China convicts baby traffickers

By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC correspondent in Beijing

There are villages full of boys who have little chance of finding a wife

A court in southern China has convicted 52 people of baby smuggling.

Six of them were sentenced to death and five to life in prison in the biggest single baby trafficking case in recent Chinese history.

Over a two-year period the smuggling ring is thought to have bought and sold 118 babies, many of them girls.

It was unmasked last year when police boarded a bus in south-west China and found 28 babies stuffed inside travel bags. One had died from the cold.

To outsiders it is a shocking trade, but in rural China it is ancient and it is growing.

It is driven by China's strict family planning laws which limit many couples to one child.

Desperate for a boy, farmers often sell a baby girl before its birth can be registered. Ironically, the baby will often be sold to other poor farmers as a future bride for their son.

All over China there are poor villages full of boys who have little chance of ever finding a wife.