Slave Market in Zhengzhou, China Targets Working Poor

In the speculative brick kilns of Zhengzhou, China, lies a chronic slave market that involves not only adults...but children. China, one of the oldest surviving civilizations, has retained a history of forced labor and human trafficking. The brick kilns are vile, humiliating, and offensive to any acquiesced profile of adequate working conditions.

Migrant workers are at the top of the list to be abducted. Many are less educated than the rest of the population and are desperate for work. With 200 million of them located in China, denouement of these horrible practices coming to fruition doesn't seem likely.

Once in these vulgar kiln-dungeons, you would most likely be whipped, scorned, and deprived of basic human rights. Of these working poor are children who have been stolen from their fathers and mothers. Fathers with missing children in the Zhengzhou region have said officials turned the other cheek after they flurried on the Internet claims that thousands of boys were slaves in the kilns. Kidnapping and abuse can become murder considering the captors disciplined their slaves without allowing communication to their families.

Zhengzhou's rail station has become one of many "slave sites" that serve as main trafficking points to pick up migrant workers with offers of employment. This junction links Zhengzhou to Beijing, Shanghai and even Xi'an, making it that more difficult to debunk the kiln operations as legal entities.

One kiln slave boss, named Heng Tinghan, was caught in Shanxi mistreating a lot of 32 workers. He was reported by the Shiyan Evening News as quoting when caught, "I felt it was a fairly small thing," Heng said, "just hitting and swearing at the workers and not giving them wages."

Poverty effects in China are mostly located in its deepest rural areas. Zhengzhou's rural population contains an estimated 4 million Chinese people.