China is investigating whether hundreds of children, most aged between nine and 16, were sold to factories in Guangdong Province over the past five years to work as slave laborers, state media said.
Chinese authorities inspected more than 3,600 businesses in Dongguan, the center of the child labor scandal, state press reported yesterday, after children were found working in factories.
The children worked long hours in factories for about US$0.35 an hour, reports said on Wednesday, in echoes of a brick kiln slavery ring that shocked the world last year.
PHOTO: AP
More than 1,000 minors were reportedly found to be working in factories in Dongguan and in nearby Shenzhen and Huizhou, which are also key to Chinese exports.
“In the 3,000-plus factories that we have already inspected, we did not come across a situation of large-scale use of child labor,” Li Xiaomei (李小梅), deputy mayor of Dongguan, told the Southern Metropolis Newspaper.
The probe was launched following the state-run newspaper’s publication on Monday of an investigative report that said the children were “sold like cabbages” by their parents to gangs who then sold them off to employment agencies or directly to factories hundreds of kilometers from their homes.
Most of the children were from Liangshan, a poor farming town in Sichuan Province.
Police have so far rescued 167 children in the city, the Hong Kong-based Wen Wei Po said on Wednesday.
Authorities have set up a task force to rescue other children. So far, 3,629 businesses involving 450,000 employees have been investigated, Li said.
“The government has a very clear cut attitude towards the illegal use of child laborers, and we will resolutely crack down on it. When we find one child laborer, that business will be investigated,’’ Li was quoted as saying yesterday.
The government would also fine the companies as much as 50,000 yuan (US$7,200) if caught, he said.
The initial investigation found that some of the businesses had employed temporary workers from “illegal middle-men,” which could have included child workers, Li told the paper.
He said they had all left the factories before the media reports came out, the Southern Metropolis Newspaper.
The Guangzhou Daily described following police on Tuesday in Dongguan as they questioned young factory workers.
One girl named Luo Siqi from Liangshan said she made 4 yuan per hour, and she initially claimed to have come to Dongguan on her own.
When told by police that the money she thought she was sending home could not have reached her family, she broke down in tears, the paper said.
“My father and mother sold me; I don’t want to go back,” Luo was quoted as saying.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”