China Says Woman Chained to Shed in Viral Video Trafficked Multiple Times

Chinese authorities said Wednesday that a viral video showing a woman chained to a small shed began circulating days before the Lunar New Year holiday and has been trafficked multiple times.

Six people have been detained, and eight lower-level Communist Party officials have been fired in the incident, which has been the subject of a provincial-level investigation, the Associated Press reported. The video was filmed by a blogger trying to obtain donations for poor rural families, but people immediately began asking questions and expressing concern about the mother, especially since the blogger said she had eight children.

Nationally, the public has grown increasingly frustrated and outraged—and has demanded accountability—as local officials responded to the concerns with a string of inconsistent statements, according to the AP. But authorities, who said the chain of events surrounding the woman is still under investigation, began providing more information about her on Wednesday.

In the video, the woman is shown with a chain around her neck and wearing a dirty pink sweatshirt. The blogger offers her a jacket and asks if she's cold. Her response to his question is not clear, but he puts a child's jacket on her, the AP said.

It was 32 degrees Fahrenheit outside at the time, according to the video. In another video by the same blogger, the woman's husband proudly states that he and his wife have eight children.

The video was filmed in a village in the county of Feng, which is located in Jiangsu province. But the woman came from a village in Yunnan province, authorities confirmed Wednesday. She was born in 1977 and married for the first time in 1995 before getting divorced in 1997 and then returning to the village in Yunnan.

A year later, a woman whose surname is Sang brought the filmed woman all the way to the coastal province of Jiangsu under the pretense of finding her a husband and getting her medical treatment, according to authorities. Sang then sold her for about $790, or 5,000 yuan, to a man in Donghai county, the AP reported.

The woman spent a few months with the man there, but she disappeared and was later found, wandering as a beggar, by a couple who took her in. They sold her to another man, a construction foreman in Feng county, a month later.

The foreman sold her to the family where she would eventually have eight children, the AP reported.

After the video of the woman chained to the shed in Feng county emerged, the backlash and widespread concern followed.

The county government's office first addressed the video on January 28, saying that the woman was married and had not been trafficked. The office said she was chained because of mental health problems, but it said in another statement released shortly afterward that the woman had been homeless, the AP reported.

The story surrounding the woman changed in additional statements released by the county government in the days that followed, leading up to the Wednesday announcement by authorities that she had, in fact, been trafficked.

Authorities detained the woman's husband earlier this month, and prosecutors authorized his formal arrest on abuse charges on Thursday, the AP reported. The man who bought the woman in Jiangsu province and the people who trafficked her to Feng county have also been detained, authorities said.

An internal party investigation led to the firing of the eight lower-level Communist Party officials, the AP reported. Three officials were also "deprived freedom of movement," and six others have received internal penalties such as rank demotions for several reasons, such as releasing false information and failing to protect the rights of the public.

Update 02/23/22, 10:30 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information and background.