From Secret China  08/01/10

Stealing, transporting and selling children within an hour in Dongguan county, Guangdong province.

Where are you my child?! One of the many photos posted on the web by their parents.

Kidnapping and selling children in Dongguan is highly organized, withkidnappers “stealing, transfering and selling” in one supply chain service. Children can be kidnapped, then transferred out off the town or county within half an hour, and finally sold in another town.

According to Central News Taipei, China Central Television (CCTV) in “Economic Half Hour” reported that kidnapping children has become a large scale “trade”, Dongguan especially is a “disaster zone”, and kidnapping networks have formed a supply chain.

According to the news，there are large amounts of peasant workers from the country, in Dongguan from all over China, many of them with low incomes, and no ability to send their kids to kindergarten, so they let them play near their home when their parents go to work. No one is looking after their kids, and their residential situations are complicated due to poor financial support, which gives ample opportunity to kidnappers.

The report says that the number of people involved in kidnapping children in China in a gang is usually from 10 to 100, and that it has become a network of organized crime with characteristics of family structure, professional and reaching across provinces. Because the organisation is so huge, the speed and the efficiency of kidnapping children has highly alarmed many parents. Once kidnapped, within half an hour, these children have been transferred, by the time the parents report missing children, these children have disappeared without a trace, Police say that to find any leads is very difficult.

After the children are transferred to other areas, they will be sold just like ‘buk choy’ (a popular Chinese vegetable) sold with a price tag”. Most of them would be adopted by a purchasing family, others can become little beggars controlled by a head beggar, and some of the girls are forced into prostitution.

A professor from the University of the Public Security of China, Wang Da Wei says, ten years ago, selling a child could gain a profit of several thousand yuan; in recent years the profit has doubled. In some developed areas, a baby boy can be sold for ten thousand yuan($1465).