They are being exploited primarily in indoor prostitution, such as massage parlours, saunas or beauty centres. Chinese victims have been increasingly detected in many European countries.
In , women from China were the largest foreign group affected by sexual exploitation in Italy. Between and , there were Chinese victims identified across the EU. According to UNODC, Chinese brothels in Europe were traditionally accessible just to the Chinese communities, but this has changed and these new forms of Chinese prostitution seem to be more amenable to trafficking in persons.
Chinese trafficking occurs on the basis of a debt bondage scheme and in the context of assisted irregular migration. From there, they are trafficked across the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries before reaching Europe. Some investigators believe that Chinese gangs are the main controllers of the worldwide trafficking business.
In Europe, these groups are increasingly involved in the business of sexual exploitation. In , the Italian authorities indicated that this business became the most prominent illegal activity of these groups in Italy. In Austria, NGOs noticed an exponential increase in the number of Chinese women working in prostitution between and While new registrations of Chinese women were really low with around 3 per year until , numbers rose up to in , and in Numbers have dropped slightly since, but there were still 55 new registrations in Accordingly, in Austria recognized for the first time a much higher proportion of identified victims of human trafficking from third countries in comparison to those from EU member states.
Since the women usually do not see themselves as victims of a crime, and therefore do not testify against their traffickers, many of the women were possibly moved to another country, returned to prostitution, or were returned to China without receiving the support they were entitled to as identified survivors of human trafficking.
