ABSTRACT
The statistics show that China hosts approximately 250,000 victims of human trafficking from both internal and international sources. Identified as a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking, China’s issues of human trafficking have been recognized as forced marriage, forced labor, and prostitution. According to the United Nations Palermo Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons of 2000 as part of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, trafficking involves “recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons” by “the use of force or other means of coercion” with the “purpose of exploitation”. A host of cultural and economic factors such as gender imbalance, rural poverty, and the high bride price and cost of weddings are the root causes for the increased demand of women into forced marriages in rural China. Due to the long history of devaluing women, an imbalanced sex ratio has been a long-term problem.
