Cross-border traffickers get harsh sentences

Infant trafficking in China has been contained in recent years after the country launched a national initiative against the trafficking of women and children in April 2009, according to NGOs that are dedicated to the fight.

The crackdown - organized by the Ministry of Public Security in 2009 in the wake of increasing incidents of trafficking - also targets those who seduce or force children to beg on the streets or to commit crimes.

The effort has put real fear into lawbreakers, said Zhang Baoyan, founder of Baby Back Home, a website that posts information about missing children.

In cross-border traffickingcases, the non-government organizations can do little because of investigative barriers that make the collection of evidence difficult, Zhang said.

"When our volunteers find suspicious information about trade in stolen children that is related to cross-border cases, we report it to the police and hand over the investigation to them," she said.

The NGOs have recently focused more on infant trafficking in impoverished areas, including Yunnan and Sichuan, where villagers have sold their children to buyers in relatively well-off provinces, such as Guangdong, Shandong and Fujian. Buyers are often couples who want a boy to continue their family for another generation, she said.

Zheng Xin

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