BEIJING - A COURT in south-west China has sentenced three leading members of a trafficking ring to death for kidnapping and selling 88 women and a child, state press said on Wednesday.

The 29-member ring kidnapped the women with the lure of jobs on a tea plantation, before selling them as brides to impoverished areas in the provinces of Shanxi, Fujian and Zhejiang, the Xinhua news agency said.

The gang also kidnapped and sold an 11-year-old child, it said, from 2003 to 2007.

He Kaixun, identified as the ring-leader, was sentenced to death by a court in Guiyang city, Guizhou province, on Tuesday, the news agency said.

Two other leading members of the gang were given death sentences with two years' reprieve, meaning they could get life in prison instead.

Other gang members were sentenced from two years to life in prison.

The 88 women have all returned to their homes after being rescued by police, the report added.

The trafficking of women and children remains common in China.

Last month, state press reported that police rescued 18 Vietnamese women who were kidnapped and sold into marriages in southeast China for as little as US$2,900 (S$4,226) each.

Population experts say that sex-selective abortions, a direct result of China's one-child family planning policy, have boosted the number of boys born here for over a generation.

Men of marriageable age currently outnumber women by over 18 million in China, a number that could grow to 30 million by 2020 due to a traditional preference for Chinese families to have male heirs.

The 'bachelor bomb' has long been attributed to laws that for nearly 25 years have limited urban families to one child and rural families to two, providing that the first is a girl. -- AFP