"Blind Mountain" (《盲山》), director Li Yang's internationally acclaimed movie about how a college girl was kidnapped and human trafficked thousands of miles away from home, into a remote mountain region. The girl ended up being a sex slave, brutally beaten, raped, and abused by the men and women there.
The movie was based on a prominent phenomenon in China, a reality. A few days ago director Li Yang announced that he gave up the full copyright of this movie, everyone can watch it for free, so to be educated by the ongoing cruelty in China against humanity.
There are, at today's age, 20k to 70k children and women each year in China, kidnapped and sold to remote areas.
A significant amount of them are girls, sold to be sex slaves and "wives"/birthing tools. There are literally woman/girl retail markets in the remote areas in China. You can see in some photos, women and girls youngest 13 years old, holding price tags in their hands, chained up by hands and legs, ready to be purchased.
Human trafficking retail market
Right before the 2022 winter Olympics, a case broke out that shocked the whole China. In the city of Xu Zhou, a woman was filmed (the "husband" has been making himself famous on Douyin by being a "father of 8 children", a lot of people started to donate winter clothes to his children. One vlogger went to film how the children were receiving the donations, accidentally filmed the chained-up mother. After the case exploded on the internet, the government sealed up the whole village in spite of the intensive efforts of people trying to visit the abused woman) chained by her neck in a filthy shed, with only 2 teeth left, mentally ill, gave birth to 8 children... It was suspected that she was brutally beaten and sexually abused on daily basis by many men in the neighborhood/family, resulting in mental illness and teeth loss.
During the 15 years being there, she gave birth to 8 children, 7 boys 1 girl, a chained-up-by-the-neck birthing tool in the year 2022. A perfect image of a true China you are not seeing in the news.
As of today, Xu Zhou local officials finally admitted that this 38-year old woman was human trafficked and sold at the age of 13. This admission came after several rounds of lying and completely false statements, claiming that the marriage between the woman and man was legal. It was also a result of built-up anger and sentiments from the public.
By the way, the "husband" did go ahead continuing to use the "fame" of "father of 8 children" to make money in Douyin (Tiktok Chinternet version), even after the exposure.
This is in fact a very prominent phenomenon in China, there are well-executed chains of human trafficking that are protected by local officials, polices, and ordinary villagers. Sometimes as high as 40%-50% of "wives" in remote villages are bought from other provinces. Three brothers in one family all having purchased wives is very common.
My whole life, I was scared of human traffickers, scared of being kidnapped and sold. We were taught to trust no one, believe in nothing. Taught to be always on alert and ready to fight and escape. When I was pregnant, sometimes I even almost got panic attacks just by imagining the possible harm on my children's way. I never ever would allow my children to be out of my sight, even living here in America. Because of the fear I had while growing up. The fear we all had as girls and women.
The regime is so advanced on using facial recognition, filled-in-each-street-corner cameras, cutting-edge online censorship, and superior-to-its-peers public-opinion-control mechanism, they're so advanced on using internet surveillance, DNA database, big data analysis, extensive tracking, hacking such digital totalitarianism tools to monitor and control each citizen's body temperature, outdoor tracks, and social interaction in accordance to "zero infection rate" pandemic policies; to monitor and control what each of its citizens could think and speak - within minutes, police could show up on your door if you post any "anti-China" words in social media, even just private chats with individuals or in groups, or at the least, your online accounts would be deleted or suspended forever, whatever you posted would be disappeared within minutes.
Yet, this regime is not able to (or not willing to? not giving a shit to?) help solve the problem of human trafficking and children kidnapping. For decades and decades, millions of Chinese families have been broken down and dismantled, heartlessly in the cruelest way humans could ever imagine.
And this is the true fate of the people under an authoritarian/totalitarian regime, where citizens are merely the tools and subjects of the reign, deprived of fundamental rights and liberty.
