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Factbook
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Factbook on Global Sexual
Exploitation
China and Hong Kong
Trafficking
Tens of thousands of women are bought and sold in
China each year. The most popular areas for abducting women are the poor areas of Yunnan,
Sichuan and Guizhou. (Human Rights in China organization report, Sophia Woodman, Stephanie
Ho, "Trafficking of Women in China," Voice of America, 27 September 1995)
China is a destination of trafficked women from Ukraine and Russia. (Global Survival
Network, Vladmir Isachenkov, "Soviet Women Slavery Flourishes," Associated
Press, 6 November 1997) Traffickers are increasingly transporting Burmese and Chinese
girls for prostitution, partially due to a decrease in the availability of northern Thai
girls. "Their pleasant character, white skin and beauty were similar to northern
girls." (Prof Kusol Sunthorntada, Researcher, Institute for Population and Social
Research, Mahidol University, ("More foreign workers join sex industry as fewer Thai
girls enter flesh trade," Poona Antaseeda. Bangkok Post, 24 November 1997)
Girls from China, aged 12-18, are in more demand for the sex industry in Thailand since
fewer girls from Northern Thailand are being lured by traffickers. (Wanchai Boonphacra,
Centre for the Protection of Children's Rights, "More foreign workers join sex
industry as fewer Thai girls enter flesh trade," Poona Antaseeda. Bangkok Post,
24 November 1997)
Women are also being trafficked for sale as wives to husbands who often resell them.
(CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)
Chinese girls from provinces in Yunan state are trafficked via Chiang Tung in Burma and
then into Thailand at Mae Sai in Chiang Rai. ("More foreign workers join sex industry
as fewer Thai girls enter flesh trade," Poona Antaseeda. Bangkok Post, 24
November 1997)
Traffickers force Chinese immigrants into
indentured servitude, women into prostitution and men into the restaurant business. In
September 1998, 153 men and 21 women, including 35 juveniles, arrived in San Diego,
California from China via Mexico, after paying smugglers $30,000. In 1997, 69 and in 1993,
650 Chinese immigrants were intercepted in the same area. If caught by immigration (INS)
officials, most will be sent back to China, unless they receive political asylum. The
smugglers may face jail time in the United States. (Paula Story, "Chinese Immigrant
Boat Reaches US," Associated Press Online, 19 September 1998)
Thousands of girls
from China's southern are trafficked into Thailand's sex industry; some go on to Malaysia
or Singapore. The economic crisis has no impact on this segment of the sex industry. More
affluent Chinese businessmen from mainland China or Taiwan who do business in Thailand
purchase sex from these Chinese girls. (Supalak Ganjanakhundee, "Migrant workers
booming as Asian economy declines," Kyodo News, 23 September 1998)
Policy and Law
Under newly passed legislation by the Macao Legislative Assembly, homicide, abduction,
smuggling of people, forcing others into prostitution, aiding illegal immigration,
illegally trading, and the manufacture, use, possession, and smuggling of arms are
considered organized crime activities, and are punishable of 5-12 years in prison.
("Macao sets up new law to stop organized crime," Xinhua, 5 August
1997)
Official Response and Action
3,000 women and children were rescued after being abducted and sold into slavery in
Southern China during the past two years. Local authorities do not assist the victims
because they have sympathy for men who cannot find wives. It is cheaper to buy a woman
than to have a proper wedding. In one incident in Uangdong, a whole village purchased
women and prostituted them from their homes. One household had bought close to 100 women
and was selling them in prostitution. (Sophia Woodman, Stephanie Ho, "Trafficking of
Women in China," Voice of America, 27 September 1995)
Cases
A trafficker was arrested and confessed to having abducted 1,800 women from Beijing.
Because of opposition from the villagers and from local officials, police were only able
to rescue six women out of 1,800. (Stephanie Ho, "Trafficking of Women in
China," Voice of America, 27 September 1997)
A 12-year-old girl from the Zheijang region was sold for US$40,000 to a trafficker. She
was taken to Bangkok, Thailand for "instruction" in prostitution. Authorities
found the girl in Italy. Her destination was the sex industry in Miami, Florida, USA.
("Pedophilia ring uncovered in Italy," USA Today, Nov 1997)
A Vietnamese woman, one of seven, was trafficked under false pretenses to China. She
escaped from the brothel, and returned to Vietnam, where she was locked in a hut and
threatened by a local Public Security Bureau official. She eventually fled to Hong Kong in
July 1991, and filed for refugee status, which was denied in 1993. In February 1998, she
was still appealing the decision. ("Viet women ‘deceived into life as ‘sex
slaves’," South China Morning Post, 21 January 1998)
Bride Trafficking
The pre-revolutionary custom of bride selling has returned to rural
villages in China. Marriage brokers - essentially slave dealers - search the countryside,
offering girls for sale to prospective husbands. The recruiters kidnap and buy women and
girls. From 1991 through 1996, Chinese police freed 88,000 kidnapped women and children
and arrested 143,000 people for participating in the slave trade. Women often work with a
marriage broker in the hope of saving their families from hunger. "Local people
defend the man who buys a wife, they think if she takes money and sends it to her parents,
he should be able to marry her." (Liu Bohonhg Beijing social worker, Dorinda Elliott,
"Trying to Stand on Two Feet", Newsweek, 29 June 1998)
The kidnapping of women for marriage by criminal gangs and middlemen has become a
growth industry in China. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution
in the Asia Pacific)
In Yanbian, China, where men outnumber women, ethnic Korean men seek illegal North
Korean women to marry. The going rate for a wife is 5,000 yuan (£400). (Andrew Higgins,
"Straight on for China and karaoke slavery," the Observer, 15 March 1998)
Prostitution
There is a resurgence of prostitution all over China. (CATW - Asia
Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)
1.5 million prostitutes and male buyers were arrested between 1991 and 1995.
Shangchuandao Island off Guandong is a tourist spot offering drugs and sex casinos with
300 women from all over China. In 1994, 500,000 tourists spent HK$55.8 million on legal
tourist services alone (Associated Foreign Press, 8 January 1998)
Women who are migrating from Changzhou, formerly an area with a high standard of
living, now hit by high of unemployment, to the cities and finding no work, resort to
prostitution. ("Out of Jobs, Countryside Workers Fend For Themselves,"
InterPress Services, 20 October 1997)
On Shanghai Street Hong Kong triads in rule the sex industry. One network traffics
girls as young as 13 across the border from China. (The Nation, 5 July 1997)
Brothels in Hong Kong employ minders to prevent girls from running away. In 1994, a
woman attempting to escape was murdered. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and
Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)
Prostitution is widespread
in Shenzhen, China and brothels, saunas and pick-up joints there attract many men from
Hong Kong just across the border. ("Condom vending machines a hit in China,"
Reuters, 9 September 1998)
Prostitution is used to lure
motorists to more than 1,000 gas stations in the Ningxia region of China. Motorists have
to buy a tank of gas before than may purchase sexual services. ("China petrol
stations offer fill up with flair," Reuters, 21 September 1998)
Cases
A woman from Sichuan, in order to avoid being forced into prostitution, tried to commit
suicide by jumping from a window. She had been tricked into work at a nightclub and locked
in a room with other women. (Associated Foreign Press, 8 January 1998)
Chan Wing-hong, who gruesomely murdered a prostituted woman, was convicted only of
manslaughter because the judge determined that he was suffering from emotional pain and
lost control of himself after the women called him negative name. ("Dwarf who killed
prostitute suffered emotional pain," Reuters, 4 September 1997)
In 1995 the Head of Police in central Hunan province, China beat a 20-year-old peasant
girl for eight hours to make her confess to being a prostitute in order to fine her. The
girl suffered serious kidney damage and internal bleeding. ("China newspaper urges
curbs on police power," Reuters, 24 July 1998)
In the Fall of 1997, a 23-year-old woman from North Korea waded across the Tumen River
to get to Yanji, the capital of China’s Yanbian Region. She was escaping near
starvation in North Korea. A relative living in Yanji bribed Chinese police manning a
roadblock near the border, provided her with new clothes, taught her a smattering of
Chinese - and set her up in a friend’s karaoke club. Now, drunken men pay 100 Chinese
yuan for two hours of her company. She sleeps on the floor in a room shared with nine
other women, and is not allowed out unaccompanied. Unable to speak more than a few words
of Chinese, she is at risk of being identified as an illegal immigrant. She hopes to
return home, but says she will never tell what she had to do to get money. (Andrew
Higgins, "Straight on for China and karaoke slavery," The Observer, 15
March 1998)
Policy and Law
In Hong Kong, prostitution is legal but pimping is not. (The Nation, 5 July
1997)
Official Response and Action
A nationwide campaign against prostitution is to be launched in 1997 following the
resurgence of pornography-related activities in Beijing. Public security authorities are
urged to inspect dance halls, massage salons, hairdressers and holiday villages for signs
of prostitution and drugs. People found to be involved in prostitution activities will be
banned or fined and those people in charge will be punished according to the law. (Chen
Yanni, "State hits hard on hookers," China Daily, 22 August 1997)
Factbook Table of Contents
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Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation
Donna M. Hughes, Laura Joy Sporcic, Nadine Z. Mendelsohn and Vanessa Chirgwin
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