In the b-grade ’60s science fiction movie Mars Needs Women, Martians have developed a genetic flaw that means they only produce male children. In desperation, a secret Martian mission comes to Earth to try to recruit Earth women to mate and produce female offspring to save their civilisation from extinction.
China has no such genetic problem, only a cultural and political deficiency which has led to a stark gender imbalance. But, where the Martians resorted to hypnosis to lure Earth women to their clutches, Chinese are just trafficking and raping them.
Decades of the one-child policy and a ruthless cultural preference for sons left China with tens of millions more men than women. The solution, it turns out, is not reform. It is importation, mostly by deception and brute force. Preferable if the women are young, poor and from places with limited ability to fight back.
Seng Moon was 16 when she was trafficked from Burma. Living in a refugee camp, she was told by her sister-in-law of a cooking job in Yunnan province that paid far more than anything available in the camp. She took the car. The last thing she remembered was the “car sickness medicine”. She woke with her hands tied.
She was eventually bought by a Chinese family who locked her in a room for two months.
“Each time when the Chinese man brought me meals, he raped me,” Seng Moon said.
“After two months, they dragged me out of the room.
“The father of the Chinese man said, ‘Here is your husband. Now you are a married couple. Be nice to each other and build a happy family’.”
Her story matched 36 others in the 2019 report. Girls as young as 14 were sold, locked up and told the price of freedom was a baby.
The same pattern has now reached the Pacific. “Lisa”, 23, grew up in a small Tongan farming village. A Tongan woman living in China contacted her with an offer of marriage to a Chinese man, expenses covered and money to send home.
“I agreed because I believed it was an opportunity that would allow me to support my family and improve my own life.”
She boarded her first flight. On arrival in Fujian she was sold off in what was little more than an old-fashioned slave auction.
“Different families came to look at her and decide whether they wanted her… It was like they were auctioning her off.”
Lisa was ‘married’. The family took her passport. When she resisted pressure to produce a child, conditions deteriorated. She was imprisoned in a separate room and starved.
“There were times when I became so hungry that I drank water from the bathroom just to stay alive.”
With help from another Tongan women she eventually escaped and returned to Tonga after nine months.
Facing a public backlash, the Chinese embassy in Tonga released two public statements, describing the issue as a “transnational marriage dispute”.
It said with “assistance from Chinese police, the Tongan embassy and students in China” it helped Lisa and another woman return home from China.
“Transnational marriages face gaps in language, culture and lifestyle,” it said.
Indeed: most of us don’t come from a culture that has one of the highest rates of slavery in the world.
Acting Tonga Police Commissioner Tevita Vailea said police quickly learned that more young women were preparing to leave Tonga in organised trips and advised the women to rethink their plans.
Tongan police are still investigating whether it meets the legal threshold for human trafficking. Women’s advocates on the ground say the indicators are already clear.
The brokers involved deny wrongdoing. One Tongan woman living in China claims many of her countrywomen are happily married there. WeChat messages discussing payments of around $20,000 suggest otherwise. The money trail is murky, but the outcome for the women is not.
Lisa, now home with her family, decided to speak out to ensure other young Tongan women contemplating travelling to China were aware of what was going on.
She said it was an experience she never wanted to relive.
“I simply hope no one else goes through what I went through,” she said.
Mars needed women and used hypnosis to get them. Beijing simply steals them.
