A Desperate Search For Stolen Children

Statistics about forced labor are not easy to come by, so the best evidence comes from people like Yuan who are at the forefront a grass-roots effort to combat trafficking.

Yuan began his search by posting photos of his son all over Henan's capital. The following month, he put a notice in a local paper. That prompted dozens of calls from strangers claiming to know where his son was and demanding money, but it produced no real leads.

Through the experience, Yuan met five other families also searching for their children. They pooled their resources and turned to Web sites and well-known bloggers who publicized cases of missing children. They also asked local television reporters to help them investigate workplaces.

After the son from one family escaped from an illegal brick kiln factory in Shanxi, the group began to concentrate on dozens of similar factories in Shanxi and Henan.

At each stop, Yuan said, he saw children the same age as his son, many with scars and other signs of beatings.

In one kiln, Yuan said he saw three children about 16 to 18 years old, still in school uniforms. The families tried to rescue the students but were chased away by a kiln boss and 20 other employees.

The families called the police.

"The police immediately sent out a car taking us to the kiln again," Yuan said. "Seeing the police, the boss agreed to let us take the three children away. We bought them train tickets and sent them home. But the police didn't ask the boss any more questions and they took no further action."

Last June, hundreds of migrants and children were found living in slave-like conditions in illegal brick kilns in Shanxi. The workers making the cheap bricks used in China's construction boom were poorly paid, infrequently fed and threatened with beatings and vicious dogs. Some of the children were as young as 8.

State media coverage of the police raids that followed made clear that police collusion had allowed many kilns to operate illegally. Police later raided more than 8,000 kilns in two provinces, rescuing 568 migrants including 22 children. Some victims were reportedly resold to other kilns by officials involved in their rescue.

Since then, government officials have announced several anti-trafficking initiatives, including a national plan of action in December that called for stepped-up enforcement and coordination among 28 government ministries under the Public Security Ministry's guidance.

In recent years, organized criminal networks have become more sophisticated at cheating and abducting migrant workers, including abduction by anesthetizing the often unsupervised children of migrant worker parents, said Chen Shiqu, who heads the office against human trafficking in the Public Security Ministry.