A 19-year-old mother’s desperate flight from abuse in China exposes organised networks that lure vulnerable Bangladeshi women with false promises of work or marriage, only to trap them in exploitation.
In the space of six months, Rima (name changed) saw her life collapse from ordinary hardship into a nightmare of addiction, coercion and cross-border trafficking. The 19-year-old from Bagerhat district left home hoping to earn money as a domestic worker in Dhaka so that she could support her three-year-old son. Instead, she was forced onto drugs, blackmailed with compromising videos, married off to a Chinese man she barely knew, and flown to China, where she says she was beaten, sexually abused and held against her will.
She returned to Bangladesh on 4 August 2026 with help from the anti-trafficking organisation Justice and Care. Her account, and the police cases now under investigation, have thrown a harsh light on an emerging pattern: Bangladeshi women being moved to China under the cover of arranged marriages.
From Domestic Work Promise to Forced Dependency
Rima, who studied only to class six and had previously worked in a jute mill, was brought to Dhaka by a distant female relative who promised a job in the upscale Baridhara area. She was kept instead in an Uttar Badda flat. Within days, she alleges, the woman forced her to take yaba, the methamphetamine tablet widely available in Bangladesh. Once dependent, the supply was controlled. “They told me I would stop thinking about my son and would not cry so much,” Rima later recounted. Videos of her taking the drug were then used as leverage.
An intermediary she identified as Ador took her to Jamuna Future Park to meet a Chinese national named Wang Zhen Zhen. Her passport was arranged, she was taken to the Chinese embassy, and papers were signed at a Dhaka coffee shop. About a month later she was escorted at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport by a person in a blue uniform – whose identity and agency remain unknown – onto a bus bound for the aircraft, along with another Bangladeshi woman. In China she spent three days in a hotel before being taken to the man’s family home. Treatment was initially tolerable until her visa was extended for six months. Then, she says, the abuse began. “One night, they tied my hands and feet and took me away in the dark, like cattle.” She was held at another house for roughly 20 days, beaten and sexually abused, returned briefly, then sent back for another 10–12 days. Her phone was confiscated when she tried to contact people in Bangladesh. Only by feigning acceptance did she regain access to a handset.
Messages she later saw on her husband’s phones indicated Tk 2.5 lakh had been paid to Ador to arrange the marriage. Traffickers then demanded Tk 3.5 lakh from her family for her return. During a doctor’s visit she slipped away, showed restaurant staff screenshots of threats and photos of her injuries (translated into Chinese), and they called emergency services. Chinese police recovered her passport and bought her a ticket to Beijing. Unable to communicate easily, she contacted Justice and Care, which facilitated her return.
A Pattern Emerging Across Bangladesh
Rima’s case is not isolated. Mostafizur Rahman, additional superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department’s Trafficking in Persons unit, said he was handling four China-related cases, with others filed at Airport, Gabtoli, Uttara, Dakshinkhan and Uttarkhan police stations. The Chinese embassy informed Bangladeshi authorities that more than 1,100 family visas were issued for China in 2025; officials estimate at least 600 recipients may already have travelled. “Stopping such travel is difficult when apparently valid marriage and visa documents are presented. The women often do not understand the risks before travelling,” Rahman noted.
Shariful Hasan of BRAC’s Migration and Youth Platform said no official tally exists, but such cases have been reported frequently over the past year and a half. He has called for verification of the identity and marital status of Chinese nationals seeking Bangladeshi brides, and for authorities to track how many women have travelled, returned or remain in China. Rima’s mother filed a petition with the Khulna Human Trafficking Offence Tribunal on 2 August naming seven accused, including Bangladeshi intermediaries and Wang Zhen, on charges of deception, forced drug use, sexual exploitation, coerced marriage and trafficking. Investigating officer Mohammad Nizamuddin of the Khulna Police Bureau of Investigation said evidence, including records of Rima’s return, was being analysed, but key information was missing because the victim’s original phone remained in China. No arrests had been made.
Earlier incidents underscore the scale. Between January 2025 and July 2026 at least six Chinese nationals were arrested over alleged fraudulent cross-border marriage syndicates. In March 2026, Zeng Fan and Zin Suchun were detained in a joint RAB-police raid in Uttara on allegations of confining and abusing young women before sending them to China. In December 2024, APBn arrested two Chinese nationals after a 21-year-old woman escaped suspected traffickers at Dhaka airport. Separate RAB operations have dismantled networks that lured women via social media with job offers, staged restaurant “weddings” in Uttara, produced fake certificates and spouse visas, and forced victims into prostitution once in China. One survivor said she and her cousin were recruited through TikTok; she escaped, but her cousin remains trapped.
China’s Gender Imbalance and Regional Trafficking Routes
The demand side is rooted in China’s long-standing gender imbalance, a legacy of the one-child policy and son preference that has left tens of millions of men without local marriage prospects – often called “leftover men.” Rural Chinese men, in particular, have turned to foreign brides from poorer neighbouring countries. Similar patterns have been documented for years involving women from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and, more recently, Pakistan and Nepal. Human Rights Watch and other monitors have recorded cases in which women are sold for thousands of dollars, confined in remote villages, raped and pressured to bear children quickly. In Myanmar’s Kachin and northern Shan states alone, estimates once put the number of women sold into forced marriages in the tens of thousands.
In Bangladesh the method frequently begins with false promises of employment or a better life, followed by staged marriages. Indigenous women from the Chittagong Hill Tracts have also been targeted; some reports claim hundreds of girls, many teenagers, have been moved using forged documents, partly because their features are seen as closer to East Asian norms. In one widely reported 2023–24 case, a widow in Chuadanga married her daughter to a Chinese man who claimed to have converted to Islam and planned to settle in Bangladesh. Six months later the young woman was in China and forced into prostitution; she managed to contact her mother via an app and described daily abuse and threats of being sold to organ traffickers. The mother said she knew of four other local women similarly deceived.
Official Warnings and Calls for Stronger Action
In July 2026 the Chinese embassy in Dhaka issued a notice warning its citizens against illegal marriage brokers and the practice of “bride-buying,” stating that such arrangements could lead to trafficking, extortion, threats, physical harm and financial loss. Counsellor Chu Guang said family-visa applicants undergo multi-stage verification – authenticated marriage certificates, one-on-one interviews and a signed commitment letter – to confirm genuineness and voluntariness. He noted that most trafficking complaints reaching the embassy came through media rather than official channels, and that Chinese and Bangladeshi brokers appeared to be behind many suspicious cases. “We encourage the Bangladesh police to crack down on those intermediaries,” he said, adding that China has zero tolerance for criminal activity by its citizens abroad.
Justice and Care Country Director Mohammed Tariqul Islam said Rima’s safe return highlighted the need for timely cross-border cooperation, stronger investigations and greater awareness in vulnerable communities. Experts stress that valid-looking paperwork makes interdiction at airports difficult, and that poverty, limited education and family pressure leave many women and girls exposed. Without systematic tracking of those who leave and do not return, and without dismantling the intermediary networks that profit from the trade, more Rimas are likely to follow the same path.
Image: Grok
