Human Trafficking
The following Chinese text was retrieved on November 18, 2016, from the Chengde Anti-Corruption Public Website.
Refer to this page for a prior version of the PRC Criminal Law, amended on February 25, 2011, and effective on May 1, 2011 (English translation available).
China’s infamous “One-Child Policy” marks its 35th anniversary this year. It has been called the world’s largest social experiment and has had tragic effects on Chinese families and society. Coercive population control policies are also the cause of a demographic time bomb. China has a rapidly aging population, a shrinking labor force, and a dramatic gender imbalance that drives regional human trafficking problems and potentially higher levels of crime and societal instability. China’s central government has started to gently revise its population control policies in the past year, though the overall policy and the huge bureaucracy that enforces it remain intact.
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In recent weeks, international human rights advocates and organizations have called on the Chinese government not to repatriate dozens of North Korean refugees currently detained in China. There is now growing concern that the refugees and their family members may face public execution if the refugees are forcibly returned to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea).
Authorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) continued to implement work-study programs in 2009 and 2010 that require students to pick cotton and engage in other forms of labor, according to various media and government reports from the region. (Internet access in the region was blocked in late 2009, and during that time, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China did not find any articles about work-study programs in the region that year.) As noted in past CECC analyses (1, 2, 3), the work-study programs have been used since the mid-1990s as a stated means of generating income for local schools and meeting local harvesting quotas.
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At this CECC roundtable, panelists examined recent developments in the Chinese government's efforts to combat human trafficking and discussed prospects for and obstacles to further progress. In the last year the Chinese government has acceded to the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.
The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) announced (via Chinanews.com) on November 5, 2009, that it had rescued more than 6,000 victims (2,169 children and 3,851 women) during a nationwide anti-trafficking campaign that began in April. According to a separate November 5 announcement on the official MPS Web site, as part of the campaign, the MPS set up a national DNA database to help identify missing children and match them with their biological parents. The MPS posted 60 photos of children who could not be identified on a special Web site dedicated to the campaign, and as of October 27, 2009, 3 of the unidentified children had been reunited with their parents, according to the site.
The Yunnan provincial government issued the Yunnan Province Implementing Opinion on the National Action Plan on Combating Trafficking in Women and Children (2008-2012) (Yunnan provincial implementing opinion) for the National Action Plan on Combating Trafficking in Women and Children (2008-2012) (National Action Plan) on November 21, 2008, calling for the establishment of an anti-trafficking office to coordinate the province's anti-trafficking efforts. The implementing opinion, like the National Action Plan, focuses on women and children. Yunnan is the fourth province to issue an implementation plan after the State Council issued the National Action Plan in December 2007.
The Chinese government's anti-trafficking response remains inadequate and noncompliant with international standards one year after the State Council issued the National Action Plan on Combating Trafficking in Women and Children (2008-2012) on December 13, 2007, (English version via the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking in the Greater Mekong Sub-region's China Office, or UNIAP China).