Wang Bangyin, a local farmer, holds his rescued son after the pair were reunited at Guiyang Welfare Centre for Children in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, Oct. 29, 2009. (Photo : REUTERS)
There were 13,000 children and 30,000 women rescued in China last year that led to criminalizing the sale of human trafficking victims in Oct. 2014.
Chen Shiqu, director of Human Trafficking Office, said that the problem has been curbed across the country through constant clampdown and comprehensive management.
There is also a significant rise in public awareness on human trafficking, which has helped pull down the number of cases.
He added that the crime rate is dropping as many trafficking rings have been deterred.
Police have also established a system to rescue children and return them to their parents using a DNA database from parents who reported their children missing.
The database helped retrieve more than 3,500 children.
However, Chen admits that trafficking involving babies and foreign and mentally challenged women are on the rise.
There are 33.8 million more men than women in China, causing many to resort to buying women for brides or as children. Other purposes of cross-border trafficking are sexual exploitation, begging and forced labor.
There were over 100 Vietnamese women reported missing in Nanliyue Village, Handan, Hebei Province late last year.
China is both a place of origin and destination for human trafficking,
Majority of migrants trafficked into China come from Vietnam, Korea, Myanmar and Russia. There have also been reports of individuals being trafficked from southwest China into countries like Thailand and Malaysia via Myanmar .
The U.S. Department of Labor has provided a $1-million grant to finance public awareness campaigns about human trafficking in China and Nepal.
Awareness-raising efforts have put international pressure on Chinese officials to address human trafficking within their borders.
