domestic slavery

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 trade in hundreds of children smuggled into the UK for sexual exploitation, drug smuggling, under-age marriage, street crime and domestic slavery was exposed last night in a government report. The Home Office-commissioned survey identifies 330 cases of suspected or confirmed victims of trafficking - most of them from China or from Africa - but warns of an "unknown quantity" that have not come to the attention of the authorities. The true scale of child trafficking is believed to be far higher.