From the article:
The demand is so high that child traffickers unable to find enough willing parties have resorted to snatching youngsters off the streets - and 70,000 disappear each year.
Wang Lee started trading in people in 1985 when he was offered money for his girlfriend. After his wife died, he sold his toddler son. "There's plenty of demand everywhere," he said. "You can sell anywhere, anytime. Demand isn't the problem. The problem is supply.
"When I started you could hook eight out of ten girls, just by having sex with them. It was easy to trick them. Now I'm not selling women so much, mainly just children. If it's a pretty girl then maybe I can get £500 or £600.
"But girls who are ugly, you can't give them away. A boy - goodlooking, a few months old - £700 to £800. But a one or two-year-old boy can fetch an even higher price: £1,100 to £1,200. If the boy's cute and the buyer is rich, maybe more. It's all about negotiation."
Child trafficking is a reality in China, and as our wait has grown, I have found these stories more heartbreaking. It's not because I believe child trafficking is slowing down our adoption - that would be an incredibly self-centered response to this article. This is so much bigger than our slow-coming family. Rather, it is another glimpse of the broken families and the broken system from which our daughter will come. I cannot help but think about the predicament that Salem's birthmom will find herself in when I read about Wai Ling and her newborn at the top of the article.
I am, at the same time, grateful that Salem will be spared from this scenario. Thousands of girls are sold as instant or future wives or much worse. Pray that the Chinese government will act against this abuse. And pray that families will take the courageous (though illegal) step to leave their children to be adopted rather than marketed. I'll also ask you to pray for God to intervene, both in changing the culture that puts all hope in male heirs for the future, devaluing women and turning children into commodities and in the abolition of China's One Child policy. These are not easy problems - they are deep and interconnected. The Gospel has the answer to both of these issues, so pray for the believers in China.
Finally, pray for the lost daughters (and now, sons) of China.
