Child trafficking has long been internationally recognized as a serious crime. However, due to data scarcity and inconsistent definitions, the scope and nature of such criminal activity are not well understood in China. To fill this gap, this study aims to provide new evidence by digitizing and analyzing sentencing documents on child trafficking in China during 2014-2016.Taking advantage of web scraping techniques, all child trafficking cases were downloaded from the China Judgments Online website. Through geographic mapping and network analysis, we identified four geographic hotspots for trafficking—the central region (Shandong, Henan, and Hebei provinces), the east (Jiangsu, and Zhejiang provinces), the southeast (Guangdong and Fujian provinces) and the southwest (Sichuan, Guizhou, and Yunnan provinces)—and explored the connection between the hotspots and the gender of victims. We further examined the effect of provincial socioeconomic characteristics on the frequency of trafficking cases, and found that sex ratio at birth and the number of legal adoptions per thousand were positively correlated to the frequency of buying and selling children.

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This study compares the effect of different types of previous and current memberships on college students’ online political participation in contemporary China using survey method and in‐depth interviews. We find that it is previous instrumental involvement, not expressive participation in high school that is significantly and positively associated with online political participation. Meanwhile, college instrumental involvement exerts no effect on online political participation, and college expressive involvement is negatively associated with youth online expressive participation. Previous instrumental involvement stimulates subsequent political engagement by exposing members to subsequent political mobilization. Instrumental associations do not act as schools of democracy in which members foster political interest or boost generalized trust, but significantly increase members’ chances to be asked to take part in politics years later. The results from the in‐depth interviews regarding the differences in participatory environments between high school and college can be used to explain why instrumental involvement in high school but not college stimulates subsequent political engagement.