Vietnamese Women Rescued From China

Chinese authorities have rescued 65 Vietnamese women who were abducted and sold to mountain villagers in China’s richest province.

The women, aged 16 to 38, were freed in raids Friday by more than 400 police on villages 40 miles north of Canton in south China, Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po newspaper said Wednesday.

Authorities began returning the women to Vietnam this week.

While women were commonly sold to be wives, concubines or prostitutes in imperial China, the practice was curbed after the Communists took power in 1949.

But the breakup of farming communes and the introduction of market reforms in the 1980s eroded Communist Party control in the countryside, leading to a revival in human trafficking.

Some 24,300 women and 2,700 children have been rescued from bondage in the past two years, according to a Chinese news agency report earlier this year.