That is the assessment of a senior public security official who was talking on
the loopholes in the country's labor system and Criminal Law yesterday.
Yin Jianzhong, a senior official of the anti-trafficking office of the Ministry
of Public Security, said: "Forced labor and sexual exploitation are the two new
outcomes of human trafficking in China and the number of such cases is rising."
The number of forced laborers and the sexually exploited has risen partly
because of the loopholes in the legal and labor systems, he added.
The Criminal Law on human trafficking protects women and children only and
leaves out grown-up and teen males. It doesn't have provisions for punishing
those trafficking people for forced labor or prostitution, Yin said.
Analyzing the reasons behind the increase in forced labor and sexual
exploitation cases, Allan Dow, International Labor Organization's
Communications Officer of Mekong Project to Combat Trafficking in Children and
Women, said: "Trafficking is not just about sex and baby selling, it is also
about labor and sexual exploitation.
"Countries the size of China will have difficulty in fighting such
trafficking."
The fast economic growth of China and movement of a large number of people
within the country and imbalanced regional development have increased labor and
sexual exploitation, Dow said.
But the number of children and women trafficked to continue "the family line"
or be forced into marriage has been declining in recent years, thanks to
crackdowns that began in the 1980s.
"The selling of women and children has been checked," Yin said. The number of
such cases has been dropping 20 to 30 percent a year.
About 3,000 such cases are reported to police across the country every year, he
said. But the number may not give the entire picture because many cases go
unreported.
Trafficking in women and children is most serious in Guangdong, Fujian, Henan,
Sichuan and Anhui provinces.
To facilitate legislation and fight human trafficking of all kinds, the
ministry set up an anti-trafficking office again early this month, Yin said. It
was first set up to tackle the problem that reached its peak in the 1980s and
1990s.
Though the biggest problem for China is the movement of a large number of
people, cross-border trafficking too is a cause for worry, Dow said.
