More than 100 Vietnamese women have gone missing after being sold as wives to Chinese bachelors from the same poor rural area in northern China, the China Daily reported on Thursday.
The mass disappearance, which includes the broker responsible for handling the mail-order brides, is being investigated by police authorities from Handan County, in the central province of Hebei near Beijing. It is suspected that the crime was planned by an "organized ring," an unnamed local official said.
"With the advanced communication techniques of today, it's easy for all the brides to leave at the same time," he told the state-run newspaper.
Since the male population in China far outnumbers the women because of decades of family planning policies and a traditional preference for boys, grooms are known to find it difficult to find a wife, Reuters reported.
Last month, a Vietnamese matchmaker, Wu Meiyu, was paid more than $16,000 (100,000 yuan) by the area's poor bachelors to be introduced to the women.
Meiyu was a Vietnamese bride who had married a local man and had been living in the area, mainly a farming community, for 20 years. She had promised to introduce the bachelors to Vietnamese brides in exchange for money, according to UK MailOnline.
"If they liked each other, the man would pay ... an amount of money based on his and the woman's ages, and then they could marry," the report said, adding that the matchmaker was able to make more than 100 successful matches.
In the last week of November, however, the wives apparently told their new husbands that they were having a meal with the rest of the brides and vanished along with Meiyu.
But an unidentified local man, who paid $18,580 (115,000 yuan), reportedly stated that Meiyu's father-in-law had informed him that she had traveled abroad to arrange residency permits in order for the Vietnamese brides to get settled in China.
Since the disappearance, one bride has returned, BBC News reported. According to the woman's claims, she "lost consciousness" after eating and woke up in a stranger's small house in Quzhou. After being told that she would be getting transported somewhere else to "find another husband," she escaped and filed a police report.
Meanwhile, Meiyu had allegedly traveled around rural parts of Hebei drumming up customers for Vietnamese mail-order brides in the past as well.
