A total of 15 infants, most of whom were sold to the traffickers voluntarily by their parents in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, were recently rescued by police in East China's Shandong Province after it busted a 78-member human-trafficking ring.
In a joint operation launched by Sichuan and Shandong police on January 14, the 15 infants, with the youngest only 4 days old and the eldest 2 years old, were rescued and sent to welfare institutions for temporary placement, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
A police investigation showed that boys were sold for 50,000 ($7,600) to 60,000 yuan, while girls were sold for between 20,000 and 30,000 yuan. In 2013, Liangshan had 13.5 percent of its population, or about 600,000 people, living below the national poverty line, said Xinhua.
Blood samples of the 15 infants have been taken in order to help find their parents through a national DNA database.
The police said the trafficking gang had a complete trans-regional supply chain covering the purchase, transportation and sale of babies.
A couple was found to have traveled frequently from Liangshan with infants to Linyi in the coastal province of Shandong, returning empty-handed, said the police.
The woman purchased infants from parents in poor villages and recruited other women, who pretended to be mothers, to transport babies to Linyi by train. Her husband was responsible for seeking buyers in Linyi, and had developed a network of agents in several districts and counties in the coastal province, according to the police.
In poverty-stricken areas of Liangshan prefecture, adopting babies from poor families who could not support all their children used to be a common practice among villagers. Usually adopting families would give a certain amount of money to the birth families as compensation and the birth parents would visit their children on a regular basis.
