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Trade in Vietnamese brides a boon for
Chinese
By Ma Guihua
DONGXING, China - The easing of border
restrictions between China and Vietnam has provided a
boon to impoverished Chinese farmers: a steady influx of
Vietnamese brides.
Many of these women are
brought to China by human traffickers and sold into
marriage, but many are simply looking for a better life.
In fact, Chinese authorities are sometimes frustrated
when they repatriate Vietnamese women only to have them
return to China as soon as their back is turned.
"After a brief research in Guangxi I feel very
much puzzled myself as to whether this is illegal
migration or human trafficking," said Liu Meng,
professor at the National Women's University of China.
Of the eight brothers in the Deng family in
Ban'ai village, some 20 kilometers from this city on the
border with Vietnam in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
in southwestern China, four have Vietnamese wives. Deng
Wenquan, 32, has a Vietnamese wife from Hanoi, for whom
he paid about 400 yuan (US$48) when he took a fancy to
her at a villager's home.
"She is nice and good
at housework. My parents treat her well. Life is now a
little better than the days without her," said Deng, who
added that he would like to visit his parents-in-law in
Vietnam if he had the money.
Deng Wenquan seems
surer of his wife than his elder brother Deng Wendong,
whose first Vietnamese wife ran off (he now has a second
one). "I give her complete freedom," said Wenquan. "She
will stay if she wants to live with us."
Mai,
Wenquan's wife and four years his junior, is a
high-school graduate. "If he were an old guy, I wouldn't
have married him. I would try to report to the police,"
she said.
Mai did not know she was going to end
up married to a Chinese man when she came to Ban'ai, and
says she was deceived by an acquaintance of her aunt.
Still, she says she has since decided to stay on in
China, despite her parents' entreaties to remain in
Vietnam after she visited them in Hanoi in 1999. "They
reported the trafficker to the Vietnamese people and got
him arrested," Mai added.
"I want to live with
my parents. But I'm not sure that I could marry a good
man there. This man is good to me and never beats me,
although sometimes we do quarrel," said Mai, showing the
photos of her family in Vietnam and China.
Thirteen years after Deng Wendong's first
Vietnamese wife left him and took their daughter with
her, he got another bride from across the border.
"She is 27 and was brought here by her father's
sister, wife of an overseas Chinese in here," said Deng,
50, who earns a meager living from fishing and
occasional rock-chipping.
Deng still keeps on
his wall a picture of his ex-wife, whom he bought for
300 yuan. "She's very capable [of doing housework and
farming]. But I was too poor, so she gave up after
living with me for seven years," he mused.
Deng
says he wanted a Vietnamese wife the second time around
for economic reasons.
"It costs dearly to get a
Chinese girl for a wife," he explained. "People would
look down upon you if you don't have money or a wife.
Having a Vietnamese bride is cheaper but will
nevertheless earn you respect. At least you have a
family."
Many residents in Dongxing City, which
shares 35.77km of boundary line and 42km of coastline
with Vietnam, view marriage with women brought across
the border, whether by traffickers or other means, as a
pragmatic matter. Many do not find this practice in
border areas strange, despite the fact that buying wives
is illegal and concerns by officials and activists that
Vietnamese women are often deceived or forced into these
marriages.
From the viewpoint of the men here,
they get in touch with an intermediary or matchmaker and
have to give money to a bride's family in traditional
society, so it is not much different paying to get a
bride across the border.
This trend is
facilitated by the easy movement of people and goods
along the border areas, since China normalized
diplomatic ties with Vietnam in 1989. Border residents
from Vietnam come to China easily and freely on day
passes, but many overstay.
A survey in Dongxing
in 1999 showed that there 1,269 Vietnamese women who
were illegal residents - there could well be more today.
More than 80 percent of those women had
elementary-school education at the most.
"Most
of the Vietnamese women entered China illegally for
marriage, some were trafficked in," said Wei Xiaoning of
the rights section of Guangxi Women's Federation.
More than 30 of the 1,500 Ban'ai villagers have
bought Vietnamese as wives, village chief Tang Guoqiang
says, not counting the women who go ahead and live with
Vietnamese women without marriage.
"Most of
these men are too poor or too old to marry Chinese
girls," said Tang. The usual tradition is that a
bridegroom has to pay 8,000-10,000 yuan to the bride's
parents as a betrothal gift, a fee too big for farmers
like Deng Wenquan.
When talking about their
wives, the men chat about how they keep house and take
care of the family. They accept, in matter-of-fact
fashion, that some women might decide to leave them one
day.
Pei Xingfu, who had confessed to kidnapping
a Vietnamese woman from the highway in broad daylight,
estimates that 30-40 percent of his fellow villagers
marry Vietnamese women.
"Thanks to the opening
and reform, villagers here are better off and therefore
can afford to marry Chinese brides," said Pei, also from
Ban'ai village. "But I don't understand why they still
want to wed Vietnamese women, even those young men at
their prime age of 26-30 want them," he added, puzzled.
The increase in cross-border marriages has also
been seen in the seven other border areas with Vietnam
in Guangxi autonomous region. The women's federation in
Guangxi says that nearly 99 percent of the 8,002
Vietnamese women living there as of 1999 were married to
locals, but none went through legal marriage
formalities. Only 0.3 percent of the 9,745 children born
from these unions were registered.
Police have
been trying to crack down on traffickers and to
repatriate victims, but this has not been easy.
"We treat them as victims, take good care of
them and teach them legal knowledge. But for those who
have lived in China for years and would not want to be
repatriated, we could do nothing but treat them as
illegal entrants," said Wei Gengwang, deputy chief of
Dongxing City Public Security Bureau. "When we send them
home, often no sooner had our officers set their feet
back, these women had already returned to China," he
added.
He said few buyers of trafficked women
have been punished. The matter is even more complicated
if a woman was first trafficked into China - without
knowing she was to be married off - but after the
marriage decides to stay on or refuses to return to
Vietnam.
Officials also find it hard to deal
with situations where repatriation would mean destroying
a union that has been in place for years.
Chinese researchers say they have come across
Vietnamese wives who say they are contented in China.
"The purpose of the Vietnamese women in China is to find
husbands or make money. If they are willing to marry
someone and money changes hands, the money could be
interpreted as fees paid for matchmakers," argued Liu
Meng.
But unlike traditional matchmaking in
China, where the matchmaker knows the brides'
background, those in the marriage trade of Vietnamese
women know little about those they send to China.
But whatever this movement of people is called,
the influx of sold Vietnamese brides in Guangxi and
farther into inner China raises social issues. Wei
Xiaoning of the Guangxi Women's Federation says the
marriages, in some cases bigamy, are not in line with
China's Marriage Law and not protected by law.
Unregistered children from these unions may lose out on
health or other services.
Meanwhile, a month into
his latest marriage, Deng Wendong said his new bride
"looks hard-working". But he said: "Marriage is like
gambling. I can never tell whether she will stay."
(Inter Press Service)
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