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Child trafficking in China

consequences are certainly not negligible; the victims live with their buyers who are not monitored by official institutions,
and the chances of a child being abused, resold, or abandoned are quite high if their buyers become incapacitated in any
way (Rafferty, 2007). Some scholars argue that the Chinese legal definition of child trafficking can be categorized as
an illegal adoption (Shen, 2013). Regardless of what officially constitutes as child trafficking in different countries, the
consequences of such crimes cannot be overlooked, and understanding the pattern and related issues of child trafficking
is still of great urgency.
Unfortunately, empirical studies on child trafficking in China are rare (Li, Tan, Wang et al., 2018; Shen, 2016; Wang, 2015;
Xing, Chen, and Xu, 2017). One possible reason is the lack of empirical data. Previous work has either been entirely based on
official statistics released by governmental agencies (Ren, 2004) or mixed with interviews of individual victims conducted by
NGOs (Chu, 2011; Jiang and Sánchez-Barricarte, 2013), which offer little insight to the problem besides aggregated numbers
and unsupported speculations on general patterns. In recent years, new empirical studies have emerged using information
garnered from Regional Police records or websites that help people to find their missing children to investigate child trafficking
(Wang, 2015; Li, Tan, Wang, et al., 2018; Wang, Wei, Peng et al., 2018). For instance, Wang (2015) utilized Provincial Police
records that contained information on the origins of victim(s), locations of buyer(s), purposes of purchasing, and means of
transportation to explore the pattern, size, and potential causes of child trafficking in Fujian Province from 2009 to 2014.
Moreover, based on self-reported information scraped from missing children websites, both Li et al. (2018) and Wang et al.
(2018) identified regional hotspots and critical bridges of child trafficking. Even though studies such as these improved the
current understanding of child trafficking in China, the applicability and implications of their results are potentially limited by
regional relevance (e.g., Fujian Province) or self-reported bias (e.g., abducted or missing cases only).
As part of the effort to improve Judicial Transparency, beginning on January 1, 2014, the Supreme People’s Court
of China (SPC) required the People’s Courts at all levels to upload their sentencing documents, except for those cases
that may contain classified information (e.g. cases related to national security) and pose a threat to individual privacy
(e.g. cases related to juveniles) or those deemed “inappropriate” to publicize. The publicized sentencing documents
provide a unique opportunity to investigate child trafficking, as the documents include information on defendants and
trafficking routes (Tao, 2017; Xing, Chen, and Xu, 2017).
Previous findings on the magnitude of child trafficking in China are mixed, especially when different sources of data
are compared. Due to the limited sources of data regarding these crimes, most of the prior studies have either used official
statistics from government reports and police records or cited self-reported information while evaluating the extent of
child trafficking. For example, using released government reports, Ren (2004) reported that, from 1980 to 2000, there
were 10,768 children trafficked nationwide, approximately 500 cases per year, which is consistent with the data released
from the National Bureau of Statistics of China that documented the total number of detected child trafficking cases as
618 in 2016 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2017). According to the information obtained from missing children
websites, Li et al. (2018) found that the number of trafficked children increased from <50 in the early 1980s to nearly
400 in the year 1994; the number of children trafficked then decreased to a stable level of around 250 after the year 2002.
These differences might be due to selective reporting. For instance, the cases reported by the missing child websites are
exclusive to children who are either missing or abducted; however, many victims of child trafficking are sold by their
parents (Li, Ren and Zhang, 2013). As such, those cases are included in the governmental reports but are not reported
to the missing child websites. While utilizing police records in the Fujian Province, Wang (2015) reported that, between
the years of 2010 and 2013, the police in Fujian Province detected more than 11,000 child trafficking cases, which is
equivalent to more than 3000 cases per year in one province. Although both Ren (2014) and Wang (2015) employed data
from official sources, the huge discrepancy is still difficult to explain.
Despite the disparity in the magnitude of child trafficking cases across different data sources, researchers have suggested
a consistent pattern of geographical hotspots for child trafficking. For example, victims were trafficked from the Inland
Northern and Southwest regions (e.g., Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou Provinces) to the Central East (e.g., Shandong,
Henan, and Hebei Provinces) and Southeastern coastal regions (e.g., Fujian and Guangdong Provinces) (Li, Tan, Wang
et al., 2018; Ren, 2004; Tao, 2017; Wang, 2017; Wu, 2017).
Generally speaking, younger boys were more marketable than girls in the black market. Existing literature has shown
that male victims comprised 53–66% of the total number of children trafficked (Li, Tan, Wang et al., 2018; Ren, 2004;
Xing, Chen, and Xu, 2017), and the price of boys ranged from 10,000 to 20,000 Chinese yuan (approximately USD
$1,500–$3,000) in 2,000, which was nearly 2–3 times higher than the cost of girls (Ren, 2004). Wang (2015) reported that,
in the Fujian Province, boys were bought at 70,000–80,000 yuan (approximately USD $10,300–$11,800), and the price of
girls was only about half (Wang, 2015). In terms of age distribution, the majority of victims were under 7 years old, while
older girls were more frequently sold into the sex industry or bridal trade (Ren, 2004).

2 International Journal of Population Studies | 2018, Volume 4, Issue 2