Research in which Universidad Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M) is participating analyzes the trafficking of women in China, a crime that is related to that country's great imbalance in the proportion of men to women, which has become worse since the nineteen eighties.This study is part of broader research that these scientists are carrying out on the imbalance of the sexes in China and its potential consequences. This phenomenon started to be noticed during the nineteen eighties and can currently be seen in the birth rate of approximately 120 boys for every 100 girls born in the People's Republic of China. The objective of this research is precisely to analyze the effects that this disproportion can have on this society and to attempt to prevent the possible negative results it may produce.

The researchers estimate that approximately 30 million males are having difficulty finding a mate in China as a result of the shortage of female adults. A large part of this situation is due to the gender disproportion among the births that take place, although there are other reasons as well, such as the migration of females from the poorest rural zones to other richer areas. "This situation has created a huge market for the sale and trafficking of women", conclude Quanbao Jiang and Jesús Javier Sánchez Barricarte, who have published this study in the journal Asian Women. "The trafficking of women has been practically non-existent in China since 1949, but we have observed that this crime has been on the rise since 1980", adds Professor Sánchez Barricarte, of UC3M's Political Science and Sociology Department.

Another related line of research that these experts are working on analyzes the trafficking of women for the purpose of marriage that comes from neighboring countries (North Korea, Viet Nam and Myanmar) to this republic. The traffic of foreign women who arrive as brides in this most populated country in the world can also be attributed to this imbalance between the sexes. Up until now, researchers have used data from various reports prepared by the Institute for Population Study and Development of Xi'an Jiaotong University; the next step that they propose is to carry out polls and interviews to investigate the problem of the trafficking of women in greater depth.

According to the researchers, the Chinese government has begun a series of rescue activities, but their efforts have met with tremendous difficulties due to the dilemmas that the buyers, the community based organizations and the victims themselves face. "In order to completely eradicate the trafficking of women, the Chinese government needs to make a long term effort to eliminate the buyers' market and to correct the population's gender imbalance", state the authors of the study, who believe that those who buy the women who are victims of this trade should be more severely punished, since they are a key link in this criminal chain.