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    NEWS

    Ganzhou Officers Try to Abduct Kids, Find It’s Surprisingly Easy

    Thousands of children are kidnapped and trafficked each year in China.
    Jun 06, 2017#crime#family

    A recent TV report showed a little girl walking around a supermarket in eastern China being seduced by toys and following an unfamiliar young woman out of the store before her guardian noticed.

    Luckily, the girl was safe: The stranger was not a human trafficker, but a government officer out to prove a point.

    The police and public prosecutors of Ganzhou, a city in Jiangxi province, conducted a test to find out how easy it is to abduct children, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Sunday. The results have worried parents and authorities alike: 42 of the 50 children, aged 3 to 10, that officers tried to lure away from their caretakers couldn’t resist the temptation of candy and toys.

    There are no reliable figures for how many Chinese children are abducted by actual human traffickers every year, but estimates range from fewer than 10,000 to as many as 70,000. The trade is fueled in part by the traditional belief that only sons can carry on the family line, putting pressure on people who cannot have children — or who cannot have more children under China’s family planning laws. Some kidnapped children are sold to criminal gangs.

    Chen Ping, the official at Ganzhou’s municipal procuratorate responsible for cases involving children, said that the simulation test was intended to raise awareness of human trafficking. “The objective is to sound the alarm of child protection to society, schools, and families,” she told CCTV. Officials said the children seemed to trust strangers easily. “Little boys especially are very interested in toy models like racing cars, motorcycles, or airplanes,” Zhong Yi, a municipal procuratorate staff member who participated in the campaign, said. “As long as you give them some gifts, they will follow you.”

    “I thought that I had educated [my child] well — he shouldn’t have followed the strangers,” one of the parents, Lin Ting, said in an interview with CCTV. “I didn’t expect he would be abducted so easily, so we have to reflect on this, too.”

    Net users were shocked by the results and showed their discomfort with the test. “How could you ask a 4- or 5-year-old child to tell good from bad in the world?” read one comment in reaction to the news. “It’s putting the cart before the horse.”

    Zhang Yongjiang, founder of China’s Child Safety Emergency Response — similar to the Amber Alert system in other countries — told Sixth Tone that based on his previous experience, testing children under 5 years old is meaningless. “Because their logical thinking hasn’t developed, it’s impossible for them to outsmart adults,” Zhang said. “The so-called test will only leave them an impression that there aren’t any good people around them, and decrease their desire for exploration and interpersonal communication.”

    Zhang also pointed out some common mistakes in how parents try to warn children about following strangers. “They always teach children what shouldn’t be done,” he said. “They just tell the children, ‘Don’t eat candies offered by strangers.’ But what if they give the children something else?”

    Zhang suggested teachers and parents should better understand the mental development of a child, and teach them how to respond more actively during safety education. “They should know how to seek out help in such situations,” Zhang said.

    Editor: Kevin Schoenmakers.

    (Header image: Ingram Publishing/VCG)