Pregnant and scared, Yin hides in a house on the outskirts of Phnom Penh — one of an untold number of Cambodian surrogate mothers risking jail time for lucrative payouts from Chinese clients.

The end of China’s one-child policy has driven desperate couples too old to bring a baby to term to poorer countries in the Mekong region, where a “womb-for-rent” industry is brushing up against legal barriers. Cambodia banned commercial surrogacy in 2016 but still has brokers — and eligible young women — skirting the ban for a price.

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This is not a child’s feet. These are the legs of adult women who when they were small are crushed, folded & stretched until they remain small. Not seldom they became infected and led to and rotting flesh. But centuries ago, “lotus feet” were considered beautiful in China.

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Everyone did well from Nary’s marriage to a Chinese man, except the young Cambodian bride herself, who returned home from the six-year ordeal destitute, humiliated and with little prospect of seeing her son again.

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China’s decades-long one-child policy has left the country with far fewer women of marriage age than men.

For some years now, a charity in Laos has been providing women at risk of being trafficked with a new tool to seek help: the Chinese social media app WeChat.

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After years of living under house arrest, Liu Xia, the widow of late Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, was finally set free by the Chinese government. She has now left China, leaving behind a painful history.

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The second Sunday in May is Mother’s Day in many countries. The feminist Ann Jarvis initiated it in the US in 1907 to honor her mother. But being a mom is a risk for many women all over the world.

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DW spoke to Uighur journalist Gulchehra Hoja who, along with some of her colleagues, accuses the Chinese authorities of arresting her family members as retribution for her reports about the plight of the Uighurs.

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