WP4 RD

(intro)

This video started off the same as many other charity videos on TikTok, with light music and cheerful mood. Everything changed when a woman appeared in the phone camera, with thin clothings far from adequate for the freezing temperature, mumbling incoherently and shivering slightly. A heavy chain ties her to a wall of a doorless shed. This video sparked public outrage. Furious audiences started questioning: Who is she? Why is she locked up like this? On the same day, the local government released a statement to quell the argument: Her name was Yang; she was locked up because she had unpredictable violent behaviors; she married Dong in 1998; they had eight children together. Contrary to the hope of the official, the statement brings up more questions: how did she give birth to eight children under the strict “one child policy” (just lifted in 2016)? Has she been abused or sold under coercion? As internet users were still demanding answers, more disturbing stories emerged: there were a lot more similar local cases, unsolved and unnoticed. The latest statement posted in February sets this issue to a contemporary end: She is most likely a victim of human trafficking. This makes us wonder: why does human trafficking still persist in China even after so many years? (general data)

(why problem exists )

The buyers market contributes to the persisting trafficking in China. Currently, China has a skewed male vs female population. Traditionally, when a man and a woman get married, the wife longer belongs to her own family and becomes a new member of the husband’s family. Combined with the bias that men are most suitable to be in dominating positions, this tradition further proved that having a son ensures a continued family line. (?)Thus, families favor male babies who are the only ones qualified to carry on the heritage of a family. In 1981, the one child policy the Chinese government posted allowing each family to give birth to one child exacerbates discrimination against female babies. (The one child policy only) “ it(one-child policy) skewed China’s gender ratio because people preferred to abort or abandon their female babies” (Hayes)Families in cities chose abortion when a female fetus was detected. In rural areas, without the technology to identify gender before the child was born, newborn female babies could be abandoned or killed. As a result, according to China’s 2020 national census, the ratio of male vs female is now 105:100, meaning there are 34.9 million more males than females. As boys become men, the marriage pressure takes place. As an old Chinese saying goes “男大当婚” [Men should get married whenever he is old enough], establishing a family is seen as an indispensable part of life. So, single men feel pressured to find a wife and have a child. When he was unable to get a wife with his own ability, purchasing a woman became the easiest solution. Saying that this is “the easiest solution”, I do not mean that this solution is recommended. Even though it is a consensus that human trafficking is unethical, some people may claim that it is hard to stop human trafficking and drastic law reform could worsen the situation. However, the fear of change does not benefit the situation as well. Raising the penalties for buyers could serve as a warning and help reduce human trafficking. As obvious as it is to me that something need to be done, the Chinese government also realized that human trafficking should be stopped.

(work on logic)

(what has been done to resolve the issue?)

Since its establishment in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has adopted plenty of laws and regulations focused on prohibiting and penalizing this terrible crime, as well as launching several national and regional rescue campaigns. From 1979 to 1991, the Ministry of Justice gradually raised the penalty of selling women and children from five years of prison to ten years in prison at most. More than once, the State Council, the Public Security Ministry, and other relevant authorities have issued directions to guide anti-crime operations in various districts. In 1987, the State Council and General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China jointly issued the “Notice about Combating Trafficking in Women and Children Unswervingly. According to the law”. In 1988, the Public Security Ministry, the Ministry of Justice, and the All-China Women’s Federation together issued “Suggestions for Rescuing Trafficked Women and children”; in 1989, the State Council issued a “Notice about Unswervingly Combating Trafficking in Women and children”; in the same year, the “Symposium on Combating Trafficking in Women and children and banning prostitution” was held in Beijing. In 1991, the Public Security Ministry and the All-China Women’s Federation held a telephone conference concerning a nationwide campaign against trafficking in women and children in Beijing, and the first large-scale nationwide combat against trafficking followed immediately. In 1993, the Security Commission of the CPC Central Committee held a symposium in Haikou City, starting the Second Combat against Trafficking and Prostitution. In 1994, the Public Security Ministry and the All-China Women’s Federation together issued a “Notice about Looking for Lost Children and Women and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children”; on April 23, 1999, the “Cooperative Program on Combating Trafficking in Women and Children” was inaugurated in Beijing, which was signed as an agreement between the Public Security Ministry and the United Nation’s Children’s Fund. According to the agreement, China would cooperate with the UN in combating trafficking in women and children via the four aspects of personnel training, propaganda, social mobilization, establishing transfer centers, and carrying out social analysis. Participants in the ceremony included officials from the Public Security Ministry, along with other authorities headed by Minister Jia Chunwang, and a delegation of UNICEF officials headed by director Carol Bellamy (Ding, 1999). On March 20, 2000, six administrations, including the Public Security Ministry and the Ministry of Justice, jointly issued a Notice of Combating Trafficking in Women and Children, initiating another unprecedented nationwide battle against trafficking, which was also the 10th fight against trafficking since 1988. (concise)Apart from releasing statements, the Office of the State Council made an action plan, published in 2013 and renewed in 2021, to further educate the public and prevent women being kidnapped. It proposed policies such as standardize job search procedures, and investigate in companies present in career fairs

(why hasn’t worked )

However, there is a fact worth noticing: there is no seller without a buyer. Law and regulations appear to be overly tolerant towards the buyer while condemning the traffickers. Even with the latest modification in 1991, there is only a 3 year prison sentence at most for buyers. Buyer and seller, three years and 10 years, the sentences clearly do not match — the criminal law hits the former much less harshly. Moreover, most buyers would be sentenced one or two years in prison, which enables them to apply for probation.Thus buyers escaped prison time and end up paying fines and doing community service. The current law imposes even less severe sanctions on buying people than on buying animals. Article 341 of the Criminal Law stipulates the crime of illegally selling and purchasing precious and endangered wild animals. Imprisonment or criminal detention, especially serious ones, may be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than ten years. According to the judicial interpretation, buying one langur can be sentenced to more than five years in prison, and buying two is more than ten years. (concise or delete)The legislators may be considering the long-standing “national conditions” of China’s human trafficking. In some places, helping old bachelors to buy women to solve the problem of marriage is something that can only be done with the strength of the whole village — everyone is responsible, and everyone is not responsible.

Similar things happened in the US, but after these incidents were exposed, the police acted immediately, and some prisoners were arrested and sentenced to 1,000 years in prison, and the prisoner’s wife was also convicted as an accessory. Most of the victims were properly accommodated, and some later wrote books about their experiences and regained control of their lives in another way. There are also victims who have sued the government for malfeasance for being kidnapped for failing to monitor sex offenders on parole, winning tens of millions of dollars in damages. Most states in the United States have laws that require teachers, psychologists, social workers and other practitioners to report signs of child abuse when they see signs of child abuse. Failure to report may face penalties ranging from fines to criminal felonies. When they discovered the crimes around them, many ordinary people would bravely lend a helping hand. The detained women in Cleveland were finally able to be rescued because their cries for help were heard by their neighbors.

Simply adding penalties sounds like the best solution, however, using severe penalties to deter buyers, curb sales and harm is unlikely to work out as smoothly as people expected. Because, for the buyer, various bachelors living in impoverished mountainous areas, the benefits of buying a wife to get married and have children may be a rigid need that must be realized, just like in the big cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, it is a rigid need to buy a house. In the same way, no matter how high the price is, he will buy it. When a benefit is large enough and becomes a rigid need, and the probability of being severely punished is small enough, even if the punishment in law is increased to life imprisonment, it will have little effect. Based on this information, we may also infer from the unsolved cases that the government feared that harsh punishment would be not welcomed by the locals. So, the key issue is never how high the penalty is set on paper, but rather the probability of the incident and the strength of the actual law enforcement. In the face of the peasants who just need their wife, it can only be a beautiful ideal to expect case investigators who live in the same area with these people historically and culturally to strike hard. Because those buyers were originally part of a social network of local acquaintances. Therefore, even if the case has to be dealt with due to the woman’s relatives coming to look for it or the media exposure, etc., the investigators have no strong just motive to identify rape, detention and other serious crimes, and finally deal with it according to the light punishment of the purchasing behavior. Raising a severe sentence or even a death sentence on paper for the act of bribing only satisfies the public’s sense of indignation, and may force a worse result, that is, the local law enforcement officers face a high starting sentence. It may not even be convicted or even rescued, because filing a case means putting the local people to death and forming a feud, and it may not be possible to get along in the local area.

Things worked internationally: punishing the government officials

Education could not work because Chinese government has done a lot of campaigns

“Respecting due process, vigorously investigate, prosecute, and impose prison sentences on perpetrators of forced labor and sex trafficking, including complicit government officials.”

“Criminalize all forms of sex trafficking and labor trafficking as defined under international law.”

The essence of trafficking in women lies in the deprivation of women’s personal rights. In this dark transaction, women are reduced to “commodities” for sale: they are marked with a price tag because of their reproductive and labor value, waiting to be selected and sold, and then fall into the quagmire of “marriage” that one cannot escape. Thus,

U. S. State Department. (2007). Trafficking in Persons Report 2007 (U.S. Department of State Publication 11407).

Ding, X. L. (1999). Cracking down on trafficking in women has become an inter-national affair. People’s Police, 6(10), 16–19.

Hayes, Adam. “One-Child Policy Definition.” Investopedia, Investopedia, 5 July 2012, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/one-child-policy.asp#:~:text=The%20one%2Dchild%20policy%20has,children%20to%20take%20care%20of.