Vietnamese child brides trafficked to China to make up for nation's gender imbalance
Mary Papenfuss
China:
Too many men, not enough women. Men snap pictures of a dancer
performing at a car show in Tianjin, China. Some Chinese men turn to
child brides from Vietnam because they're the only wives they can find
and afford
Reuters/Stringer
Hundreds of child brides, some as young as 13, are being trafficked
from Vietnam to marry Chinese men who can't find wives because of
China's gender imbalance.
China's one-child policy
combined with the long-standing preference for sons has heavily skewed
the nation's gender ratio. By 2020, the National State Population and
Family Planning Commission projects that males of marrying age in China will outnumber females by at least 30 million.
Now the villages along the Vietnamese-Chinese border have become a
hunting ground for human traffickers to provide wives to single men.
Girls are tricked or drugged, then sneaked across the border by boat,
motorbike or car, reports CNN. "It costs a very huge amount of money" for a Chinese man to
marry a local woman in part because a number of men are competing for
her hand in marriage, said Ha Thi Van Khanh, national project
coordinator for the United Nation's anti-trafficking organization in
Vietnam.
Traditionally, Chinese men wishing to marry local women are expected
to pay for an elaborate banquet and to have purchased a new home, so
"this is why they try to import women from neighboring countries,
including Vietnam," she said.
Vietnamese brides can sell for $3,000 (£2,040). They're considered
particularly desirable because of their cultural similarities to the
Chinese.
In one case
tracked by CNN reporters, a 16-year-old girl was drugged and smuggled
into China, where she was pressured to marry. When she refused she was
beaten and starved until she relented.
She said her husband was kind to her, but she never stopped missing
her family. "My desire to go home was indescribable," said the girl,
Nguyen. "I agreed to marry the man but I could not stay with a stranger
without any feelings for him."
When her mother-in-law realized she was never going to warm to the
marriage, the family returned her to the traffickers. They got their
money back, and Nguyen she was forced into a second marriage. She
finally fled back home but had to leave her child behind.
Chinese and Vietnamese officials are working together to help stem the trafficking problem, and some organisations like the Pacific Links Foundation run a shelter for trafficking victims in Vietnam.
Pacific Links takes victims each week to a market in northern Vietnam where they talk about their experiences to people there.
"I think awareness is the only tool," to end trafficking, said organisation founder Diep Vuong.
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