Chinese child trafficker with 17 victims sentenced to death

The trial of Yu Huaying has gripped China

A Chinese court has upheld the death sentence for a woman who trafficked more than a dozen children in the 1990s, in a case that has gripped the country, state media report.

Yu Huaying was sentenced to death again on Friday, after a re-trial that considered additional evidence found that she sold 17 children, not 11 as the 2023 trial had found.

The case first came to light in 2022, when a woman whom she trafficked for 3,500 yuan ($491; £378) in 1995 reported her ordeal to police in Guiyang, in China's south-west.

Yang Niuhua, who was already in her early 30s by that time, was looking for her family and documented her search on Douyin, China's version of TikTok.

Ms Yang was eventually reunited with her relatives following a DNA test, only to be told both her parents had died a few years after she was snatched in Guizhou province.

Ms Yang's report led police to arrest Yu, who was in court during Friday's sentencing.

The court also stripped Yu of all political rights for life and ordered the confiscation of all her property.

“Yu Huaying's subjective malice is extremely deep, her criminal behavior is particularly heinous, and the consequences of her actions are severe, warranting harsh punishment. Although she confessed, this is insufficient to justify a lighter sentence,” the court said.

According to state media reports, Yu's first victim was her own son, whom she sold for 5,000 yuan when she was in her 20s.

The boy's father, Gong Xianliang, would eventually become Yu's cohort in child trafficking. Gong died after Yu was arrested.

Luo Xingzhen - whose two children were snatched by Yu in 1996 - previously revealed how she had spent two decades waiting for her children to come home to the family's shoe repair stall, the same spot where they were taken.

"The pain the traffickers have caused me is unspeakable, and the break in my family can never be repaired," she said in November last year, according to the English-language Global Times.

State media report that some parents of Yu's victims suffered from depression and the ordeal had led families to break apart.

The court said Yu built a "complete criminal chain" of child trafficking, finding children in the provinces of Guizhou and Yunnan and the municipality of Chongqing in the south and selling them up north in Hebei through intermediaries, according to reports.

Yu was detained for two months in 2000 for child abduction and in 2004 was jailed for eight years for a similar offence.

Human trafficking has long been a concern in China and cases draw outrage when they are exposed, such as when a woman, who was trafficked for marriage, was found chained in Jiangsu province last year.

When China's one-child policy was in force, a cultural preference for male children led to the trafficking of unwanted baby girls.