China, which introduced a one-child policy in the 1970s, restated yesterday its hard line on trafficking in children and its ban on selective sex abortions.

The sale of women and children has become a nationwide problem in China, where stringent rules on family planning still restrict couples to having just one child, at least in the cities, and limit numbers elsewhere.

The one-child policy has been blamed for upholding the traditional bias for male offspring, especially in rural areas, and triggering a surge in selective abortion, child trafficking and killing of female infants.

“Criminal acts of trafficking, maltreatment and abandonment of female infants must be punished with severity, and illegal sex determination and sex selective abortion must be strictly banned,” Zhao Baige, deputy director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China, told a conference.

China has also launched a “Girl Care” project, designed to protect the rights and interests of girls.

Chinese police had arrested 95 members of a gang in Inner Mongolia for trafficking 76 babies, the China Daily said on Wednesday.

In November, a court in the southern province of Guangxi sentenced two people to death and jailed dozens for smuggling more than 100 babies in one of China’s poorest provinces.

The UN Children’s Fund said that about 250,000 women and children were victims of trafficking in China last year.

Official figures in March showed police had freed 42,215 kidnapped women and children in 2002 and 2003 and analysts say that could be just the tip of the iceberg.