Last month, the video of a mother chained by the neck in a shed in a village of Jiangsu province, China, causes public outrage in China. She has given birth to eight children and is unable to communicate with people due to the cognitive impairment. Internet users started to question if she is a victim of abuse and human trafficking. The later statement from the local government failed to respond to public concerns, which spurred another round of rage in Chinese social media.
She is only one example of thousands of women trafficking cases. The real number of trafficked women is hard to estimate. But we can find part of them by looking into the court documents in China. After searching “women trafficking” in China Judgments Online, 2,177 documents of court verdicts from 2008 can be found.
In this article, I want to reveal at least some pattern of the crime and dig into the reasons behind. And hope one day a more completed data set can be built to include all women from this vulnerable group.
Woman trafficking cases concentrate in central-east provinces and border provinces in China
Hebei: 116
Shandong: 137
Henan: 298
Sichuan: 159
Anhui: 266
Guizhou:
115
Yunnan:
176
Guangxi:
107
Fujian: 303
Hebei: 116
Shandong: 137
Henan: 298
Sichuan:
159
Anhui: 266
Yunnan:
176
Fujian: 303
Guangxi: 107
Guizhou: 115
For years, the Chinese government has been trying to eradicate such cases and women and children trafficking is listed as a severe crime in law. From the mapping of cases, it is worth noting that the trafficking mostly occurred in the southwestern provinces and central-eastern provinces. It’s believed that the southwestern provinces tend to be the outflow of trafficked women, while the central provinces tend to be the inflow of these women.
In China, 90% of people are Han ethnicity and 10% are other ethnicities. Southwestern provinces are where many ethnic minority groups are living and located at the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. Since the economic development in China is imbalanced, the people living in eastern provinces are generally wealthier than those in the western provinces. Lots of trafficked women from southeastern provinces, or other countries have already overwhelmed by the burden of life in their hometowns and longed for a new life, and they all had a strong urge to emigrate. Moreover, some traditional Chinese families, especially in rural areas, still believe that a woman is the property of her father before marriage and of her husband afterward. Thus, purchasing a wife for the continuation of family lineage is justifiable. Taking advantages of these two minds, traffickers will use "job introduction", "going out for business" and "better marriage" as reasons for trafficking.
Most ethnic minority groups live in western part of China
In general, the people living in eastern China are wealthier than the western provinces
Now there is a "seller's market", why does the "buyer's market" concentrate in the central provinces?
One of the main reasons that the central provinces are often the inflow areas for trafficked women is the feudal idea of "son preference" among the central provinces. Most of the central provinces are agricultural provinces, which are economically and culturally backward and deeply influenced by feudal thinking, which is especially prominent in remote areas. Peasants have serious patriarchal thinking, which leads to the imbalance of male to female ratio. For a traditional Chinese family, marrying a wife is a must, so how do these extra men find wives as adults?
Provinces with higher Woman trafficking cases tend to have bigger gap of gender ratio in birth and marriageable age groups
The ‘natural’ sex ratio at birth
ranges from
gender ratio
gender ratio
103-107 boys / 100 girls
at birth
of marriageable age
|
|
92.29
Anhui
131.07
94.53
Henan
127.64
97.24
Jiangxi
128.27
97.95
Hunan
125.78
97.02
Gansu
124.79
97.43
Hubei
123.94
99.78
Fujian
125.71
96.85
Jiangsu
121.38
99.78
Shandong
124.28
105.84
Hainan
129.43
102.93
Guizhou
126.2
Guangdong
107.08
129.49
94
Chongqing
113.8
99.3
Hebei
118.71
103.13
Guangxi
122
97.59
Sichuan
112.98
100.59
Jilin
115.67
103.35
Zhejiang
118.36
101.56
Shaanxi
116.1
101.35
Heilongjiang
115.1
100.81
Ningxia
114.36
100.65
Liaoning
112.91
102.31
Shanxi
113.07
104.78
Qinghai
112.69
105.26
Beijing
112.15
107.13
Yunnan
113.61
105.6
Shanghai
111.49
100.82
Xinjiang
105.56
105.32
Neimenggu
108.87
111.56
Tianjin
114.59
100.08
Xizang
103.51
90
100
110
120
130
Anhui
gender ratio
92.29
of marriageable age
Henan
94.53
Fujian
Sichuan
99.78
97.59
Hebei
Shandong
99.3
99.78
Guizhou
Guangxi
102.93
103.13
The ‘natural’ sex ratio at birth
ranges from
103-107 boys / 100 girls
112.98
118.71
122
124.28
125.71
126.2
127.64
131.07
gender ratio
at birth
From 2010 China Census Data, it is not difficult to find a strange fact: even though the proportion of boys born in the central provinces is extremely high, the sex ratio of marriable age (20-40) will tend to be balanced, and in some provinces, the proportion of women will even be higher. Take Anhui province as an example, the gender ratio was 131:100 at birth, which means there are 30 more boys born per one hundred girls. But the gender ratio of 20-40 age range was 92:100, which means the woman proportion is higher. In the neighboring Henan province, the same pattern occurs, with gender ratios 128:100 and 95:100 respectively.
In the chart, the red-marked line are those provinces with more than 100 trafficking cases. Most provinces with large numbers of women trafficking see a huge difference between gender ratio at birth and marriageable age. I also looked at the gender ratio at birth in 1970-1990, where these 20-40 age group was born, and all the data is above 100, which means more boys were given birth than girls.
It is not to say that the sudden increase is all attributed to woman trafficking. Some researchers pointed out that due to the one-child policy conducted in 1979, underreporting of female births twice exceeded that of male births in the years between 1983 and 1988.
But the data is an evidence that the deep-rooted boy preference has some correlation with the women trafficking cases. The conclusion is also supported by some academic papers. One study published last year suggested that entrenched patriarchal values as indicated by a high sex ratio at birth, sex-specific migration due to uneven regional economic development, and the marriage squeeze felt among low-status men in the context of a shortage of marriageable women in the total population are the fundamental causes of trafficking of women for forced marriage in China.
It’s important to keep in mind that the detected cases are always the tip of the iceberg. More attention should be aroused to combating the trafficking crime, legal awareness of women’s rights and balancing economic and social development, as the author pointed out at the end of the study.