Results tagged “gangs”

Five sex slaves, including two minors, have been rescued from Changning, according to Shanghai Daily. They had been abducted from their home provinces and forced into prostitution here in Shanghai. Police arrested 24 suspects and pinpointed a total of seven gangs as the masterminds behind this human exploitation operation, and also arranged raids in Hubei to catch another gang. Let's hope that these women can now return to their home provinces and live unthreatened - and maybe, one day, we can actually put some sensible laws on prostitution in place to make sure that stories like this are much more rare.

Hundreds of parents set to the streets on April 15th in a peaceful march, begging for help in finding their missing children. Originally reported by the New Express (translated by Danwei), the parents claim that about 1,000 children have gone missing from the Dongguan area since 2007. At their wits end, they've set out to draw more attention to the apparent, widespread abduction problem.

Last night around 7pm, a man at the Baoshan Road station on the No.3 line was beaten to death. According to police reports and witness accounts, four to five young men chased down the deceased and began beating him near the No. 1 entrance close to Qiujiang Road. The deceased was around 40 years old and operated a stall right outside the subway station. Police are currently investigating. Source: Netease

Two weeks ago, when we told you that China's new labour law was going to be a big, big thing, we had no idea it would also be the cause of some serious blood-letting. Local gangs and triads have been attacking the Shenzhen Dagongzhe Migrant Worker Centre which has been instrumental in providing legal advice for rural migrant workers and informing them about their rights under the new labour law. In separate attacks, they shattered...

When you've got nothing left to sell, sell your blood. That's how many people in China, most notably in Henan, got AIDS. But as long as there's poverty, you can bet that there will be people willing to sell their own blood. In the town of Jieyang in Eastern Guangdong province, a recent expose lead to greater media attention, which meant that the authorities actually had some work to do. An investigation started, which lead to the suspension of three officials (pending further investigation) as well as the arrests of the blood-selling mafia's ringleaders (both reports in Chinese).

Shanghaiist just read a recent newspaper article about China's premiere and largest pod/videocasting website , Toodou.com. Our interest piqued, we went over to the site to see what we could find -- and find stuff we did! First off, here's the CNN special on bloggers and podcasters where they interview the founder of Toodou, the US educated Gary Wang. Wang and his Dutch co-founder started the site "out of boredom," which is what cool internet startup business types nonchalantly call what is in fact their shrewed intuition of what's going to become the next big thing. Or they were really bored.

Running errands in our neighborhood this afternoon, the same guy tried to give us the same "massage" business card twice. He rolls with the gang of Rolex and Mont Blanc hawkers who approach us at least twice a day -- before the gym and after the gym, and then whenever else we are brave enough to leave the apartment. (The most unique salesperson, who we have only seen once, offered us a laptop computer -- right outside of Plaza 66.) Anyway, this brings us to today's news that Beijing, in its effort to rid its streets of any "Chinese" characteristics before the 2008 Olympics, is cracking down on those who hand out illegal advertisements (you know, the kids who throw business cards into your pockets and bags, or even through the crack in your taxi window). We're assuming the Rolex guys are included in a separate crackdown.

This sounds like a cool job: go out and search for a Shanghai's soul. That's what this reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald was sent to do. However, in the course of this he makes some observations that we found debatable, or in other cases, flat-out wrong. Here's one part of it: