More Freedom in China brings Sorrow

December 5, 2010

I read a TIME piece by Austin Ramzy about stolen children in China seeking answers. Some Chinese parents that lost children complain that the police do not do enough to find the missing children.

As usual, the story is more complicated than that.

In fact, Ramzy wrote, corruption began to rise, and organized crime, beaten back by relentless social controls during the Maoist era (1949 – 1976), grew once again (which means that with more freedom comes more risk due to crime).

Because of new freedom of movement, Ramzy wrote, gangs found it easier to take children from one place and sell them in another.

However, the police in China are learning. Last year, the police launched their biggest crackdown ever, with more than 15,000 people arrested over 17 months. The ultimate penalty for trafficking in children is death.

The longer the child is missing, however, the more difficult it is to find them.


Length of Al Jazeera English video 21 minutes

101 East, an Al Jazeera English program, did a special on this topic. The host says, “Tens of thousands of children are abducted and sold in China each year.”

Curious, I wanted to know if a similar situation exists in the US.

Checking FBI statistics, I learned that the FBI reported in 2009, 558,493 missing persons under the age of 18. Non-family members adduced fifty-eight thousand.

Further research revealed that most child abductions in the US and China are for different reasons. Another family member abducts most in America.  In China, many of the abductions are so the children may be sold to strangers that live far from where the child was taken.

One reason for why children are kidnapped and sold to other families is due to cultural reasons. In China, parents depend on their children to care for them in old age and this motivates some Chinese couples to pay a kidnapper to find a child for them.

In fact, up until the early 20th century, children and women were often sold in China and it wasn’t against the law as it is today.

Of the thousands abducted in the US, the FBI says about a hundred children a year are murdered within three hours.

Discover more about the growth of Organized Crime in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Death by Execution or Murder

November 23, 2010

The Huffington Post and other media reported that Ambassador Mark Sedwill, NATO’s Senior Civilian Representative in Afghanistan, said that youngsters living in Afghan’s capital probably are safer than in other big cities like London or New York.

The knee jerk reaction of the virtual mob judged Sedwill wrong without evidence.

However, he was right!

Between 2001 to June of 2010, direct deaths of “all” civilians killed in Afghanistan as a result of insurgent actions was estimated to be 4,949 to 6,499 or an average of 550 to 722 a year.

In the US, total murders 2001 to 2009 were 137,840 people. Forcible rape was about a million. Aggravated assault was about eight million. Source: FBI

About 260,000 children die globally each year in motor vehicle collisions and ten million are injured. That’s more than all the roadside and suicide bombings in both Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars started.

In the US, Child Help reported that 10,432 children died from abuse 2001 to 2007 and over 3 million reports of child abuse are made annually.

That leads me to the Western mob’s criticism of China’s convicted criminal execution rate.

Amnesty International estimated that 1,718 executions took place in 2008 in China.

The big difference is that most people executed in China at least get a trial and a chance to prove innocence before death. In a motor vehicle collision, murder or child abuse, the innocent victim has no chance.

It is wrong that criminals serving life sentences in the US without a chance for parole or execution cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

KPBS did a special on The Cost of Life in Prison. For 2,600 serving life sentences in California, the projected cost was about $6.4 billion.

Criminal Justice says, 140,610 people are serving life sentences in the U.S. and more than 40,000 are serving life without parole.

China’s justice system is doing the right thing. China has executed convicted child molesters. Source: Dream Catchers for Abused Children

Discover The Founding Fathers had it Right about the Death Penalty

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Hong Kong Triads

November 19, 2010

After China lost the first Opium War, started by Britain and France, Hong Kong was awarded to the British in January 1841.

Soon after the British established Hong Kong as a colony, the number of Triad members grew considerably.

In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion even had allies among some of the Hong Kong Triads.

Britain returned Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997.

Today, Hong Kong, like Macao, is a Special Administrative Region and Hong Kong basic law runs the region instead of the law of the People’s Republic of China.

Beijing calls it the most democratic legal system in the PRC. Pro-democracy activists say it is not democratic enough.

As in Macao, the Chinese Triads have been very active for more than a century.

In fact, when China fell to the Chinese Communists in 1949, hordes of Shanghai triads fled for their lives to Hong Kong, establishing the British colony as the world headquarters of Chinese organized crime. Source: Partners in Crime

Chinese Triads have members in nearly every country in the world and are especially strong in China, Southeast Asia, and the United States.

In the early 1980s, when China opened to global trade, the Triads started to return to the mainland.

Triad criminal activity includes but is not limited to street-level crime such as gambling, extortion and prostitution, and international activities such as narcotics trafficking, counterfeiting and smuggling goods and people.

It is estimated that there are 50 Triad societies in Hong Kong with a total membership of about 80,000.

Of these societies, about fifteen are criminally active… Sun Yee On is the largest Triad in Hong Kong with an estimated 25,000 members. In addition to criminal activities in Hong Kong, intelligence reports since 1994 indicate Triads dominate the government of Guangdong Province on the mainland. Source: Illuminated Lantern.com

Learn more about organized crime in Macao

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Chinese Border Guards stop Drug Trafficking — Part 2/2

November 18, 2010

The most common method of smuggling is to hide the opium from Afghanistan in the smuggler’s luggage. The smugglers will also use other tricks to fool the inspectors.

At the Hongqilafu Border Inspection Station, one team of inspectors checks the luggage inside the station while another team inspects the empty bus.

China’s border guards even go under the tourist busses and check the bottom.  Sniffer dogs were sent to the station but the dogs died due to the lack of oxygen.

The conditions at the border station have been improved over the years.

At one time, the guards lived in trailers.  Now, they live in a new, updated border station in a permanent building.

One officer, who has been at the station for more than a decade, said, “In the past, when it was extremely cold in late winter, we couldn’t sleep at night. Sometimes the temperature fell so low that when I got up in the morning, I found that part of my cap had been frozen to the wall of the camper van.”

The border pass near the inspection station is open from May 1 to October 31. For the rest of the year when the area is covered in ice and snow, the pass is closed. Yet, the border guards must be stationed there in the six months of the off season.  It’s a tough assignment even with improved living conditions.

As China has opened up more to the outside world, the Hongqilafu Border crossing is open to other nationalities than just Pakistanis. Each year, more tourists visit China along this route.

Return to Chinese Border Guards stop Drug Trafficking — Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Chinese Border Guards stop Drug Trafficking — Part 1/2

November 17, 2010

The expansion of poppy growing in recent years has created problems around the globe.

Even at one of the most remote border inspection stations in the world, the frontier guards must be vigilant against drug traffickers.

Hongqilafu, Zinjiang lies along the border of China and Pakistan at an altitude of 5,100 meters (almost 17,000 feet).

The oxygen at this altitude is less than half of sea level. This is where China’s Hongqilafu border station stands.

In the last few years, more drugs have been smuggled across the Sino-Pakistani border because of the expansion of poppy growing in Afghanistan.

In fact, United Nations statistics show that 87% of all illegal heroin in the world comes from Afghanistan.

Li Shengyu, commander of the Hongqilafu Border Inspection Station says, “They need buyers for the huge amount of drugs. As far as we know, the drug dealers are targeting China as a new market and plan to make their way into China across the border at Hongqilafu.”

Between 2006 and 2008, huge amounts of drugs were intercepted at border stations. The Chinese border guards must be vigilant to discover hidden drugs among the tourists coming into China.

Learn about the 19th Century Opium Wars

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

2 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese police, crime, government | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

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