Reluctant Brides in Slavery of China

Children are kidnapped easily from playgrounds, schools, and even outside of houses. Chinese traffickers snatch young girls and even babies from their parents and sell them illegally. In China, boys outnumber girls by 118:100 due to one-child policy. As a result of the one-child, girls were therefore often aborted or – hardly born – killed.

Decades of practice led to the world’s largest surplus of men, which is noticeable especially in the rural areas of China. There are villages where for years no wedding took place because there are lack of unmarried women.

ZDF correspondent Nicola Albrecht accompanied Yao Cheng for more than a year. Yao worked since 2007 for an organization called Women’s Rights in China to rescue abducted girls and women. He repeatedly visited villages where a lack of awareness that trafficking in women is a crime. For his work Yao was declared by the Chinese Government as a Public Enemy. Although the government in propaganda films staged their own success in the fight against human trafficking, Yao was still monitored by the security agencies and even put into prison regularly. “The government covered up because the whole world was shocked when the dimension of the problem would be made public,” said Yao.