Police pledge to fight child trafficking

 BEIJING, July 7 (Xinhua) -- Police have pledged to boost efforts to fight child trafficking after an operation that rescued 181 children and arrested 802 suspects.

Chen Shiqu, director of the Ministry¹ of Public Security's anti-human trafficking office, said police have stopped child trafficking from increasing, but the practice is still prominent in some regions.

"We have zero tolerance² when it comes to child trafficking and will make the utmost efforts to make sure that every trafficker is caught," Chen said on Friday.

In the raid carried out on Monday, more than 10,000 police officers, under the ministry's command, launched operations simultaneously³, catching⁴ the suspects and rescuing the children in 15 provinces including Hebei, Shandong, Sichuan, Henan, Fujian and Yunnan, according to a statement released on Friday.

Two child trafficking gangs were smashed, Chen said, and all the rescued children were sent to welfare homes.

Shao Zhongyuan — listed as a top-level fugitive⁵ for allegedly being involved in a gang that trafficked more than 100 children — was arrested during the raid in Zaozhuang, a city in East China's Shandong province, the statement said.

In December, four suspects were caught trafficking four children in Luohe, Henan province, when police were inspecting a long-distance bus going from Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, to Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province.

The suspects led the police to a major child trafficking gang, headed by Li Shichun and Hou Enzhuo.

In April, police in Xingtai, Hebei province, tracked down another child trafficking gang, headed by Yang Xuehua and Ji Xiaofang, who trafficked children using a private gynecological clinic in Pingxiang county. Local police said they had noticed that pregnant women from other places and children were often coming in and out of the clinic.

The clinic's owner, Guo Yanfang, confessed to the police on Tuesday that she began to help Yang and Ji's child-trafficking ring in 2008 and that she was mainly responsible for finding out the gender⁶ of unborn babies and seeking buyers, according to the Beijing News.

Yang and Ji, both from Southwest China's Sichuan province, brought pregnant women from Sichuan to Xingtai. The babies were sold locally or to neighboring provinces, the report said.

The two suspects were also involved with three other similar clinics in Xingtai.

The suspects confessed that the babies' genders⁷ and the mothers' appearance would result in different prices and they also introduced a bidding mechanism⁸ in order to earn more money, the report said.

Yang could get 6,000 to 8,000 yuan (940 to 1,300 U.S. dollars) for trafficking a child. Guo could get 2,000 to 5,000 yuan for successfully introducing a buyer, while a pregnant woman could receive 30,000 to 50,000 yuan, police were quoted as saying by the report.

The ministry listed the two trafficking gangs as special cases that had to be dealt with in February and May. With the efforts of local police, the ministry found Li Shichun and his gang were trafficking children from Yunnan to Hebei, Fujian and Henan via Guangdong, while Yang Xuehua's gang was trafficking children from Southwest China's Sichuan to places such as Hebei and Shandong.

As of Thursday, all major suspects, including the four gang leaders, had been caught, the ministry's statement said.

On Friday, Chen Shiqu said the ministry will also strengthen cooperation with non-governmental organizations to launch a crackdown on child trafficking.

Baobei Huijia, or Baby Back Home, a Jilin-based voluntary group in Northeast China that helps search for missing children and offers support to parents across China, is an organization that the ministry wants to works with.

Zhang Baoyan, founder⁹ of the non-governmental group, which has more than 20,000 volunteers nationwide, said they've provided more than 1,000 messages involving both missing children and parents' calls for help to the ministry since 2009.

"Our staff members communicate with police officers every day about missing children's clues and also provide the parents' DNA¹⁰ information to help missing children find their parents," she said.

1 ministry   

n.(政府的)部；牧师

参考例句：

• They sent a deputation to the ministry to complain.他们派了一个代表团到部里投诉。
• We probed the Air Ministry statements.我们调查了空军部的记录。

2 tolerance   

n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差

参考例句：

• Tolerance is one of his strengths.宽容是他的一个优点。
• Human beings have limited tolerance of noise.人类对噪音的忍耐力有限。

3 simultaneously   

adv.同时发生地，同时进行地

参考例句：

• The radar beam can track a number of targets almost simultaneously.雷达波几乎可以同时追着多个目标。
• The Windows allow a computer user to execute multiple programs simultaneously.Windows允许计算机用户同时运行多个程序。

4 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

5 fugitive   

adj.逃亡的，易逝的；n.逃犯，逃亡者

参考例句：

• The police were able to deduce where the fugitive was hiding.警方成功地推断出那逃亡者躲藏的地方。
• The fugitive is believed to be headed for the border.逃犯被认为在向国境线逃窜。

6 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

7 genders   

n.性某些语言的（阳性、阴性和中性，不同的性有不同的词尾等）( gender的名词复数 )；性别；某些语言的（名词、代词和形容词）性的区分

参考例句：

• There are three genders in German: masculine, feminine and neuter. 德语中有叁性：阳性、阴性和中性。 来自辞典例句
• Japan was fourth among the genders of foreign students. 日本在二十个留美学生输送地中列第四位。 来自互联网

8 mechanism   

n.机械装置；机构，结构

参考例句：

• The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
• The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。

9 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

10 DNA   

(缩)deoxyribonucleic acid 脱氧核糖核酸

参考例句：

• DNA is stored in the nucleus of a cell.脱氧核糖核酸储存于细胞的细胞核里。
• Gene mutations are alterations in the DNA code.基因突变是指DNA密码的改变。