China's 2-child policy will curb child trafficking: official

The country eased the family planning policy in response to its ageing population by allowing couples to have two children

Besides easing future labour shortages, China's policy to do away with the over three- decades-old one child policy with that of two children will ease rampant child trafficking and reduce pressure on families desperate to have a son, a Chinese official said.

The two-child policy will help stem child trafficking at the source, Chen Shiqu, director of the anti-trafficking office of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) said.

"Because having a second child is allowed, it will decrease the demand for purchasing children. This can prevent trafficking," he said in an interview with state-run chinanews.com.

Last week, China eased the family planning policy in response to its ageing population by allowing all couples to have two children, putting an end to the one-child policy introduced in the 1970s.

"Child trafficking has become rampant since the adoption of the one-child policy. In many places, family control is very strict and many couples are forced to undergo sterilisation.

"Because the couples still want a boy, they take a risk and buy an abducted child," Zhang Baoyan, founder of Baby Come Home, an organisation dedicated to helping abducted children go home, told the Global Times.

Thousands of children go missing every year in China, as traffickers snatched the only child, mostly boys, from parents only to sell them.

Data from court cases from January, 2014 to October, 2015 show that the number of abducted boys is double the number of girls.

In a child trafficking case heard in a local court in Jining, Shandong Province, boys were said to be sold at 45,000 yuan ($ 7,101) on an average, while girls started from 10,000 yuan, the report said.

Zhang said that people in regions like Minnan in Fujian, Chaoshan in Guangdong, Shandong and Jiangsu are more prone to buy abducted children, because of the traditional values in those areas.

Zhou Haiwang, an expert with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the new two-child policy has some good influence on reducing trafficking, but the new rule may not affect demand from families who buy children because they are unable to give birth to their own.