Dispatches (TV Series) China's Stolen Children (2007) User Reviews

$1000 for a boy, $450 for a girl ...

[Vic_max · 8/10 · 15 July 2008]

... and price goes up $300 if the kid is cute and down if the child is a newborn (newborns takes more work to raise). If the child is an unattractive girl, in the words of one child trafficker ... "you can't even give them away". If the child goes to a wealthy family, the price is lower (parents feel better about selling their kids into a better life).

It's been almost 30 years since China instituted its One Child Policy and this documentary focuses on one of the unfortunate side-effects: the black market for children. Child traders (or "traffickers") really believe they're performing a needed service for people so they are very comfortable talking about it.

The candid commentary from these traffickers are heartbreaking to hear. You hear about how they buy kids, sell kids, and even kidnap kids to meet growing demand. They even talk about how they stop them from crying all the time. In short, they describe the whole process from start to finish.

A trafficker even allows the filmmakers to record a deal he makes between a buyer and seller. But that's nowhere as intense as the video of a 16 year old girl who is "snatched" away from sex-traders by a PI and her parents who have tracked her down. The mother just breaks down and cries.

Although the first 35 minutes are pretty slow, by 40 minutes in, you won't be able to stop watching. It's both tragic and captivating to watch - just realize that before you start.

Heart-breaking and shocking: a social Chernobyl is growing

[newsjunkie356-1 · 8/10 · 23 August 2008]

This docu is both heart-rending and disgusting. The logic behind the "One Child Policy" (OCP) is, from a strictly utilitarian viewpoint, a necessary one. China cannot feed its present population; millions literally live in holes in the ground. Rural poverty is grinding in the extreme. As usual, those with money and connections to the Communist Party or government officials (often one and the same) or police are immune from the OCP; since violations of the policy are punished by fines, couples with money can easily pay the fines or go to the gray market (there's no mention of whether voluntary baby-selling is a crime; to be fair, most US states have no law against selling children).

The OCP which has done much to stabilize China's population growth (to the point that India will, in the very near future, pass China as the world's most populous nation). But it has produced "social imbalances", as the Communist Party puts it. With the traditional preference for boy babies--there are no old-age pensions or other "safety net" in China and the poor can scarcely afford to feed themselves, let alone save money for their old age (many would probably find it astounding that Americans prefer to spend so much money on luxuries rather than save enough for comfortable retirements).

Therefore, the only safety net is a son. Tradition makes the parents' welfare the son's duty. Daughters become members of their husband's family and thus can do nothing, or very little, to help their parents in old age. Therefore, there is a premium on very young boys kids. "Child Registration Officials" are bribed to manufacture the necessary paperwork--as this docu shows. As always, money talks and walks.

But as with everything else, the OCP has boomeranged in a way the Communist Party--obviously--never imagined or, hopefully, intended. With so many baby girls being aborted or abandoned, there is now a high demand for young women and teenagers; and many are kidnapped for profit. At present, according to the docu, 40M Chinese males have little or no hope of ever getting married (and, doubtless, this "official" figure is way too low). So some families buy their "little prince" a future wife and raise her to be submissive and uneducated, apparently the preferred type of wife for many, if not most, Chinese men.

The documentary focuses on a Private Detective who quit the police force in order to search for China's stolen children. After many years on his chosen crusade, he has rescued only 100 kids. And in one of the film's only dramatic moments, we are witness to the rescue of a 16 year old girl who was kidnapped by traffickers--whether to be sold as a wife or to be forced into prostitution isn't clear. What is clear is that the young teen was relieved to be freed from what is slavery in all but name.

The docu also relates the stories of several other couples who've either had children stolen or are actually looking to sell their children, either because they can't afford them or for profit. A child trafficker (the kind of man who used to be called a "white slave" trader in the US 50-60 years ago) also shares his story and we are shown how one such "negotiation" is conducted, between a couple, their faces carefully blurred, seeking to buy a baby boy and a woman seeking to sell her year old son (she tells the trafficker she has already sold two previous children; though she claims she does this because of poverty, the three children have brought her enough money to equal 10-15 years wages; so, clearly, she's using her womb as a baby factory).

This emotionally grinding work is obviously breaking down the resolve of the PI. A scene shows a conversation with his mother where he tells her he's going to quit looking for children. Obviously the tiny number of recovered children, combined with the danger of dealing with traffickers, has weakened his resolve and now outweighs the "hatred" of the traffickers that motivates him. And it's hard to blame him. With probably 99% of his cases ending up dead-ends (we are also shown one family whose young son he did manage to recover via a cell phone trace to the "adoptive" parents), with little or no help from corrupt police, Communist Party and governmental officials, he's searching for "needles in a haystack." And in a country of 1.3B people, the analogy is barely adequate.

However laudable the goal of reducing China's population growth to negative (a "Two Child Policy" would people zero population growth), the OCP is like a nuclear reactor slowly going critical. A social "Chernobyl" if you will. The increase in the price of girl children is a clear sign that the imbalance between the sexes is already a problem and one that can only grow worse.

Population limitation is a must for China, but, clearly, the corrupt and heartless system bolted onto Chinese society is causing more problems than it's solving. It's corrupting not just officialdom, but the very concept of family, so central to China's most ancient traditions. The documentary clearly shows the consequences of the usual Communist preference for orders from on high and the use of force to ensure compliance. The Party never thinks of the carrot only the stick. And the sticks are huge fines, forfeiture of one's house, and forced abortions.

Definitely something to think about as we are watching the Beijing Olympic games coming to and end. The gov't spent $23B--or so it's claimed--to make its capital suitable for the games. One has to wonder if that amount of money--a gigantic one given the pathetically low standard of living for 90% of the population--would not have been far better spent to solve the population control methods and the social time bomb they have created.

A well-structured and important film despite being depressing and quite distressing

[bob the moo · 18 April 2008]

I must confess that I know very little about China and I don't think I'm a minority yokel who gets his news by judging the pattern bones make when thrown down. No, all I can really tell you about the world's next superpower is that it is going to be the world's next superpower, so any documentary that comes along on the subject is going to be of interest to me as a way to learn more. This film falls very much into that category as it was filmed with the crew posing as tourists, plenty of hidden filming and mobile phone sim-cards being changed after each call for fear of exposure. It should not be questioned in regards the risks taken by those involved but a film is about the final product, not the challenges of making it (were it any other way, Waterworld would be held in much higher regard).

As a film though, it is far more impressive than the challenges in the making and accordingly we are told by the narrator of the undercover work very early and in a very brief scene; after this it is very much a footnote to a much more compelling and distressing documentary. Tens of thousands of children, the film tells us, go missing or are sold in China and this film looks at the issues behind this and, to its credit, does not pretend that they are simple. Some of these trafficked children are from "necessity" but the "evil" that makes it happen is spread wide – from institutions to individuals and the film makes this point really well while exploring the world where a newborn girl can be picked up for as little as £200, which is less than an X-box.

We spend our time with various subjects. One is a private detective who works tirelessly to find missing children when the authorities seem disinterested to the point of almost denying it ever occurs. He is working for a couple whose young children was kidnapped off the street. Another couple have just had a baby but are too young to get married, which means they cannot get a marriage permit and thus cannot get a birth permit – meaning they face a fine of almost £2000 to be able to then get papers for their baby were they to declare it. We also meet a trafficker of children, who sold his own son to another family and sees nothing wrong with what he does. The various stories are well woven together to make for a compelling film that has almost nothing in it to uplift or relieve you from the misery and horror of the subject – we get to see a rescue of a teenage girl from the sex trade back into the arms of her mother but even this is full of danger and fear and ends during the rescue rather than following up with happy domestic scenes.

None of it is without strong emotion and that is as it should be because it is a terrible subject. The most disturbing parts for me are with the trafficker. He appears a normal, boring little man but yet he discusses "tricking women" and "supply and demand" in the same way you or I would discuss making a cup of tea. This is why he is taking part in the film, because he genuinely does not see anything wrong with what he is doing, not even with the fact that he sold his own son and would have sold the other one had he not been old enough to find his way home. There is evil that is knowingly evil and wrong but I think it is almost more frightening to meet someone who has nothing in their eyes to suggest they even know what they are doing. He states that he thinks there must be something wrong with seeing people as commodities but he just cannot work out what it is. However even with this the film does not go after him as a monster but rather just leaves him as part of a bigger problem.

The film offers up connections to the single child policy and it makes this case very convincingly to the point that the official Chinese Government statement does little to dissuade. The film is well worth seeing because it doesn't just look to shock so much as inform; the contributors are well chosen and all the angles are laid in front of the viewer leaving very little doubt that action is needed and that at present the Government seems to be doing very little to address the problem.