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I just saw this on ABC TV's (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) "4 Corners" Program tonight and it was brilliant. It will be shown again on Tuesday, 22 April at 11:35pm (Sydney time) and on ABC2 at 8am same day. Its director has been nominated for a BAFTA Award. Below is the intro excerpt to the docco.
[URL="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2219617.htm"]http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2008/s2219617.htm[/URL]
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China's Stolen Children
Reporter: Channel 4
Broadcast: 22/04/2008
By one estimate about 70,000 children are kidnapped and sold on the black market in China each year.
Untold thousands of other people are tragically affected by the trade… this film features remarkable access to those at its core: desperate parents searching for a stolen son; a trafficker who brokers deals and who sold his own child; a young couple having to give away their newborn daughter; a private investigator who hunts for stolen children; a boy rescued from traffickers.
In modern China, baby girls can be sold for as little as $500. Boys cost $1000-plus. "China’s Stolen Children" intimately reveals the depth of this tragedy and explores the connection between child trafficking, an alarming shortage of girls and the country's stringent birth control policy. It's a link the Chinese Government
rejects.
This documentary shows a side of China that authorities would rather keep hidden – at any time, and especially in the long run-up to the Olympics. Its makers worked undercover, posing as tourists, constantly moving hotels and changing their telephone simcards.
"China's Stolen Children" recently won a Royal Television Society Award and it is listed in as having won the 2008 Current Affairs Award in the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley, made for Channel 4 and HBO, "China's Stolen Children" airs on Four Corners at 8.30 pm Monday 21 April, on ABC1.
This program will be repeated about 11.35 pm Tuesday 22 April; also on ABC2 at 8 am Tuesday.
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Film Synopsis from True Vision TV (the film maker) web site
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Ten years after the policy-changing and award-winning film, The Dying Rooms, the same team returns to a very different China where the infamous One Child Policy has had the horrific side effect of a boom in stolen children.
With extraordinary access to devastated parents desperately searching for their stolen son; a man who brokers the deals and has sold his own offspring; and prospective parents grappling with giving up their soon-to-be-born daughter through lack of options, we are brought face to face with the crisis that such a stringent government policy has created among China's poorest people.
Beautiful, haunting, deeply tragic, but impossible to ignore, this film takes us into the heart of modern China. A place where girl babies are being sold for 3,000-4,000 RMB (200-270); detectives specialise in finding kidnapped children; and child traffickers are so relaxed about the trade they ply, that they allow the film-makers to covertly record them buying and selling tiny human lives. Tens of thousands of children are now kidnapped and traded on the black market whilst the State is more concerned with keeping the story quiet than tracing Chinas stolen children.
Narrated by Sir Ben Kingsley
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Who are the children sold to? Is this for the sex trade? I had heard of children from Korea being brought into China to be sold, and I just do not understand where the profit is supposed to be in this awful trade.
Kay
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Some children end up in the sex trade - the docco actually showed footage of a client selecting a girl from a row of young women.
Some end up in families, particularly families who want a boy for traditional reasons, since in traditional Chinese culture daughters-in-law are to look after her parents-in-law (not her own parents) and the ever important ancestral line goes via males. And given the massive ageing population in China and the lack of sufficient care for the aged, I can understand why some people choose to buy babies as a back-up plan for their future aged care. [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7149330.stm"]BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Ageing 'threatens China economy'[/URL] Sadly, where there's demand, there's supply - whatever the cost.
You can view the docco on: [URL="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/01/video-chinas-stolen-children/"]China Digital Times Video: China’s Stolen Children[/URL]
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Adoption
Who are the children sold to? Is this for the sex trade? I had heard of children from Korea being brought into China to be sold, and I just do not understand where the profit is supposed to be in this awful trade.
Kay
Each year, over 5,000 make their way to the USA by way of adoption agencies. Baby brokers get as much as $500 from orphanages in China, who in turn get about $3,000 from foreign adoption agencies in the form of a "donation." These adoption agencies then get over $20,000 from the adoptive parents in the form of adoption fees. Of course, this is only for baby girls. Baby brokers usually sell boys directly to wealthy Chinese couples.
As long as there is a lot of money to be made in trafficking children, it will continue. A baby broker can pay someone in a rural area more than an entire month's salary to steal one healthy baby. The broker can then turn around and sell the baby to an orphanage for five times as much. The orphanage also gets about five times as much as they paid, as does the adoption agency. It's a matter of supply and demand. As long as there is a demand, there will be a steady supply.
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[URL="http://abcnews.go.com/International/Story?id=4774224&page=1"]China's Lost Children[/URL]
Of the Thousands of Children Kidnapped in China, Many Are Adopted by Foreigners
Here is an article from ABC News that talks a little bit about the role Chinese orphanages and foreign adoptions play in child trafficking.
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So basically you are saying that almost 3/4 of all children adopted from China are kidnapped? That all the safeguards and procedures in place that are internationally regulated are bogus and that almost all the children left each year are victims of kidnapping and trafficking? Where is your proof. I've seen NONE.
Also you are saying adoption agencies in the US are making $20,000 per baby? I can tell you right now my agency did not fare so well. Our entire adoption cost was about $20,000 (about $30,000 less than my friends who were adopting an AA child domestically) and only a reasonable percentage of that was paid to the agency themselves.
I am not saying trafficking and kidnapping does not occur, but your assertions are less than accurate.
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I watched this documentary and have to say there was not one word in it regarding any of these children being put into the international adoption market. It was about Chinese taking other Chinese babies and older children being put into the sex trade.
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No matter if one child is stolen from it's parents, that act is so sad. The things we do for money, is there no end.
bprice215
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BlakeH
Each year, over 5,000 make their way to the USA by way of adoption agencies. Baby brokers get as much as $500 from orphanages in China, who in turn get about $3,000 from foreign adoption agencies in the form of a "donation." These adoption agencies then get over $20,000 from the adoptive parents in the form of adoption fees. Of course, this is only for baby girls. Baby brokers usually sell boys directly to wealthy Chinese couples.
As long as there is a lot of money to be made in trafficking children, it will continue. A baby broker can pay someone in a rural area more than an entire month's salary to steal one healthy baby. The broker can then turn around and sell the baby to an orphanage for five times as much. The orphanage also gets about five times as much as they paid, as does the adoption agency. It's a matter of supply and demand. As long as there is a demand, there will be a steady supply.
Blake, if this were really the case, then CCAA would be referring more than 3-5 days of LIDs per month. There would still be a steady flow of adoptions out of China. Sadly, many PAPs have been waiting now for almost 3 years, whereas only three years ago, the wait time was only 6 months from DTC to referral. How do these actual facts fit into your assertion that there is a "steady supply" of healthy baby girls being sold to orphanages for IA?
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ripples
Some children end up in the sex trade - the docco actually showed footage of a client selecting a girl from a row of young women.
If my memory serves me right, the "client" was actually a Private Investigator, who was working for a family to bring her out of the brothel in China.
There's no doubt that this happens. It happens in all countries, including the USA.
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KarenInCa
If my memory serves me right, the "client" was actually a Private Investigator, who was working for a family to bring her out of the brothel in China.
There's no doubt that this happens. It happens in all countries, including the USA.
Oops. I think you're right - I think the viewer wasn't a client but the PI. Nonetheless, the way that the manager of the brothel was describing and pointing to the young women was so demeaning.
And you're right that trafficking happens in all countries. Recently a highly acclaimed film called, "The Jammed", was released in Australia about the slave trade in Melbourne and it's inspired by actual events. If one does a search on ABC At The Movies The Jammed - one can read the reviews by some of the more esteemed reviewers in Australia as well as an interview with the film director.
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ripples
Oops. I think you're right - I think the viewer wasn't a client but the PI. Nonetheless, the way that the manager of the brothel was describing and pointing to the young women was so demeaning.
And you're right that trafficking happens in all countries. .
Girl Child/ Women being forced into prostitution isn't a thing of only China. It happens in the West and every other part of the world. Its demeaning anytime and anywhere it happens.
Why can't China change their policy of one child. It may have brought down its population, but the families being torn apart and having to make choices they would have not made orignally is just so depressing. Reminds me of that sad and bone chilling film "Sophies Choice".
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