JAKARTA -- As economic misery continues to fuel anti-Chinese violence, many ethnic-Chinese women, with their families' blessings, are pitching themselves to foreigners as mail-order brides.

An Asian Wall Street Journal report yesterday said that many were hoping to get a foreign husband -- with Americans and Canadians most sought after -- as the best hope for a quick escape.

For the 4-per-cent racial minority, saving the children has become the No. 1 priority as they have become the targets of violence, which in extreme cases has taken the form of gang rape.

It is a painful step for these typically middle-class Chinese families, said the report.

Many would-be mail-order brides have it all: university degrees, white-collar jobs, cars and servants.

But with the rupiah's fall, what they earn and own is not enough to help them qualify for immigrant visas or even pay for university study in most Western countries.

So while some sign up for short-term college courses or sweat-shop jobs abroad, hoping that, somehow, they will get to stay on, others see a foreign husband as the best hope for a quick escape.

"It's a tragedy for our country," says Ms Asmara Nababan, a member of Indonesia's respected National Human Rights Commission.

"The truth is, these women" who are plunging into courtship by mail "do so out of very well-founded fears".

Miss Yotin Negoro, 24, an ethnic Chinese who works at Bobby Halim & Associates, consultants for immigration to Australia, has started writing to Americans through a pen-pal club, hoping a long-distance romance will develop.

Her parents used to oppose the idea of her getting involved with a Westerner.

Now they study newspaper want ads, trying to find her a perfect match in the US or Canada.

There is no way to count how many women are driven by fear into unions with foreigners, the report said.

However, "it's something talked about in every Chinese family I know", says Lulu, a manager at a top Jakarta hotel, who did not want her family name disclosed.

Accounts clerk Huang Mei Hua, 30, has started taking English lessons as part of efforts to search for a foreign husband.