(RTTNews) - In crackdowns on gangs engaged in human trafficking, police in north China's Hebei province have rescued 206 foreign women who were "illegally purchased" by desperate bachelors over the last two years.
As many as 3,500 women and children, abducted from areas around China, were also rescued from the province as part of a two-year operation against human trafficking, Xinhua reported quoting a provincial official on Thursday.
Some rural families in Hebei still follow an old custom of purchasing wives for men who cannot find suitable Chinese spouses. These families are able to buy "mail-order wives" now as their income increased.
Police have busted more than 429 trafficking rings and arrested 556 suspects since the operation was launched in 2009.
The mail-order bride trade was not confined to Hebei alone. In the past, women were sometimes kidnapped from relatively poor areas in southwest China and sold to rural families in the wealthier central and eastern provinces. However, mail-order brides have become more popular in recent years.
"Some foreign women are tricked into moving to rural China for job opportunities or false marriages," the official said adding that the women came from a host of countries, including Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, North Korea and Mongolia. Police are helping the women return to their home countries.
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