Birth Controlled: China's Stolen Children Reviewed

China's Stolen Children, the latest in HBO's documentary film series, is a masterful exercise in guerrilla film-making. Filmed in China's Yunnan province without the knowledge of the Chinese government, the film's crew posed as tourists, switched hotels every few days, and swapped SIM cards out of their mobile phones after every call. The result is unprecedented access into China's human trafficking trade and the birth control laws conducive to its success.

The film investigates human trafficking panoramically, following everyone from the traffickers themselves (both reformed and active), parents searching for their kidnapped son, parents trying to sell their daughter, a boy who himself was kidnapped, and the detective who's working a seven month old case with few clues, no witnesses, and no leads. But the most pervasive of any facet of the trade is the furtive Chinese government, which does everything in its (far-reaching, for sure) power to silence the families of over 70,000 children a year who are being "snatched from the streets."

China's Stolen Children
by HBOclips

Many cultural phenomena are inexplicable, their origins too psychological to be tied to any one social policy or national zeitgeist. The flourishing human trafficking is not that kind of abnormality: China's Stolen Children lucidly and convincingly ties thousands of kidnappings to the country's One Child Policy, which prohibits couples from having more than one child, with penalties for not doing so ranging from fines (usually five years' salary) to forced abortions (in one instance, in the 8th month of pregnancy.)

Under the Policy, before becoming pregnant, prospective parents must file for a birth permit. Without a birth permit, parents are unable to receive a birth certificate for their child, and the child is designated with "non-person" status.

One "non-person" is Chen Jie, the kidnapped five-year-old son of two young parents who have sought out the help of Detective Zhu, an ex-policeman who tracks down missing children with mild success -- he's been working for 10 years and has rescued 100 children. Like any classically noir detective, Zhu is never without a cigarette and his clothes are perpetually more wrinkled than the last time you've seen him.

Life, for Chen Jie's parents, is always spoken of in the subjunctive: "What if he comes back in 20 years?", "If the police lost their sons, they'd be working harder", "When it's raining, I wonder if he is getting wet." There's no one to blame, really, and nothing to do -- literally, as the government forbids parents to put up Missing Child posters or speak to the foreign press -- besides hope for Zhu's success.

Chen Jie's parents pleas to no one in particular that they'd give their own lives if their son could return again is juxtaposed with another young couple who've had their daughter without a birth permit but cannot afford to pay the fines. They've decided to sell her (they explain it's their only option), and call upon a human trafficker to facilitate the transaction.

The trafficker is Wang Li, who entered the business in 1985 after selling his own girlfriend. (Li would later sell his youngest son after his wife died.) Upon meeting the young couple and their daughter, Li coolly asks about the baby's age and weight, as a drug trafficker might inquire about the purity and chemical composition of a strain of cocaine. Girls sell for about half as much as boys, and poor families are charged more than rich families, since parents don't want their children going to poor families' homes. Looks and perceived intelligence of the child play a factor too.

The human trafficking underground and its participants (both willing and unwilling), achieve justice -- or some approximation thereof -- through vigilantism and side-stepping the Chinese government. And thanks to night-vision and hidden camera devices, we're made privy to its inner-workings; for instance, a successful rescue mission by Detective Zhu and the negotiation of the price of a child between Li and prospective buyers.

But the heroism of Zhu and others is no match for the One Child Policy, and the imbalances it's initiated and the values it's glorified. Historically, in Chinese culture, family lineages end with daughters and continue with sons, so when a daughter marries, she effectively becomes a part of her husband's family and leaves her own. Naturally, this has resulted in a higher demand for male children, and the evidence is in the numbers: over 40 million baby girls have been "selectively aborted" in the last 30 years. Of course, this also leaves 40 million males without any prospective wives, so families are forced to engage in bridal auctions or purchase baby girls to raise and then marry off to their own sons.

In interviewing everyone from helpless great-grandparents to grieving parents to one boy who himself was kidnapped, the film expertly illustrates that human trafficking and cultural by-products is a pan-generational problem. But for all the bereaved families and illicit births, the Chinese government has only issued a statement that any connection between One Child and human trafficking is "ignorant and simplistic."

Chen Jie's parents are of the opposite opinion, they hold responsible One Child and the birth control officers who turn a blind eye when children disappear and appear out of nowhere. As Chen Jie's mother and her own mother wander around a pigsty in the countryside (where Chen Jie was delivered, as to avoid any doctors reporting the birth), they hold each other and cry out in desperation for Chen Jie's safe return. His grandmother asks rhetorically, "Why so much darkness in his destiny?"

China's Stolen Children premieres tonight at 9 PM on HBO.

Comments

[AuthorTalia]

Unfortunately, the kidnapped children are only a fraction of the million children that have gone missing from the rosters since the 1979 one-child policy was put into affect. Currently, 1.7 million girls alone are missing EACH YEAER due to gendercide (singling girls out for death) and abandonment. Many live "illegally" with no papers, subjecting them to a life where no schooling or medical care are available, and later, no possibility of a job or housing.... The only option available is sexual slavery even in the confines of unsuitable "marriages."

The selling of babies to loving families is only one of the many uses for unwanted or "out of quota" babies. What the documentary has failed to show is the selling of children to prostitution rings. In southeast Asia, many believe that having sex with a child purifies those infected with sexual diseases, including HIV... Another form of selling is for organ harvesting, and more appalling--to the handful showcase orphanages designated for foreign adoptions.

More about it can be learned from my presentation at the U.N. in March 2007. Please check my website at www.TaliaCarner.com

Talia Carner, author, CHINA DOLL

[CKieffer]

There are two different situations here. 1) China's acknowledgment that they have an out of control population problem. They enforced a single child rule. Environmentally, economically and socially, they were correct and it is exactly what they needed to do. While not perfect, their methods are more humane than sterilizing people after they have a child.

(I am not addressing their inability to track children - - that is something that they will probably resolve as their national disposable income increases... once they resolve Beijing sinking into the empty aquifers, the national/overall lack of water, the pollution issues, etc., etc.)

The much larger problem is: man's inhumanity to man and our inability to negate man's greed. Until we resolve those issues, you can have all the best laws and best intentions in the world... man will still find a way around them.

[jeplanet]

I just watched this movie and I was absolutely transfixed. One of the most real and devastating documentaries ever to be made.
To anyone who has ever thought that China's one child policy might even be slightly positive;
Shut Up and watch this movie. Then let's hear what you have to say.

[Theda]

You'll never hear Bush, Bush Sr., Cheney or evangelist Pat Robertson speak out against this human trafficking. They, along with the Carlyle Group, have made billions of dollars from doing business with China.
So they conveniently turn away from the human misery and will never speak out against it. Good Christians, all of them.

[NYCBear]

Look around you at the world - our overpopulation has devastated the land and the seas, and has pushed the atmosphere itself into worldwide climate change. Where are the fish, birds and other animals that the earth used to teem with? We have mostly destroyed them.

Those who say that humans should be allowed to breed at will are incredibly destructive and narcissistic. It's not in our best interest, as a species, to continue our destructive over-breeding. If you have fewer children, they will live in a better world.

[demfriend]

This is another eason why the world should be united againest such human trafficing. The one kid policy should not be allowed by the world as the result is horrible. How many of these kids end up in sex trade and sex slaves? The very idea this has gone on for hundreds of years is not a reason the world should tolerate it. I don't care if they call it part of their culture the kids/babies and innocents and should not be trafficed like drugs nor should they be killed because of their sex. Many people throughout the world want kids and this is not a way for the world to be turning eyes from it. We have known it happens already and now the film is proof beyond doubt.

[LiberalBuzz]

What a tragic story, but unfortunately one can understand China's policy but not it's heartlessness in how it treats those who have lost their children.

Dman shame this isn't at the top of the front page, especially with the Olympics coming up to further shame the Chinese government. And what is worse is the ignorance STILL pervasive in China, like most of the world, that boy children are to be desired and girls are to be killed in order for the family to keep trying to have a boy child.

You can't beat ignorance with a stick but it sure would be nice to embarrass the Chinese government by publicizing this non stop for the next few months. What an ignorant country and look at how we can't wait to make them even more rich.

[pcplz]

Well, it seems to me that they are biting off the proverbial nose to spite the face. The article said it all in the fact that all those boy babies are gonna be looking for girls. Once they get a big nation of men with just a few women.....the women will have power. Once the women get into power...this stupid stuff stops.

[MagisterLudi]

One child policy is THE primary factor in China's resurgence as an affluent world power.
Over-breeding leads to savage destruction of societies and environment.
You doubt it?----- Compare Africa and Europe.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.