2007 Trafficking in Persons Report - Center for Women Policy Studies

C H I N A
80
CHINA (Tier 2 Watch List)
The People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) is a source,
transit, and destination country for men and women
trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and
forced labor. Children are trafficked for commercial
sexual exploitation. The majority of trafficking in
P.R.C. is internal, but there is also considerable
international trafficking of P.R.C. citizens to Africa,
Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and
North America, which often occurs within a larger
flow of human smuggling. Women are lured through
false promises of legitimate employment only to be
forced into commercial sexual exploitation largely
in Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan. There also
are cases involving P.R.C. men and women smuggled
into destination countries throughout the world at
an enormous personal financial cost and then forced
into commercial sexual exploitation or exploitative
labor in order to repay debts to traffickers.
Women and children are trafficked into China from
Mongolia, Burma, North Korea, Russia, and Vietnam
for forced labor, marriage, and prostitution. Most
North Koreans seeking to leave North Korea enter
northeastern China voluntarily, but some of these
individuals, after they enter P.R.C. in a vulnerable,
undocumented status, are then sold into prostitution,
marriage, or forced labor.
Domestic trafficking remains the most significant
problem in China, with an estimated minimum of
10,000 to 20,000 victims trafficked internally each
year. International organizations report that 90
percent are women and children, trafficked primarily
from Anhui, Henan, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan,
and Guizhou Provinces to prosperous provinces
along P.R.C.’s east coast for sexual exploitation.
While it is difficult to determine if P.R.C.’s malefemale
birth ratio imbalance, with more males than
females, is currently affecting trafficking of women
for brides, some experts believe that it has already
or may become a contributing factor.
The Government of P.R.C. does not fully comply
with the minimum standards for the elimination of
trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts
to do so. China is placed on Tier 2 Watch List for
the third consecutive year for its failure to show
evidence of increasing efforts to improve comprehensive
victim protection services and address
trafficking for involuntary servitude. China made
improvements in some areas, such as by sustaining
efforts to enforce its laws against trafficking
and showing some improvements in victim care
in key geographic locations by building shelters to
provide trafficking victims with short-term care. It
failed, however, to improve comprehensive victim
assistance in a number of locations and continued
to treat North Korean victims of trafficking as
economic migrants, routinely deporting them back
to horrendous conditions in North Korea. China
improved its cross-border anti-trafficking cooperation
with Vietnam and at times cooperated with the
United States law enforcement agencies on select
human smuggling cases. The two sides established
a working group on human smuggling under the
framework of the U.S.-China Joint Liaison Group
on law enforcement cooperation. China’s efforts
to combat trafficking for forced labor remained
inadequate. China should take significant measures
to improve in these areas; revise its anti-trafficking
provisions to align with its international obligations,
including prohibiting the commercial sexual
exploitation of children under age 18 and all forms
of forced labor; and proceed with its plans to finalize
and adopt the National Action Plan.
Prosecution
China sustained its record of criminal law enforcement
against traffickers over the reporting period,
though government data is difficult to verify and
appears to conflate trafficking with human smuggling
and illegal adoptions. P.R.C. law criminalizes
forced prostitution, abduction, and the commercial
sexual exploitation of girls under 14 through its
criminal code. Prescribed penalties under these
provisions, including life imprisonment and the
death penalty, are sufficiently stringent to deter
and commensurate with those prescribed for grave
crimes. China does not prohibit commercial sexual
exploitation involving coercion or fraud, nor does
it prohibit all forms of trafficking, such as debt
bondage. While Article 244 of its criminal code bans
forced labor by employers, the prescribed penalties
of up to three years’ imprisonment and/or a fine
under this law are not sufficiently stringent, though
serious cases can draw harsher penalties. During
the reporting period, China reported investigating
3,371 cases of trafficking of women and children.
These figures, however, may include cases of child
abduction for adoption, which is not considered a
trafficking offense for Report evaluation purposes,
or human smuggling. Throughout the country,
provincial governments rescued 371 victims and
arrested 415 suspected traffickers. Between June and
September 2006, China improved cooperation with
Vietnamese authorities, jointly disrupting 13 trafficking
networks and rescuing 193 victims. The government
reportedly launched similar operations with
Thailand and Burma in late 2006. China did not