81 Children Rescued from Chinese Child Trafficking Ring

From the New York Times:

In a significant illustration of China’s illicit trade in babies, the Ministry of Public Security said Wednesday that the police had rescued 81 children from a major child trafficking ring that had operated throughout eastern China.

Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported that 13 babies were rescued in the city of Handan in Hebei Province, ranging in age from only 10 days to 4 months. Most were girls, the news agency said.

More than 2,600 police officers from 14 provinces were deployed in a sting operation on July 20, which resulted in the detention of 330 suspects, the ministry said in a report posted on its Web site.

Another raid earlier this month broke up a cross-border child trafficking operation in China’s southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, Xinhua reported. Eight children were rescued and 39 suspects, mostly Vietnamese, were arrested, according to Chinese media reports.

So what happens to the children?  According to China Daily:

All 89 kidnapped children, including eight Vietnamese infants, who were recently rescued by police from two major human trafficking rings in South China, will not be allowed to stay with the people who bought them.

The decision is part of an attempt to limit the growth of the black market in stolen children, said Chen Shiqu, director of the anti-human trafficking office under the criminal investigation bureau of the Ministry of Public Security.

Chen told China Daily the existence of a buyer's market is the main cause of human trafficking crimes.

He said the children should be placed under the temporary care of civil affairs departments before their parents can be located and verified through DNA tests.

"To make the buyers lose both the child and their money, and to completely deny their original intention, we will ask the civil affairs departments to temporarily take care of the rescued children," he said.

The Criminal Law says abducted children whose parents cannot be found will not be available for adoption due to the lack of identification. This means they will live in welfare institutions, which are not conducive to the healthy development of children.

"We are negotiating with civil affairs departments to improve the laws to allow unidentified children to be adopted," Chen Shiqu said.

Despite the quote from Chen, that the existence of a buyer's market is what causes this human trafficking, the buyers will not be facing criminal charges as long as they did not abuse the children they bought.  The New York Times article says, "'The cost of the crime of buying children is not great,' Liu Ancheng, deputy director of the ministry’s criminal investigation bureau, told the newspaper."  No kidding!

And, no, for those who will want this pointed out, there's no evidence that these trafficked children were intended for international adoption to the West.  Though the children taken from Vietnam to China were trafficked internationally. . . .