Children sold to Chinese factories

The Cambodia News.Net
Wednesday 30th April, 2008

A Chinese newspaper has reported thousands of children are being sold in the same way as 'cabbages' to China's booming factories as virtual slave labour.

According to the Southern Metropolis Daily, hundreds of children, some as young as ten, are being sent to electronics and toy factories across southern China.

Most of them are bought and sold at a street market in Sichuan, one of rural China's most overpopulated provinces.

According to reporters, the children have been forced to stand in line, before being assessed like cattle and then driven in trucks to factories in the Pearl River Delta, the heart of China's manufacturing industry.

The newspaper said that many came from the same area of Sichuan, Liangshan County, where 76 children have been reported as missing since the Chinese New Year in February.

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