The IHT reports:
SHANGHAI: When stories of hundreds of people being forced to work under slavelike conditions in the brick kilns of Shanxi Province burst forth in the Chinese news media last week, many readers were horrified by a picture of their country that they hardly recognized.
Most shocking of all was the fact that a great many of the workers were children, in a country where employment in factories under the age of 16 is illegal. According to the reports they made, many of the children had been kidnapped, held against their will and forced to work unusually long hours under brutal conditions.
After the torrid initial burst of news reports, the government, through the Central Office of External Communication of the Communist Party, instructed the news media to stop reporting "harmful information that uses this event to attack the party and the government," China Digital Times reported.
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