Four sentenced in stowaway case in south China

A court in south China upheld a sentence to three Vietnamese and a Chinese to jail for smuggling people from Vietnam to China.

The criminals were given jail terms ranging from three to eight years, according to a statement from the intermediate court in Fangchenggang, a city bordering Vietnam in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Nguyen Thi May, a principal culprit who was born in Vietnam, was given eight years in jail and fined 8,000 yuan.

According to court paper, in 2013, Nguyen met He Wenping, a Chinese national who had been engaged in recruiting workers for factories in the more prosperous Guangdong province. Nguyen offered to organize people from her home country to work in Guangdong.

In March, with the help of Nguyen's two countrymen, 19 people boarded boats in the Vietnamese city of Mong Cai and entered Chinese border through a breach in the guardrail along the Beilun river.

The stowaways were put in a van rented by He Wenping but caught by police when they were passing a toll station. The case had been tried in a lower court in Dongxing.

The China-Vietnam border has seen an increasing number of illegal immigration into China, as many were lured by better pays or better lives. Last year, the Dongxing city court handled 46 illegal border crossing cases, involving 126 people. Endi