There is, in any discussion on the history of gender relations, an elephant whose presence in the room most feminists would be uncomfortable acknowledging. That is the fact that the notion of gender equality is a rather recent development in the grand scale of Human history (you'd be hard-pressed to find the idea even being discussed more than a century or two ago). Indeed, for most of recorded Human history, in most of the world, a woman's legal and social standing was very much akin to that of a horse or cow: the living property of the man in whose home she lived, typically purchased from her parents for a price, and whose value was measured largely on the basis of her utility. Yet lower still was the status of a woman from a conquered nation or race living among her conquerors. Such a woman was typically viewed as little more than a sexual object or breeding vessel (or both) and in most cases, such a woman had little to hope for other than to bear a son for her captor and thus gain a marginal degree of value.
Most of the world outgrew this somewhere over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. Even the Middle East, never exactly a bastion of women's rights, has been slowly and awkwardly inching in the direction of progress (Bishin & Sherif), albeit begrudgingly and unevenly (Alexander). Yet there is one country which seems to be perpetually stuck in the Bronze Age on this issue, and it should come as very little surprise that that country where the notion of women's rights just isn't quite catching on is the same one that can't speak of Human Rights without putting the phrase in quotes, where the idea of a world filled with sovereign states simply hasn't caught on either, and whose entire cultural identity was founded on a sense of ethnocentric superiority. Of course, I'm talking about the self-anointed "Central Nation:" Zhong Guo, or rather, China. This cultural predisposition to regard a woman as an "it" rather than a "she (which, as I will show later, runs so deep in Chinese culture that it is hard-wired right into their language)," combined with one of the most brutally repressive societies in the modern world and a flamboyantly flagrant disregard for international norms and laws has, unsurprisingly, resulted in a society where sexual slavery is rampant.
However, before examining the misery and hopelessness in which hundreds of thousands of women live as Chinese sex-slaves today, it is worth examining the thousands of years of social pressure that enable China to take such a thing so casually. This article will treat several background topics related to China's current status as one of the world's leading facilitators of sexual slavery before attempting to shine some light on the magnitude of the problem of China's (mostly government-sanctioned) modern-day participation in this outmoded and barbaric practice.
It's Built Into Their Language
女 (nǚ) - Chinese character meaning "female"
奴 (nú) - Chinese character meaning "slave"
The Chinese language is derived from pictoglyphs found on cave walls, and generally, the simpler a character is, the older it is. Also, characters frequently contain smaller versions of another character (known as "radicals") which hint at the meaning of the word. Above, you can see that the Chinese character for slave (奴, "nú") contains as a radical the character for female (女, "nǚ"). The rather inescapable message is that the pre-Chinese who first practiced slavery defined a slave's status as "like being a woman." Even the pronunciation of the two characters is so similar that many foreigners cannot hear the difference upon arrival (the "u" and "ü" vowels are difficult to distinguish).
The Chinese language didn't even have a third-person feminine pronoun until social pressure from Europeans forced the Chinese to adopt one in the 19th century (oh, the nerve of those evil Westerners, imposing their values upon the idyllic "Middle Kingdom"). The character for he (他, "tā") was used in ancient documents to refer to men, but any references to women prior to this time (with the exception of women holding high rank such as the wives of emperors or nobles) used the pronoun for it (它, also "tā"). When the Chinese discovered that it would be expedient to have a direct translation of the English word "she," they came up with the rather uninspired character "她," which is nothing more than the "tā" for "he (他)" with the radical "女" squeezed in - and in a classic Chinese lack of originality, this character is also pronounced "tā," but I digress. It seems sexism, much like ethnocentrism, is built right into the Chinese linguistic foundation.
The Superlative in Everything, Especially Repression of Women
"It is only a slave this time... not worth mentioning."
-Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth, Ch. 7 (O'Lan's remark after giving birth to a daughter)
Though the concept of women holding equal status to men is, as mentioned above, relatively new in most parts of the world, the level of open and unmasked disdain for women that makes itself manifest throughout most of China's history seems to be yet another jaw-dropping superlative in the quiver of the Dragon Throne. Most civilizations developed some form of social protection for women. Post-Roman Europe developed the Chivalric ideal. In Africa and the Americas, Patriarchal tribes were frequently Matrilinear, giving every member of society a vested personal interest in protecting at least the women in his immediate family. Even some sects of Islam interpreted the burqa and its accompanying restrictions as a necessary way of protecting who they deemed as fragile and helpless women, unable to protect themselves, easy prey for raiders and bandits if they went outside the home unaccompanied or put their beauty on display (which, given the conditions in the Middle East during the age when Mohammed lived, might actually hold some water). It is as if most of the world, even though they did not acknowledge a woman as a man's equal, recognized the vulnerability that came with that inequality and created some kind of societal safety valve to ensure that the gender on top would protect the gender below.
In China, not so much.
Sima Qian, hailed in China as the preeminent historian of the ancient world, did not mince words on the subject. His Records of the Historian records an incident wherein the legendary Chinese general Sun-Wu (Sun-Tzu to most of the world) had two of the emperor's concubines beheaded for no other reason than to make sure he had the attention of the other few hundred others so that his impromptu "job interview" with the emperor would go well (Sun/Minford xvii - xviii), as well as another instance wherein a man went to a noble and said "one of your concubines has laughed at me. I want that lady's head." When the noble refuses (it is implied that he would have conceded had the concubine not been one of his most beautiful), the noble's advisers leave him in droves, and one of them plainly tells the noble that his refusal to execute the concubine for laughing at a man is the reason why. The noble later orders the woman to be beheaded and apologizes to the man she laughed at. The author makes plain his rebuke of the noble for not killing the woman (for the "high crime" of laughing at a man) upon the first request (Sima/Wang, 42). And of course, we cannot forget emperor Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of China, whose entire harem was entombed alive with him at his burial (Zhang, 18), an act of barbarism which the much later Ming Dynasty would make their standard practice (Parkes, Ancient Origins).
If one marvels at the casual taking of Human lives for such venial offenses, this has much to do with the fact that there is a question mark over whether Imperial China considered women to be Human Beings at all. Historical records from this part of the world are replete with emperors and various lords giving women as "gifts" or "tribute" in the same manner that they would give livestock (Moriya, 64). To reiterate, while this habit was common throughout much of the Fertile Crescent and Ancient Greece during the Ancient and Classical Eras, Chinese historical records show it persisted well into the Qing Dynasty (1644 - 1911).
The less-than-Human view of women in this society runs so deep that authors Pearl S. Buck (quoted above) and Lu Xun (citation unavailable at the moment because my copy of his complete fictional works is currently on loan to a friend), both of whom wrote about life in China between 1849 and 1949, frequently spoke of girl children not even being given names by their families. Even the one faint hope which, in other gender-repressive societies, was available to women fortunate enough to be beautiful (that is, the hope of living out one's days as the concubine of the monarch rather than as chattel in the home of a commoner) offered little hope for women in China, as life in the Imperial harem was, according to many sources, more brutal and dangerous than the life of ordinary women (Parkes, Ancient Origins). And of course, need we even comment on the practice of footbinding?
At last, it must be noted that this Bronze-Age view of women as objects persisted right out in the open in China until well into the 20th century. As late as the Kuomintang Era (roughly, the World Wars), a Chinese official is recorded passionately denouncing the Communist rebels to a Western interviewer not for their brutality, not for the poverty that they tended to create, not for their fanaticism, but for the fact that "they encouraged slave girls and concubines to revolt against their masters (Diamond, Modern China, 12)." The official's tone and emphasis show that he clearly expected his Western audience to be shocked by this audacity. Of course, the Chinese government dealt with these "unruly concubines" in a frenzy of rape and savagery that would have made Qin Shihuang proud (Diamond, 6 & 7).
Nothing Has Changed
It is common to hear from Sinophiles that China is a "global leader in women's rights," despite the rather inglorious appraisal Human Rights Watch gives China on that score in their 2018 World Report (p. 146 & 147), and the country's nervous censorship of the "me too" movement (Hernandez & Mou). A few have gone so far as to claim women hold higher status than men in Chinese society (Guanzhou China, 2019), though this appearance is largely derived from the way China's 119/100 male to female ratio, in tandem with the tendency of wealthy men to skew this ratio even further by keeping large numbers of mistresses (Wong, Hang) has made Chinese men inclined to shower women with gifts for their attention on a scale far greater scale than in most countries. Of course, with the odds so stacked against the possibility of ever finding a match, some Chinese men have decided not to take "no" for an answer. A taxi driver in Hunan Province named Long Shanjiang was arrested in March for kidnapping a 16 year old girl, and holding her in captivity for 24 days, raping her repeatedly before she escaped (Zhuang (1)). Zhuang also reports a similar incident from Henan Province (similar spelling, different province) from 2011 where a man kept an imprisoned harem of six, one of whom died in captivity.
An even more sickening incident was reported last December in a smaller city in Henan province (what is it about that province?) when a 20 year old woman who had gone missing at the age of 14 was found to have been held as a sex slave by a man surnamed Deng along with his son (Zhuang (2)). The victim reported having been routinely raped by both father and son and bearing three children (a fact which should already raise eyebrows about the ineffectiveness of local authorities in a country with a One Child Policy); one with Deng, and two with his son. To add to the horror of the tale, the victim was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a result of her six-year ordeal. The most vomitose aspect of this case, however (and the one that sheds the most light on China's culture) was that the victim's mother, upon learning of the situation, chose to arrange for her son to marry the younger of her two captors, in part because the police would not charge the men with kidnapping.
After numerous attempts to have the man’s family prosecuted for the abduction, the mother – who still did not know the exact circumstances that had led to her daughter’s pregnancies – eventually agreed to a settlement brokered by police in July that would have had Deng’s son marry the daughter. “Considering my daughter already had three children, I decided to give in and marry her to the family...
So, let's recap. Fourteen year old girl vanishes. Mom searches for her for six years before finding her held captive as a sex-slave by a father-and-son duo. Mother discovers her daughter has borne children from both men and is now mentally traumatized. Police are soft-handed with charges. Finally, mother decides "well, let's have my daughter marry one of the kidnapping rapists who have ruined her life." In any other country, this would be a front-page shocker that would have kept the media foaming at the mouth for weeks. In China though?
The story barely raised an eyebrow!
The Hong-Kong-based South China Morning Post gave it one article, which was reprinted by an expat-oriented WeChat page on the Mainland called "KunmingExpats," but not a single mainland media outlet designed for Chinese consumption even picked up the story, for two reasons. The first is that this is not considered incredibly shocking in China, and the second is that anyone who DOES report on this issue in China has a tendency of being arrested, as a New York Times reporter learned the hard way in 2011 (Jacobs).
Given the number of these cases that have been reported, the casual reaction to them, the brutally misogynistic history of the society in which they occurred (as documented above) and the regime's ruthlessness in persecuting anyone who dared to call attention to it, it's logical to conclude that this story happens far more often than what reaches Western ears. And yet, even the notion of "can't impress a girl, then abduct one" simply isn't getting results for the lifetime bachelors created by China's gender imbalance. So the men of China have decided to solve this problem the same way the Mongols did.
Can't Abduct a Chinese Woman, Comrade? Don't Despair!
So, we have a society where women have historically been viewed as a commodity, and that "commodity" is suddenly in short supply, even though not keeping a woman (or two, according to Wong and Hang) is a mark of low status. This same society has a culturally-ingrained view of their neighboring countries as vassal states. It doesn't take a genius to see where this led. Accounts of women being brought into China by means ranging from deception to coercion to outright brute force and sold to men who use them as sex objects have become so commonplace that there remains little to be said except to present the daunting list of nations from which they have been taken.
- Cambodia (Maza)
- Mongolia (Asia Foundation)
- Myanmar (Barr; Graham-Harrison)
- North Korea (Ma; Yu (1))
- Pakistan (Amir)
- The Philippines (Yu (2))
- Russia (ECPAT)
- Vietnam (Yen)
The situation these women face upon arrival in China is, to say the very least, bleak. Accounts exist of these women being caged, shackled, beaten, (Yen), resold as "damaged goods (Yu (1))," and in at least one documented instance (and God only knows how many that went unreported), murdered by their purchaser (Ma). Yet, going to the police is not an option because those who do tend to find themselves being arrested while their enslavers go free (Barr). It seems slavers don't stop at the border and make sure their merchandise has a proper visa.
From personal experience with what laughably calls itself a "Justice System" in China I can attest to the fact that if you are a foreigner and you dare to accuse a Chinese citizen of a crime, you will be the one facing investigation and the Chinaman who committed a crime is likely to not only get a reward for "helping apprehend a criminal," but sue you for slander (you destroyed his reputation by implying he was a criminal) and probably win, and that's what I have been through as a legal resident in China, so I shudder to imagine how bad it is for trafficking victims.
But the most chilling thing about China's staggering traffic in Human Lives is the Chinese population's response to it. It's not that they don't know about it. They do. It's simply that they are utterly convinced that there is nothing wrong with it!
A Youtube video about China's habit of trafficking enslaved concubines from Myanmar garnered comments from a group of Chinese trying to defend their country's reputation (almost assuredly members of the "50 Cent Party," since Youtube is blocked in China and it's illegal for Chinese citizens to have a VPN unless it's provided by their government), and the running thread throughout them was an insistence that the women trafficked into China were preying upon innocent Chinese men, and that the men who purchased them, raped them, abused them and did God-only-knows-what-else, were the victims (Xiao Lu (March 2019); Guanzhou China (April 2019))
Sprinkled in amid these chest-thumping claims of victimhood was a connotation that China had some sort of legitimate right to prey upon neighboring countries because it is richer.
And where does China get this notion that this is acceptable, that trading in Human Beings as livestock is legitimate? Oh, but let the script get reversed and see how they respond if a group of abducted Chinese women turned up in a brothel in Russia or Japan. But as long as the ones being enslaved are from "lowly laowai tributaries," China insists it is perfectly normal. And this "we have the right to do this and you don't have the right to object" mentality is not a few fringe outliers. It is not a few bad apples. This is the core, underlying attitude that underpins China's entire sick, twisted society.
And it's time to stop dealing with China as though they are capable of becoming civilized enough to quit it.
Works Cited
Alexander, Caroline. "On Women’s Rights, Uneven Progress in the Middle East." Bloomberg Businessweek. 11 January, 2019. Web, 20 April, 2019.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-11/on-women-s-rights-uneven-progress-in-the-middle-east-quicktake
Amir, Adnan. "Chinese Illegal Marriage Operators Exploit Young Pakistani Women." Nikkei Asian Review. 18 April, 2019. Web, 20 April, 2019.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Belt-and-Road/Chinese-illegal-marriage-operators-exploit-young-Pakistani-women?fbclid=IwAR2QkJki9-PgQbDbvHohFfz-_o_GeGI4gYkQkClfCku9KrxeWFJtstrKgis
Asia Foundation (2006). “Human Trafficking in Mongolia: Risks, Vulnerability and Trauma.” November 2006. Web, 19 April, 2019
http://asiafoundation.org/resources/pdfs/MGtraffreporteng.pdf.
Barr, Heather. "It’s a Booming Business: Trafficking Myanmar ‘Brides’ to China."
https://womensenews.org/2019/03/its-a-booming-business-trafficking-myanmar-brides-to-china/
Bishin, Benjamin & Sherif, Feryal. "The Big Gains for Women's Rights in the Middle East, Explained." Washington Post. 23 July, 2018. Web, 20 April, 2019.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/07/23/womens-rights-are-advancing-in-the-middle-east-this-explains-why/
Diamond, Norma. "Women Under Kuomintang Rule: Variations on the Feminine Mystique." Sage Publications Inc. Modern China. Vol. 1, No. 1, 1975.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/188883?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
ECPAT. *Global Study on Secual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism; Country Specific Report: China (2015). September 2015. Web, 21 April, 2019.
https://www.ecpat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/3.-SECTT-CHINA.pdf
Graham-Harrison, Emma. "Kachin Women From Myanmar 'Raped Until They Get Pregnant' in China." The Guardian. 21 March, 2019. Web, 19 April, 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/21/kachin-women-from-myanmar-raped-until-they-get-pregnant-in-china
Guanzhou China (April 2019). Re: Myanmar: Women, Girls Trafficked as ‘Brides’ to China [Video File]. Web 23 April, 2019.
Hang Lijia. "Hello My Concubine." South China Morning Post. 15 Feb, 2009. Web, 21 April, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/article/670008/hello-my-concubine
Hernandez, Javier & Mou, Zoe. "'Me Too,' Chinese Women Say. Not So Fast, Say the Censors." New York Times. 23 Jan, 2018. Web, 21 April, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/world/asia/china-women-me-too-censorship.html
Human Rights Watch. World Report: 2018. New York, 2018. Seven Stories Press.
ISBN 978-1-60980-814-3
Jacobs, Andrew. "Journalist Is Detained in China for Article on Sex Slaves." New York Times. 23 September, 2011. Web, 20 April, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/world/asia/china-detains-journalist-for-article-on-sex-slaves.html?mtrref=www.google.com&gwh=F612872677B03EBD8DEC69105C9781CB&gwt=pay
Ma, Josephine. "Sold and Separated: the Trafficked North Korean Women Trying to Bring Their Chinese Children ‘Home’ to the South." South China Morning Post. 27 August, 2018. Web, 22 April, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2161475/sold-and-separated-trafficked-north-korean-women-trying
Maza, Cristina. "Cambodian Women Recount Escape from Slavery as ‘Brides’ in China." News Deeply. 7 August, 2017. Web, 21 April, 2019.
https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2017/08/07/cambodian-women-recount-escape-from-slavery-as-brides-in-china-2
Moriya, Hiroshi. Trans. William Scott Wilson. The 36 Strategies of the Martial Arts. Boston, 2013. Shambala Publishers,
ISBN 978-1-59030-992-6
Parkes, Veronica. "The Ming Dynasty Concubines: A Life of Abuse, Torture and Murder for Thousands of Women." Ancient Origins. 2 July, 2018. Web, 20 April, 2019.
https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/ming-dynasty-concubines-life-abuse-torture-and-murder-thousands-women-007965
Sima Qian. Trans. Wang Guozhen. Selections from "Records of the Historian". 2017, Beijing. China Intercontinental Press.
ISBN 978-7-5085-3050-5
Sun Tzu. Trans. Minford. The Art of War. 2002, New York. Penguin Books.
ISBN 978-0-140-439
Wong, Stephen. "China's Concubine Culture is Back." Asia Times. 26 July, 2009. Web (from archival copy), 22 April, 2019
https://www.asiatimes.com/atimes/China/KG26Ad01.html
Archived copy at (https://www.coursehero.com/file/21493721/kept-mistress-in-China/)
Xiao Lu. (March 2019). Re: Myanmar: Women, Girls Trafficked as ‘Brides’ to China [Video File]. Web 23 April, 2019.
Yen Duong. "From Vietnam, Without Love: the Child Brides of China." South China Morning Post. 17 June, 2018. Web, 21 April, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2151075/vietnam-without-love-child-brides-china
Yu, Sylvia (1). "From Seeking Refuge to Slavery: How North Koreans Become Victims of Human Trafficking." South China Morning Post. 2 July, 2017. Web, 20 April, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2100944/seeking-refuge-slavery-how-north-koreans-become-victims
Yu, Sylvia (2). " ‘I Was Forced to Sell My Body in a Hong Kong Bar’: a Filipino’s Experience of Trafficking, Prostitution." 19 Feb, 2017. Web, 22 April, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2071873/i-was-forced-sell-my-body-hong-kong-bar-filipinos-experience
Zhang Lin. Trans. He An. The Qin Dynasty Terra-Cotta Army of Dreams. 2005, Xi'an. Xi'an Press.
ISBN 978-7-80712-184-8
Zhuang Pinghui (1). "Taxi Driver in China Arrested for Kidnapping Teenage Girl and Holding Her as Sex Slave." South China Morning Post. 26 March, 2019. Web, 21 April, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3003353/taxi-driver-china-arrested-kidnapping-teenage-girl-and-holding
Zhuang Pinghui (2). "Chinese Teen Who Was Kept as a Sex Slave in Man's Flat for Six Years Bore Children to Both Him and His Son." South China Morning Post. 26 December, 2018. Web, 22 April, 2019.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2179479/chinese-teen-who-was-kept-sex-slave-mans-flat-six-years-bore