Contact: Rohit Mahajan | mahajanr@rfa.org  

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 30, 2023

RFA Mandarin Wins Gracie Award for Human Trafficking Series

WASHINGTON—Radio Free Asia’s (RFA) Mandarin Service was today named among the winners at this year’s Gracie Awards for its four-part series, Abduction and Trafficking of Women in China: A True Story and Analysis. The project, a collaboration between two of RFA Mandarin’s veteran journalists, won in the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation-sponsored contest’s category for best non-English programs. 

“Full credit for this achievement goes to the fantastic team at RFA’s Mandarin Service, which continues to produce thought-provoking and impactful stories,” said RFA President Bay Fang. “They have the critical and increasingly difficult job of spotlighting sensitive topics for our Chinese audiences like this that are either suppressed or underreported by state-controlled media. 

“RFA’s exposé on the trafficking of women in China is a testament to our journalists’ persistence.” 

In the first two parts of the winning project, which debuted in March 2022, RFA Mandarin reporter Jane Tang interviews Dong Ru, a woman who was abducted and sold to a family in a rural province in China. The third installment follows her son, who details the psychological trauma he developed growing up in an abducted family, and how he helped his mother escape the painful marriage she was sold into. In the fourth and final episode, RFA Mandarin journalist Wang Yun provides a comprehensive analysis of the ongoing human trafficking crisis in China.  

Other winners at this year’s competition include The Washington Post, NPR, CBS, and VICE Media. They will be honored at the 48th Annual Gracie Awards Gala in Los Angeles on May 23. Alliance for Women in Media Foundation (AWMF) is a non-profit that creates educational programs and scholarship initiatives to benefit the public and women in the media.

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Radio Free Asia is a private, nonprofit corporation broadcasting and publishing online news, information, and commentary in nine East Asian languages to listeners who do not have access to full and free news media.  RFA’s broadcasts seek to promote the rights of freedom of opinion and expression, including the freedom to “seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” RFA is funded by an annual grant from the United States Agency for Global Media.