The U.S. State Department, experiencing a rare spasm of moral rectitude, has issued a new report downgrading China from being a Tier 2 sex trafficking nation to a Tier 3, the lowest possible rating (Trafficking in Persons Report 2013).
Human trafficking is one of the great evils of our time, but in China it is exacerbated by the government's "one-child" policy. This coercive initiative has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of unborn baby girls and nearly 40 million Chinese men of marrying age who cannot find wives. That the State Department admits this is striking, even as the report itself is disturbing: "The Chinese government’s birth limitation policy and a cultural preference for sons, create a skewed sex ratio of 118 boys to 100 girls in China, which served as a key source of demand for the trafficking of foreign women as brides for Chinese men and for forced prostitution."
The report continues that the Communist government has not done nearly enough to stop the trafficking of women and girls throughout the country caused by the "one-child" program: "The government did not address the effects its birth limitation policy had in creating a gender imbalance and fueling trafficking, particularly through bride trafficking and forced marriage."
A nation, like a person, reaps what it sows. China has created not only a demographic crisis of unprecedented proportions through its "one-child" policy, but in carrying this policy out has consigned millions of unborn babies to death through abortion and thereby left millions of men without the possibility of marriage. This has, in turn, fostered a demand for women and girls who can be sold and purchased like commodities.
Let's pray that somehow, a "culture of life" - even if driven by sheer economic self-interest - will take root in China and that abortion in that ancient land becomes as unthinkable as it should be.
