Thousands Sold Into Slavery Rescued

Nearly 3,000 women and children were rescued after being abducted and sold into slavery in southern China over the past two years, a Chinese newspaper reported Thursday.

The 2,861 women and 134 children were returned to their families after three crackdowns on kidnapping gangs in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, the People’s Security News reported.

Police arrested 3,886 people and broke up nearly 600 gangs involved in the abductions, the report said. There have been scattered reports of such crimes in the Chinese press, but this was a particularly large case.

Women and girls are often kidnapped from their homes or lured away with false promises of jobs, taken to distant poor villages and sold into bondage as wives.

Women were sold as wives, concubines or prostitutes in imperial China. The Communists ended the practice after taking power in 1949, but human trafficking has resurged after the breakup of farming communes in the late 1970s eroded the control of the Communist Party.