By Eleanor Bogue, Second Place winner of the 2024 Human Rights Essay Contest – Undergraduate Division
As outlined by the United States Department of State, the Secretary of State supports the role of creating, maintaining and adapting, or terminating treaties with foreign states, ensuring the protection and promotion of American interests. One of America’s interests includes promoting a secure global community, where individuals – regardless of nationality – are granted fundamental human rights. These rights are defined and protected (in theory) by the United Nations and, more specifically, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The United States Department of State works to support this pre-established universal standard by engaging in diplomacy with other countries who might be falling below the expectations for protecting the dignity of their citizens.
As the current Secretary of State, I have been recently educated about human rights violations in China that must be addressed. “Bride trafficking” or the illegal selling of women (kidnapped from either China or neighboring countries such as Cambodia or Pakistan) for marriages with single Chinese men, is a growing issue in China. In the, “2024 Trafficking in Persons Report: China,” the State Department details how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is currently rated on tier three (four being the poorest rating) of the Trafficking in Persons Report based on their neglect to comply with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (a US federal law). China has not made the necessary effort to eliminate trafficking, and this report assesses the severity of the situation. The 2024 report does address bride trafficking as a result of human trafficking in the second to last paragraph, using the term “forced marriage,” but I believe the nature of this specific topic deserves an individual report. In this brief I intend to dive deeper into the specifics of this acute violation of women and possible preventive measures with the updated evidence from 2025.
Due to the One-Child policy that the PRC had previously established to combat overpopulation, (a grave human rights violation in and of itself) Chinese families prioritized having and keeping male children. As a result, the PRC is now an abundantly male society, with 104.48 males for every 100 females. With the latest estimate in 2025, there exist 30 to 40 million more men than women in China, and projections claim that in 2030, more than one in four men will be unmarried by the time they are in their late thirties. This disparity has led to an increased demand for trafficked women who are sold for sex, marriage, and childbearing. Confirmed cases of trafficking show that the average age of a male customer is between twenty and thirty years. These PRC men are often working in what is considered a low skill job (farming, construction, etc.) who have physical or mental disabilities. Brides are often kidnapped outside of the PRC, as seen from the varied stories written by journalists who have exposed this issue in Cambodia, Indonesia, North Korea, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Vietnam. Occasionally these women enter into arranged marriages willingly because they are promised financial stability or citizenship, however most are forced.
Most women are tricked or coerced, often unaware that they are travelling with the purpose of marriage, and unaware that their final destination is China. They are typically coerced by a broker, their future husband, or his family. They can be bought by men in China for close to 30,000 dollars, an amount that is often regained when these men sell their “wife’s” sex to other men in China. The women can also be forced into marriage by intentional impregnation, or rape with the intent of pregnancy, making this woman dependant on this PRC male for access to her own child. Whatever method is used for the abduction and coercion of these young (often teen) women, the result is the same: an atrocious disregard for their dignity and rights that must be addressed by the government of the PRC, as well as their home countries.
China has attempted to mitigate this issue, however the officials within the PRC often engage in the exploitation themselves or ignore it, worsening the situation. China’s Supreme Prosecutor’s Office recorded arresting 1,546 people between January 2024 and March 2025 for criminal activities surrounding fraudulent matchmaking. Unfortunately, most of the criminal activity that the Prosecutor’s Office seems to be concerned with includes schemes where people romantically connect with other Chinese citizens over a matchmaking website and scam them for yuan. The office hardly mentions any violations to women or the extreme degree of bride trafficking that goes on. Chinese officials rarely pursue remedial action for claims about marriage trafficking and instead allegedly ignore the appeals and either deport the women and their children or return them to their husbands for a price. An additional legal blockade to solving this crisis is that many marriages that involve foreign women are considered illegitimate, and are never officially registered. In fact, if a foreign woman from North Korea were to escape her PRC husband, she would be considered an “illegal economic migrant” regardless of her marital status, and she would be immediately deported. The socioeconomic drivers of this human rights abuse remain unaddressed, as Chinese officials ignore and in some cases perpetuate the trafficking industry.
Another vital element of understanding and responding to this human rights abuse is recognizing how and where the operations of this industry are able to be facilitated. This trafficking network spans multiple countries and it’s illicit and covert nature makes it challenging to track. The identities of these women are often intentionally not recorded, and the perpetrators can range wildly, from a man interested in a one time kidnapping to purchase a wife to people who devote their lives to trafficking, making thousands of dollars. However, some common hubs for bride trafficking have become apparent in recent years. These cases have reportedly increased in locations where BRI construction project sites are. BRI is China’s Belt and Road Initiative, often referred to as the new “Silk Road,” and is essentially intended to perform a similar function. It began in 2013, launched by President Xi Jinping, with the intention of using physical infrastructure to connect East Asia and Europe. According to the U.S. Council on Foreign Affairs, “Xi’s vision included creating a vast network of railways, energy pipelines, highways, and streamlined border crossings, both westward—through the mountainous former Soviet republics—and southward, to Pakistan, India, and the rest of Southeast Asia.” Without sufficient oversight for these sites and increased border crossings as a result of the project, facilitating bride trafficking has become easier and more common.
In order to stop this grave violation of human rights throughout Asia, this industry of trafficking must be systematically discovered and prosecuted. China must reform its internal offices to ensure that no corrupt government officials are able to ignore and engage in trafficking. They will need to first acknowledge the severity of the issue and then proceed to allocate the resources necessary to prevent trafficking and respond when cases do arise. Not only will China need to reform, but the home countries of these women will need to create more safeguards for their populations that are at risk of trafficking. This violation, when discovered by these Asian countries, should be addressed and spoken about, instead of ignored and silenced.
In terms of action that the government of the United States can engage in, I recommend informing more people about this issue, as recognition is often the first step towards finding a solution. This issue presents a unique problem as it spans many different cultures and countries, and can be incorrectly labeled as a more innocent form of “arranged marriage” instead of trafficking. Typically the United States seeks to eliminate trafficking in other countries through programs developed by the Departments of State, Labor, Homeland Security, and Defense, and the U.S. Agency for International Development. I would recommend increasing these efforts to protect victims and prosecute the traffickers, and I would recommend creating separate programs or sub-programs to solely focus on the Chinese bride trafficking issue. The people that run these programs must all be trained to recognize the difference between this and other types of trafficking, so that it can be approached correctly. It is my hope that with this report, this issue may be assessed and responded to with the adequate attention it deserves.
Bibliography
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“The Gender Ratio of China (2021 – 2029, Males per 100 Females).” GlobalData, 2021. https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/macro-indicators/the-gender-ratio-of-china-325417/.
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