© Agence France-Presse/Peter ParksPhoto illustration. Chinese police have busted two huge child trafficking rings that spanned 10 provinces, arresting more than 600 suspects and rescuing 178 children, the government said Wednesday.
Child abductions and trafficking are rife in China, despite repeated police crackdowns -- a problem that many experts blame on the nation's strict "one-child" policy and lax regulations on adoption.
The public security ministry said in a statement that police in the southwestern province of Sichuan had chanced on clues that a child trafficking gang was operating there when dealing with a traffic accident in May.
Then in August, police in the southeastern province of Fujian discovered the existence of another gang involved in widespread child trafficking.
After a long period of evidence-gathering, more than 5,000 police officers from 10 different provinces across China launched a joint offensive on November 30, arresting 608 suspects.
They rescued 178 children, who have now been placed in welfare agencies, in what the statement called "the biggest victory yet for anti-trafficking" operations.
It did not say how old the children were, or whether they had been reunited with their parents.
Lax adoption rules for childless couples in China have led to a thriving underground market for kidnapping, buying and selling children.
Many academics also blame the problem on the nation's strict "one-child" policy, which has put a premium on baby boys, as many families want a male heir.
As such, some parents who are unable to have a son or want a second child opt to buy one, and baby girls are also sometimes sold on to traffickers.
Authorities have repeatedly launched crackdowns on trafficking, but scandals keep emerging.
Police said in July they had freed 89 children in a crackdown on trafficking launched this year, arresting 369 people in the operation.
In November, police in the eastern province of Shandong also broke up a human trafficking gang that bought babies from poor families and sold them on for $8,000.
And in 2007, in a scandal that shocked the nation, authorities found that thousands of people had been forced into slave labour in brickyards and mines across the nation.
I have a lot of attention on China.
The US news media almost never covers anything that happens there, except when a Chinese official says something nasty about the US.
But the alternative media has been sending out a variety of interesting and unusual stories. China also figures prominently in the reports of various "secret government" whistle blowers.
The fact remains: China is one of the largest cultures on earth that continues to resist Europeanisation.
Esoteric sources claim the Chinese (along with Native Americans) are descendants of the Lemurians. Their teachings and practices incorporate a respect for the planet lacking in European traditions.
More modern sources tell us that the Chinese, while they take Western technologies seriously, have also continued to develop technologies based on their own more spiritual traditions.
The persistence of their bizarre writing system is perhaps the starkest evidence to a Westerner that there is something in their traditions which they deeply value and do not wish to part with.
Thus, the prospect of Chinese culture becoming more dominant on earth, to the point where, perhaps, they are teaching the West about the "modern" way to do things, rather than the other way around, is most intriguing to me.
For China to open up to the world, The threat to their society currently posed by the rest of the world must be eliminated.
I hope it happens.