Child Slave Labor Revelations Sweeping China: New York Times Article

Su Jinduo and Su Jinpeng, brother and sister, were traveling home by bus from a vacation visit to Qingdao during the Chinese New Year when they disappeared. Cheated out of their money when they sought to buy a ticket for the final leg of their journey home, they were taken in by a woman who offered them warm shelter and a meal on a cold winter night, and then later a chance to earn enough money to pay their fare by helping her sell fruit. The next thing they knew they were being loaded onto a minibus with several other children and taken to a factory in the next province, where they were pressed into service making bricks. Several days later, the boy, who is 16, escaped along with another boy and managed to reach home, enabling his father to rescue his 18-year-old sister a few days later. This story is one of hundreds like it that have swept China in recent days in an unfolding labor abuse scandal that involves the kidnapping in central China of hundreds of children, and perhaps more, some reportedly as young as 8, who have been forced to work under brutal conditions.