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Chinese children sold 'like cabbages' into slavery
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Reuters
Posted online: Tuesday , April 29, 2008 at 08:42:59
Updated: Tuesday , April 29, 2008 at 08:42:59 Print Email To Editor Post Comments
Beijing, April 29: Thousands of children in southwest China have been sold into slavery like "cabbages", to work as labourers in more prosperous areas such as the booming southern province of Guangdong, a newspaper said on Tuesday.
China announced a nationwide crackdown on slavery and child labour last year after reports that hundreds of poor farmers, children and mentally disabled were forced to work in kilns and mines in Shanxi province and neighbouring Henan.
"The bustling child labour market (in Sichuan province) was set up by the local chief foreman and his gang of 18 minor foremen, who each manage 50 to 100 child labourers," the Southern Metropolis Newspaper said.
"The children generally fall between the ages of 13 and 15, but many look under 10," it added.
The newspaper said 76 children from the same county, Liangshan, had been missing since the Chinese Lunar Year festival in February, 42 of whom had already left the region to work.
"The youngest kids found in the child labour market were only seven and nine years old," it said.
According to a contract exposed by an undercover reporter, a child labourer is paid 3.5 yuan ($0.50) an hour and must work at least 300 hours a month.
"These kids are robust and can do the toughest work," a foreman was quoted as saying, as he pulled a scrawny girl to stand beside him, the paper said.
Xinhua news agency said the county government had sent officials to rescue the children, but some were unwilling to leave, having been sold into slavery by their parents or volunteering to work themselves.
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A defense analyst recently summed up the ongoing connection between the United States and China to me as an attempt to reconcile individual military priorities against a backdrop of a growing trade relationship. Do you agree? What impact does your recent trip have on that tenor?
I explained to them, in the U.S., we have relationships with a number of other nations … Our politicians and bureaucrats will grouse and say things, but underneath all that is a fairly well-knitted military-to-military relationship that buoys that relationship and keeps it strong, regardless of the politicians fussing with each other. With China, they're somewhat the reverse of that. We've got strong business ties. We've got pretty good political ties. But the military is one step up and one step back. Things will happen that will get us pretty hot under the collar … So we sort of spit at each other. We ought to do better at that. We know how to do better. It would help if the military could do better at exchange and knitting relationships that would be the basis for the other relationships that nations have.
Through visits … Chinese Marines laying on a beach alongside other sweaty U.S. Marines waiting to go forward and take an objective in an exercise is better yet, because we are then lowering the curtain and we're getting to know each other.
The reason they're important is … if small nations make a mistake, you may never read about it. If big nations miscalculate because we're not communicating, it can have impact worldwide.
Understanding that it's got to be a two-way street. It can never be just us with an outreach to them. It's got to be both of us willing to meet in the middle. You can create enemies if you don't drop certain barriers and create certain levels of understanding that's going to help you both move forward together.
Would it be fair to say the real impact of this visit remains to be seen?
Probably, because a lot of things we talked about have not yet been offered or put into motion. I think, a year from now, we'll know how much the visit was the precursor for some of those things that hopefully might bring our militaries closer together.
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