A photo in the Beijing Morning News yesterday showed some of the nylon bags -- about the size of standard gym bags -- spread out on the ground in front of the bus in the town of Binyang in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Authorities were trying to find the infants' parents, said a Guangxi government official who only gave his surname, Tang. "Some of the babies were abandoned, while others were abducted," he said.

He said the suspects were arrested after police, acting on a tip, discovered the babies while searching the bus last Monday.

Local media reported that the babies were all under 3 months old and that one died after they were found. The newspaper said the smugglers might have drugged the infants to keep them from crying.

Tang said that the babies were taken to a local hospital and that he had no information about their health.

The babies apparently were being smuggled for sale, though police didn't know where they had come from or where they were being taken, the paper reported. The paper said the bus departed from Yulin, a rural district of Guangxi, for the eastern province of Anhui.

Chinese officials say an unknown number of children are abducted every year for sale to childless families. Older girls are sometimes sold as brides in rural areas with fewer women.

In rural China, families traditionally value boys over girls because they are seen as carrying on the family name, working fields and caring for parents.

The newspaper reported yesterday that it had interviewed Yulin residents, who said they have never heard of such a smuggling case before.

(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2003)