Sessional_Paper_1935 — Page 282

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Appendix No. 21.

Extract from the "Report of the Committee of Experts on Slavery" Provided for by the Assembly Resolution of September 25th, 1931 (League of Nations).

40.

While in Africa, by reason partly of the fact of the cessation of famines and partly of the improvement in the economic situation of the native peoples, parents no longer need to have recourse to the sale of the children in order to pro- vide them with the means of subsistence, is it the same in China?

On this point, the material supplied or forwarded to the Committee has not enabled the latter to ascertain the exact situation. While it is certain that a large number of children, sepecially females-who, if they are not really adopted, are known as "Mui-tsai''-are placed by their parents with other persons, generally in return for a money payment to the parents and the obligation to support the child, the nature of the contract and the rights which it confers on the person with whom the children are placed are not very clear. Some regard it as a real sale of the child. The lot of such children, they add, is particularly wretched, since apart from being neglected and overworked, which alone entails the cruellest bodily suffering, they are often, it would appear, victims of the depraved instincts of their employers, or of persons with whom the latter bring them into contact, and sometimes also of acts of revolting cruelty.

Although the information to hand is to the effect that there is no ill-treatment of the numerous "Mui-tsai" at Hong Kong at any rate as a general practice on the part of the well-to-do Chinese population of Hong Kong in whose service they are, the Government of Hong Kong in February 1929 enacted an ordinance which prohibits the engagement of female servants for the use of whose service payment has been made to another person and likewise the employment as paid servant of any person of the female sex under ten years of age. As regards contracts concluded previous- ly, the order, inter alias, accords "Mui-tsai" the right to return, should they wish, to their parents, without the latter being obliged to refund the sum paid by the person to whom the "Mui-tsai" was entrusted. There are other provisions designed to en- sure the good treatment of "Mui-tsai" during their period of service.

As regards China, these assertions, to the effect that a "Mui-tsai'' is a female child who has been sold and who is as a rule ill-treated, were contested by the Chinese delegate in the Sixth Committee of the League Assembly in September 1931. This distinguished authority stated :

"Traffic in vhildren does not exist in China, and indeed could not exist there in view of the Chinese traditions of filial piety and the well-known readiness of Chinese mothers to adopt other children in cases of disaster”.

The documents supplied or transmitted by the British Government tend to con- firm this statement. There are said to be no sales of children, but children are placed in service, on payment, it is true, of a sum of money to the parents, though the main object is to ensure the child the means of subsistence, which the parents can- not give it. The child is regarded rather as a member of the family in which she is placed; in any case, though obliged to give her services, she occupies in the house a position superior to that of the paid servants. According to the same authority, "Mui-tsai" are rarely ill-treated, as the Chinese love children. Further, the Chinese Courts, it is stated, inflict severe penalties on persons guilty of ill-treating children, and such persons lose all standing in public opinion.

One is led to wonder whether this difference of opinion is not due to a misunder- standing. May it not be the case that, side by side with the "Mui-tsai'' system, there is a clandestine traffic in young girls in China, as in other countries, for purposes of prostitution? May not the explanation be found in the fact that the parents who live at a distance from the centres of population believe, when they hand over their