Xie Deming and Cui Wenxian, two leaders of a gang accused...

Xie Deming and Cui Wenxian, two leaders of a gang accused of trafficking 118 babies, were sentenced to death by the Yulin city Intermediate People's Court in the southern China, state media said. Four other leaders of the 52-member baby trafficking gang were also sentenced to death but with a two-year reprieve. Five others were handed life imprisonment. The court was told that the baby trading gang had traded 118 babies in several regions since 2001 and one infant had died after being fed sleeping pills while being transported. Xie, a 57-year-old farmer from the Fumian district of Yulin City, alone sold 46 babies to areas in east China's Anhui province and central China's Henan province. Only one of the 118 smuggled babies was not a girl. China's stringent rules on family planning, which allow couples to have just one child, at least in the cities, and limits numbers elsewhere, have bolstered a traditional bias for male offspring seen as the mainstay for ageing parents.