Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Babies for sale: children openly sold online in China...

Babies, many of whom have been abducted from their families, are being openly sold online in China, a BBC investigation has revealed.

Sellers are becoming "more sophisticated" as they use websites and online forums to sell children to prospective buyers.

Baby boys can be sold for up to 100,000 rmb (£10,500), double the price of a girl, as male children are valued more highly in Chinese culture.

No official figures are released from Beijing, but the US State Department estimates that 20,000 children are abducted every year. The country's state media puts the number even higher, at 200,000, but Chinese authorities reject this figure.

"Once abducted, children are most often sold for adoption but some are forced to work as beggars for criminal gangs," the BBC's Martin Patience reports. "The vast majority of those abducted are simply lost forever." Full story...

Related posts:

No comments:

Post a Comment