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| China imports brides from other southeast Asian countries but the practice - called 'bride-trafficking' - is illegal |
The women were married through a matchmaker to men living in rural villages near Handan, but vanished in late November, the reports said.
Their matchmaker, a Vietnamese woman living in China, had also left.
China's gender imbalance sometimes sees poorer bachelors seeking brides from South East Asian countries.
China Daily quoted an official as saying an "organised ring" may have been involved in the mass disappearance.
The bachelors had paid tens of thousands of yuan each to the Vietnamese matchmaker, named by local media as Wu Meiyu, who had been living in Hebei for more than 20 years.
Earlier this year she had gone around rural areas in Hebei looking for customers, promising them a Vietnamese bride for a 115,000 yuan ($18,600; £11,800) fee, the reports said.
On 20 November, the wives reportedly told their husbands that they were having a meal with other Vietnamese brides. They subsequently became uncontactable.
When the husbands went to Ms Wu's home to confront her, they found out that she had left a few days earlier.
Jinghua Daily reported that at least one bride subsequently returned. She claimed that she "lost consciousness" after the meal and awoke to find herself in a small house far from her husband's village of Quzhou.
She was told that she would be going elsewhere to "find another husband". The woman left the house and returned to Quzhou to file a police report.
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| Inner Mongolia where brides are few and far between |
Chinese police arrested a gang accused of selling a group of women as wives in rural China, state media said.
Among the 14 victims were five children from Myanmar, who have now been returned, Xinhua news agency reported.
The women were lured by the prospect of holidays or jobs and then sold for up to 50,000 yuan (£5,200).
Police caught the gang after one of the women alerted an officer while travelling on a train in August.
She turned to the policeman for help, according to Xinhua, saying she had been abducted in Myanmar (also known as Burma) and forced to travel to China.
Officers reportedly caught the abductor after he tried to drag the woman away.
Following a three-month investigation, police arrested another 30 suspects allegedly involved in the people smuggling operation.
Because of its one-child policy, China has a large gender imbalance because many families decide to abort or abandon baby girls. Rural Chinese struggle to find wives, and bride-trafficking is big business.
In September, state media reported that police would crack down on websites selling all-male tours to South East Asia where travellers could meet "foreign brides", according to the Reuters news agency.
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