About 10,400 Vietnamese women have been sold to China to be wives of Chinese men or to work as maids or prostitutes. Of the total, 1,829 escaped back to Vietnam with 200 children fathered by Chinese, the Nong Thon Ngay Nay or Countryside Today newspaper quoted a Ministry of Public Security report as having said. It said Vietnamese boys had also been sold to China recently, adding that the authorities were investigating the motive of the sales. The newspaper did not specify a time period for the trafficking figure, but it apparently applied to the years after the two countries restored diplomatic relations in 1991, following a brief but bloody border war in 1979. (Straits Times 15 May 2001)