The official China Daily cited a senior police officer as saying most of the trafficked women are from poor rural areas and are cheated by criminal gangs into thinking they are leaving to pursue overseas studies or well-paying jobs.

Most of China's trafficking cases are still domestic, with women being taken from poor areas in southwestern China's Yunnan and Guizhou provinces to be forced into marriage elsewhere in the country, said Chen Shiqu, head of the anti-trafficking office of the Ministry of Public Security, according to the paper.

But "there has been a growing trend for organized transnational human trafficking crime groups to target Chinese women for forced prostitution in foreign countries," Chen was quoted as saying.

The report said Chen did not provide specific figures, but added that police rescued 15 Chinese women trafficked to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for prostitution in November. Two Chinese suspects were detained at the time, it said.