With a swollen, almost dark-purple arm, little Cheng Yuqiao was crying and struggling in a woman's arms as she sat at the Guangzhou Railway Station one day in May.
Passengers suspected kidnapping and called police. As it turned out, the woman, who was mentally unstable, was admitted to hospital. The 3-year-old boy received medical attention before being sent to the Guangzhou Welfare House.
Hoping to find the youngster's family, a hospital employee posted the boy's photograph on the Guangzhou Television Station's online forum (club.gztv.com). Netizens began a month-long search. Hundreds of people swapped information.
Eventually, the pieces fell into place: The woman at the railway station was actually the boy's mother. They were from a village in Southwest China's Sichuan Province. The boy had fallen and fractured his arm, and his mother had apparently suffered a mental breakdown during the journey to seek treatment. The family was finally reunited and returned home earlier this month.
In Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou Province, 2-year-old Xue Yucheng disappeared when his mother suffered a mental breakdown in 2004. But this boy was not as lucky as Cheng Yuqiao; he hasn't been found. His family has printed 5 million leaflets in a desperate attempt to find their child.
It's not known if kidnappings have increased on the mainland because no nationwide data are available. But with media reports of children being stolen from hospitals, snatched by motorcycle riders, wrenched out of their mothers' arms and even abducted from homes, many parents are worried.
"We have to be on guard all the time," said Eva Deng, a Beijing mother, who launched a signature campaign to draw attention to missing children after hearing Cheng Yuqiao's story. She has already collected more than 2,000 signatures and plans to send the letter to Premier Wen Jiabao.
The tradition of a male heir is deep-rooted in Chinese culture, more so in the rural areas where an abducted child could fetch up to 18,000 yuan (US$2,250). Such is the malaise that some local government officials don't consider buying children to be a crime.
Chinese laws exempt buyers from prosecution if they have not physically abused the child and co-operated with police in the investigation. Criminals take to child trafficking not only because of the hefty profit and a ready market, but also because of the low detection rate of child abduction cases. In fact, when a child is reported missing, more often than not, a police station will register the event as "an incident," rather than "a case" that demands immediate investigation. In other words, police don't have to investigate a missing person's case unless there is some evidence of kidnapping or injury.
Almost two years after Xue Yucheng's disappearance, his father has not been able to get police to register the case. "All I got was a promise to 'help investigate,'" Xue Peng said.
