A father's search through China's dark side

BEIJING

The man was a distant relative, so Yuan Cheng thought he could trust him. They both came from the same impoverished village of corn farmers, where most teenagers leave home for city jobs that pay in one month what a family earns off the land in a year.

Last March, Yuan said he asked the relative, a construction team leader in central Henan province, to find a job for his 15-year-old son, Yuan Xueyu. Two days later, the boy and 18 others set off on a 500-mile journey to the city of Zhengzhou.

Xueyu was assigned to a job installing windows between the 23rd and 24th floors of a skyscraper. But at the end of a shift three weeks later, the boy vanished, the relative later told Yuan in a phone call.

Yuan's year-long search for his son has turned into an odyssey through the ill-defined world of human trafficking, an underground system that has helped fuel China's economic might and flourished in the absence of protections against forced labor.

Joining with other desperate parents and harnessing the power of the Internet, Yuan has looked everywhere he could think of: bus stops, train stations, construction sites, police stations in two provinces and furnace-like brick kiln factories, where forced labor is common.

"I clenched my teeth and tried to soothe my wife by saying my son must be playing somewhere. But he was not that naughty, nor that clever," said Yuan, who also has a 7-year-old daughter. "The police said it wasn't a criminal case. They asked me to search more carefully. I asked if it was possible that my boy was cheated or tricked into working somewhere else, and they said they had heard of too many similar things."

Officially, 2,375 trafficking cases were reported in China last year, a 7.6 percent decrease from 2006, according to the Public Security Ministry.

But the statistics are based on China's narrow definition of trafficking, which covers only the kidnapping, purchase or sale of women and children younger than 14, not older teen-agers and men. Activists say the number is grossly understated and that tens of thousands of people are trafficked each year.

Historically, many victims have been women forced to marry lonely farmers, or male babies illegally adopted by couples who wanted a son. But those types of cases are leveling off, while cases of migrants deceived into sexual exploitation and forced labor are increasing, activists say.

Three years ago, Zhang Aihua's son, Hao Bingbo, was abducted in Zhengzhou while delivering food to a construction site. Five people surrounded him, taped his mouth, tied his hands, blindfolded him and threw him into a car, his mother said in an interview.

Hao, then 15, was taken to a kiln in Henan, where he spent three months, then to a kiln in Shanxi province, and a year later to another kiln in Henan.

He eventually managed to run away and returned home in August. "I could barely recognize my son at that time," said Zhang, a street vendor, who made two unsuccessful trips to Shanxi to look for him. "He was skinny, his hair dirty and messy. I saw many scars and bruises on his body, knife cuts on his elbow and burns on his feet. He didn't wear shoes while he was laboring in the kiln, and his feet have not yet recovered."

Statistics about forced labor are not easy to come by, so the best evidence comes from people like Yuan who are at the forefront of 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 websites 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 were children 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.

Chen said that police should send officers to investigate the places where people disappear as well as their residences. "They should collect photos of the kidnap victims, look for witnesses and get more evidence on how the person was kidnapped," Chen said.

But trafficking remains difficult to prosecute, and as millions pour into China's cities, the problem has become inextricably linked to migration issues.

"Trafficking often results when poor people are desperate to find better circumstances. In many cases, the people who are trafficked willingly accept offers of help from people who turn out to be traffickers," said Dale Rutstein, a Unicef spokesman.

"One or both parents leave children with relatives or neighbors in remote villages to find work. Young girls from the countryside, aged 15 and older, leave home looking for work. Children left behind are more vulnerable to exploitation," he added.

On Yuan's third or fourth trip to Shanxi, after he had exhausted his savings and borrowed from relatives, he finally found a reason for hope.

Three teen-age boys working in a kiln jabbed at the photo of Yuan's son and said they recognized him. "They said they were sent there together. But they were divided up after they arrived," he said. "I was very excited."

But under police questioning, the boys' stories began to appear inconsistent. Shanxi police told Yuan to ask the Henan police for help, because his son had disappeared there. "But Henan police did not pay much attention, either," he said. "They said to keep searching by ourselves and they can cooperate if we find some clues."

Slowly, the other families have begun to find their children. Two were reunited with their sons with the help of local authorities, Yuan said, but police did not explain how the children were found.

Of the original group, only Yuan and one other family are still searching.

Internet articles drawing attention to the cases helped raise $22,000 in donations that were spread last month among 23 families in Zhengzhou, including Yuan's.

"I felt the world's heart was big," Yuan said. "Of course I also later became numb from the consolation. What I most wanted to hear was information about my son."