups and hoped for an urban life.58 While traffickershad once paid parents for their babies, they have recently resorted to kidnapping ofchildren for the trade.59 Trafficking in women has been for forced marriage andsexual exploitation whereas that of baby boys has been for adoption.In 2000, the Chinese authorities set up target forces against trafficking. Over 300
trafficking gangs were located in Yunnan and over 3,500 traffickers were arrested. Atthe same time, the Provincial Public Security Department sent out more than 100working groups to other provinces to fight against the crime. Over 1,800 traffickingcases were solved.60 Between 2000 and 2004, the authorities investigated more than2,600 abduction cases and the Yunnan police arrested over 6,000 suspects.61
Gender imbalance has been one of the causes of trafficking within China. Womenwere trafficked for forced marriage. Some statistics show that the male population inrural China outnumbered females by 20–40% because of the one-child policy.62
Rural families have tended to give away their baby girls, and this practice has led togender imbalance in many parts of China. In these places, especially rural areas, menhave found it very difficult to get married and to produce heirs. In poor villages, thecomparatively low status of women, in terms of schooling and employment, hasmade it easier for them to be tricked by traffickers and to end up in unforeseensituations. In some cases, boys are also trafficked to well-off families who need anheir to continue the family business.Gender imbalance will continue to trouble China. There are no easy ways to solve
this issue. With the intensification of the problem, criminals will continue to kidnap,lure, trick, and smuggle the ‘human goods’. As the trafficking network spreadsthrough the provinces, cooperation between provincial governments will benecessary, though it is not easy. The central government will need to increase thepenalty for such offenses and to educate the public on the terrible consequences ofthese ever-growing trafficking and smuggling crimes, the results of which have been
55. International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour of the International Labour Organization,Yunnan Province, China: Situation of Trafficking in Children and Women: A Rapid Assessment (Bangkok:International Labour Organization, 2002), p. vii.
56. Ibid., p. 9.57. Ibid., p. 15.58. Ibid., pp. vii–viii.59. Ibid., p. viii.60. Ibid., p. 2.61. ‘Two sentenced to death for human trafficking in southwest China’, Agence France Presse, (3 October 2004).62. ‘A human rights report on trafficking of persons, especially women and children: China’, The Protection
Project, (March 2002), pp. 123–124.
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forced labor, sex trade, illegal adoption of children, deaths during trips, a lack ofconcern for human rights, an expanding smuggling network, and so on. If theproblems are not tackled to the fullest, worse situations are still to come.In 2004, the Chinese police took strong action against trafficking in women and
children. An increasing number of women were being sold for forced marriage inregions where gender imbalances were acute.63 The Public Security Bureau ofYunnan reported on the numerous cases of abduction and kidnapping. Thesouthwestern part of Yunnan was the worst affected region. Between April and July2004, police saved 85 abducted women and children, but the number of how manywere missing was unclear.64 Most probably, women were sold to men in provinceslike Henan where the gender imbalance was rather acute and many men could notfind a wife. In October 2004, two men guilty of kidnapping and selling women andchildren were sentenced to death, and many offenders involved in the traffickingtrade were jailed.65 They belonged to gangs which promised employment and moneyto women, but instead they eventually sold women to other villages and provinces.Inter-provincial and cross-border trafficking has become a major problem. While
the trafficked women might be sold for marriage, some were forced into the sex tradeand suffered from prolonged sexual exploitation. In the past, trafficked women wereaged between 20 and 50, but recently most of them were under 20 and some weregirls as young as 12 years old. Usually from rural parts of Yunnan, such women andchildren were being trafficked to underdeveloped areas in the provinces ofJiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Shanxi, Guangdong and Inner Mongolia.66 Somewomen were even smuggled to Southeast Asia—Thailand, Malaysia, and Burma(Myanmar). These women endured great suffering in these faraway lands; the crimesagainst them included rape, beating, and torture.
VI. The response of the Chinese government and others to trafficking andsmuggling
In 2000, 58 smuggled persons died in a refrigerator truck in Dover, England, and theincident shocked the world.67 In 2002, the Chinese government acknowledged theproblem of human trafficking. According to the Ministry of Public Security and highofficials in charge of women’s affairs, worldwide operation was needed to tackletrafficking in women and children.68 A project was initiated by the All-ChinaWomen’s Federation and the International Labor Organization (ILO) in YunnanProvince to fight against human trafficking. The project was meant to be a ‘pilotmechanism’ to tackle the problem through extensive cooperation between differentgovernment authorities and communities. The authorities emphasized that the entiresociety should work against human trafficking, and the basic points were the
63. ‘China to crackdown on human trafficking amid growing gender imbalance’, Agence France Presse, (7September 2004).
64. Ibid.65. ‘Two sentenced to death for human trafficking in southwest China’, Agence France Presse.66. International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour of the International Labour Organization,
Yunnan Province, China, pp. 19–20.67. Zhang and Chin, ‘Enter the dragon’, p. 739.68. ‘Project to crack down on human trafficking’, China Daily, (4 November 2002).
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recognition and protection of the rights of women and children. According to asource, continued poverty was the cause of the problem, and the determination toreduce poverty, through financial aid and improvement in agricultural skills, wouldhelp eliminate human trafficking. In order to combat human trafficking, efforts had tobe made by several security organs instead of the sole work of one agency.69
Yunnan has been one of the most badly-affected areas. There was trafficking inwomen to places where gender imbalances were increasing.70 Between 2000 and2004, the police arrested suspects who were involved in numerous abduction cases.Almost 4,000 women and more than 800 children had been kidnapped.71 Thenationwide figure was that more than 42,000 women and children had been savedfrom kidnappers in the three years from 2001.72
In 2000, the International Program on the Elimination of Child Labor of theInternational Labor Organization (ILO–IPEC) started the ‘Mekong Sub-RegionalProject to Combat Trafficking in Children and Women (IPEC–TICW)’ to deal withthe problems of exploitation, the sex trade, and child labor. It involved Yunnan inChina and other countries in Indochina, such as Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.The ILO–IPEC had a project office in Yunnan to supervise the work, and it workedwith a number of local agencies such as government bodies and women’s groups. TheILO–IPEC reported that over 1,000 women and children were trafficked annually inYunnan, which was one of the worst regions for human trade.73
The Chinese government also set up certain measures to tackle the traffickingproblem. These included locating local community leaders involved in the traffickingbusiness, and levying fines on those who were involved.74 It is reported that, if over20 people left unlawfully and annually from a certain village, local officials therewould be sacked and fined up to US$3,000 for failing to stop the illegal transportationof persons.75
The Chinese government passed a number of laws against trafficking andsmuggling. The penalties for traffickers and buyers of the ‘human goods’ are high.Early in 1973, China ratified the ILO Minimum Age Convention (No. 138). In 1979,it agreed to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of DiscriminationAgainst Women (CEDAW). In 1989, China also supported the UN Convention on theRights of the Child (CRC). Then in 2002, it supported the ILO Worst Forms of ChildLabor Convention (No. 182).76
Recently, some countries have established bilateral organizations with China tocombat trafficking. The United States, Canada, and Australia have sent high-levelrepresentatives to China to discuss the issue. The United States’ Immigration andNaturalization Service and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security formed a Joint
69. Ibid.70. ‘China to crackdown on human trafficking amid growing gender imbalance’, Agence France Presse.71. Ibid.72. Ibid.73. International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour of the International Labour Organization,
Yunnan Province, China, p. vii.74. Skeldon, Myths and Realities of Chinese Irregular Migration, pp. 29–30.75. Ibid.76. International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour of the International Labour Organization,
Yunnan Province, China, p. vii.
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Liaison Group, which held regular meetings in Beijing. American officialsestablished regional offices in major cities such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, andmade frequent trips to Fujian Province to investigate the situation. At the sametime, Australia’s Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs sent specialagents to Beijing and Guangzhou to check on people of special concern.77
There have been other attempts to tackle the problem, especially trafficking inpersons from the mainland to Taiwan, as there have been increasing numbers ofwomen being trafficked to Taiwan. The total number of trafficked persons fromChina to Taiwan was 2,511 in 2003, and out of this number, 84% were women.Authorities on both sides of the straits recognized the urgent need to confront thiscrisis. The Straits Exchange Foundation (Taiwan) and the Association for RelationsAcross the Taiwan Straits (China) cooperated to locate illegal immigrants and torepatriate them. The Taiwanese submitted names of illegal immigrants to themainland authority, which in turn would produce a repatriation list to bring thesepeople back to their original villages and counties.78
China has participated in international conferences to combat this human trade. InApril 2003, China’s representatives took part in the Second Regional MinisterialConference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related TransnationalCrime, which was held in Bali, Indonesia. The foreign ministers of Indonesia andAustralia co-chaired the meeting, which was also attended by delegates from Korea,India, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and others. Together with other countries, Chinaacknowledged that the fundamental causes of human trafficking and smuggling werenumerous and of many aspects. There was the consensus that extensive andtransnational cooperation was necessary.79 In June 2004, China was one of theparticipants in the Senior Officials Meeting in Brisbane to discuss and review ‘thevaluable work of the Bali Process’.80
From 2001 to 2005, the Chinese authorities investigated more than 28,000trafficking cases, arrested over 25,000 suspected traffickers, and saved over 35,000trafficked persons. In 2006, the authorities looked into over 3,300 cases, arrested over410 traffickers, and rescued over 370 victims.81 There was increasing cooperationbetween China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Burma (Myanmar) to effectively rescue thetrafficked victims. In 2007, China together with Cambodia, Laos, Burma (Myanmar),Thailand, and Vietnam formed a six-country alliance—‘The Coordinated MekongMinisterial Initiative against Human Trafficking (COMMIT)’—to combat humantrafficking. COMMIT was a government-led endeavor to establish ‘a sustained andeffective system of cross-border cooperation and collaboration’ for the purpose.82
77. Skeldon, Myths and Realities of Chinese Irregular Migration, p. 29.78. Hille, ‘The stalemate between China and Taiwan perpetuates tragedy of human trafficking’, p. 2.79. Second Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related
Transnational Crime, Bali, 29–30 April 2003.80. Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, Senior Officials
Meeting, Brisbane, 7–8 June 2004.81. China, available at: www.humantrafficking.org/countries/eap/china.82. COMMIT Sub-Regional Plan of Action (Beijing, December 2007).
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International trafficking is made possible by worldwide networks with highlyorganized planning and operation.83 Only through serious international cooperationto combat the trade can governments get to the bottom of the problem. Asiancountries should cooperate in a number of areas such as education, economicdevelopment, and law enforcement to gradually eliminate the factors leading tohuman trafficking and smuggling. In addition, international cooperation can moreeffectively facilitate the arrest and prosecution of the snakeheads, and the tracing ofthe trafficking and smuggling gangs.
VII. Conclusion
Human trafficking and smuggling have become ever-growing crimes and havereceived worldwide attention. Despite the fact that the Beijing government andNGOs have been investigating the issues, human trade has not been severelychallenged, not to say being significantly reduced in size and in concerned territories.Traffickers and smugglers have complicated networks and transnational connections.Globalization is the most apt description for the trafficking and smuggling businesses.Unfortunately, the traded items are ‘human goods’, and the trade has led to prolongedsuffering for victims and the negligence of basic human rights. While Chinesesocieties have appeared to become modernized, human trafficking and smugglinghave created a modern-day form of slavery, a problem extremely difficult to resolveand even to handle. The Chinese government has recognized the seriousness of thisexploitation of human labor, but it still has a long way to go to combat thephenomenon.
83. International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour of the International Labour Organization,Yunnan Province, China, pp. 25–26.
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