Strictly punish sellers and buyers of children

ACCORDING TO A LATEST JUDICIAL INTERPRETATION RELEASED by the Supreme People's Court on Thursday, acts that lure children under the age of 6 away from their parents or guardians will be defined as "infant stealing", which may result in 10 years behind bars at the minimum, even the death penalty under serious circumstances. Daily Sunshine, a newspaper based in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong province, commented on Friday:

The top court's revised interpretation of the crime of "infant stealing" should be a major deterrent to human traffickers and settle many disputes over what constitutes "infant stealing". The update, which will come into effect on Jan 1, came a week after some 36 kidnapped children were rescued in a joint operation under the command of the Ministry of Public Security that covered seven provinces and netted some 157 suspects.

Admittedly, kidnapped children are "lucky" if someone pays to adopt them, because many of them are otherwise deliberately crippled and sent out to beg. That explains why some legal experts argue that executing all kidnappers is not necessarily efficient, because that may put the kidnapped in a more dangerous position.