A Singaporean journalist traces how Southeast Asian women are trafficked into marriage in China—and what it takes to escape
When Chan boarded the plane to China, she had no idea she was being sold. A stranger had promised her a better life: she’d heard stories of Cambodian women finding prosperity abroad through marriage. But soon after landing, her passport was taken, and she was sold to a man she had never met. Despite her refusal to marry or engage sexually, the man’s brother forced her into it. Chan wasn’t the only one. In the same rural village in China, she discovered many women from her home province of Kampong Cham, Cambodia, all caught in the same nightmare.
The article by Mu Yu for Initium Media tells the stories of Fan, from Myanmar, and Chan, from Cambodia—two of the many Southeast Asian women trafficked into China for marriage. Fan was drugged and abducted, then told she’d been “sold to China.” Her only choices were to pay a ransom or be bought by someone else.
Their experiences are not rare. According to research from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), China is the most common destination for Cambodian women trafficked for marriage. From 2018 to 2024, Initium Media collected 488 verdicts related to the trafficking of women from Chinese court records. Of the 1,031 identified victims, two-thirds were foreign nationals, mostly from Vietnam, followed by Myanmar and Cambodia, a few from North Korea and Laos.
The UN’s 2024 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons confirms that women make up around 80% of victims identified in East Asia and the Pacific, with forced marriage as a major form of exploitation. Fan and Chan’s stories are among those referenced in regional trafficking studies.
One NGO working with survivors tells Initium that Cambodia’s deepening debt crisis is fuelling the trade—families borrow too much and see marriage migration as a way out. In Myanmar, years of civil conflict and a thriving drug economy have left women exposed and unprotected. COVID closed many trafficking routes, but others opened: via river, across Vietnam, into southern China.
Once inside China, women are stripped of documents and freedom of movement. Without ID, without language, and without local knowledge, escape is almost impossible. “China is so big,” one NGO worker says. “You can’t get around without documents. They don’t even know where they are.”
That’s part of what makes them desirable. Traffickers and buyers alike see foreign women as “easy to control”. And they pay more for them.
Southeast Asian women also command higher “prices” than their Chinese counterparts. Chan was sold for 130,000 yuan (approx. $18,000). Court records show that foreign women are sold for between 30,000 to over 100,000 yuan, while some Chinese women—particularly those with mental illness or intellectual disabilities—are sold for less than 10,000 yuan. In fact, a study of 1,038 court verdicts found that over a quarter of trafficked Chinese women had some form of mental conditions.
Multiple factors drive the price disparity: foreign women may be trafficked through more hands, adding cost, and the cross-border nature of the crime requires greater risk and expense. But the market is disturbingly organized. Traffickers include fellow nationals who deceive their victims under the guise of job or marriage offers; local villagers who facilitate crossings; and Chinese gangs who profit from reselling women. Chinese families, in turn, pay “bride prices” or “gifts” to secure these women as wives.
For women like Chan and Fan, escape is rare. Chan’s “husband” and his family had taken her passport. She was confined indoors. Though she grew to like her “husband,” his mother’s abuse made her desperate to flee. But getting out required help from others—another trafficked Cambodian woman, Chan’s neighbour, stole her husband’s credit card to buy Chan a train ticket to the Cambodian consulate in Shanghai.
Fan, on the other hand, stayed. Her “husband” was kind, and they had two children together. Like many, she chose to remain in China—torn between the desire to return home and the emotional and financial ties to her children. NGOs report that many mothers who could flee ultimately turn back because they can’t take their children with them.
This gray area—between coercion and consent—is where the legal and humanitarian response often falters. Foreign women like Chan are frequently not recognized as trafficking victims, but rather labelled as illegal immigrants. As GI-TOC’s report explains, whether a woman is seen as trafficked depends less on her experiences of abuse, and more on whether she “chose” to come to China for economic reasons. This framing misses the reality of manipulation, misinformation, and forced compliance.
In response, NGOs and researchers are urging a shift in focus: rather than just stopping trafficking at the border, support must be extended to those already in China. That includes offering them legal residency, integrating them into the civil registry, and helping them access social services. Many of these women live without legal marriage status, without access to healthcare, or the ability to work. These aren’t just victims of trafficking; they are now marginalized residents, raising children, caught between borders and bureaucracies.
This deeply reported piece by Mu Yu is a reminder that trafficking isn’t just about movement—it’s about confinement. About lives bought and sold, and the systems that let that happen. And about the rare but vital moments of resistance, when one woman helps another find a door out.
(“Fan” and “Chan” are pseudonyms.)
KLT
Original article by Mu Yu 木俞, ‘被拐賣到中國的東南亞女性：為了孩子，越來越多人選擇留下｜一分鐘數洞,’ (Southeast Asian Women Trafficked to China: More Are Choosing to Stay for Their Children | One-Minute Data Dive) was first published in Chinese on 5 March 2025 and is available here.
Mu Yu is a Singapore-based journalist, a participant of the Second Cohort of Initium Media’s Data Journalism Project, which supports young Chinese-language journalists in pursuing in-depth reporting. This is Mu Yu’s first piece—and it’s a powerful one.
Initium Media is a Chinese-language digital media outlet based in Singapore.
