The Real Source of China's Trafficking Problem

The U.S. State Department's decision to name China one of the world’s worst offenders in human trafficking was greeted with predictable resentment in Beijing. With some justification, Chinese officials argue that they’re at least trying to tackle a difficult problem, and in any case, that they hardly belong in the same category as egregious regimes such as North Korea and Sudan. But the fact is that China’s trafficking issues are at least in part a legacy of government policies -- and they won’t be resolved until that link is acknowledged and addressed.

The shadowy nature of human trafficking makes it difficult to develop a complete statistical portrait of the problem, whether in China or anywhere else. China's Ministry of Public Security can point to some successes: In 2015, authorities arrested 1,932 suspected traffickers, and convicted 1,362 individuals for the trafficking of women and children. But those numbers -- though significant -- don't tell the whole story in a country where there are more than 200 million migrant workers, as well as porous borders that allow for the easy movement of people between China and its neighbors.