Website to find rescued Chinese children’s families

Police in China have set up a website to try and find the families of 60 children rescued in a six-month crackdown on human trafficking. More than 2,000 children altogether were found in the campaign, Chinese state media said yesterday. The ministry of public security has put pictures of 60 of those kidnapped from young babies to adults, on a website aiming to return them to their families. The "Babies Looking for Home" website also displays information on when the children are thought to have been kidnapped and where they were found as well as the DNA and blood type of the children.

Some of the 2,008 rescued children from across China have already been reunited with their parents. But some of the older children on were kidnapped years ago, according to the ministry. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children go missing in China each year. Trafficking of women and children is common in China. It is something often linked to China's one-child family planning rule, which has forced women to give up their second and third babies. Criminal gangs steal the children and sell them to childless couples. Some families buy trafficked women or children to use as extra labour or household servants.Women are also trafficked to be sold to men living in isolated parts of the country who can’t find brides because of a growing gender imbalance, which comes from sex-selective abortions of baby girls, which also stems to the family planning policy, experts have said. In China's patriarchal society, baby boys are especially valued, sometimes selling for as much as £3,670, according to a BBC correspondent in Beijing. Girls, meanwhile are sometimes sold for as little as £305.

Last week, police in north China said they recently busted a ring of baby traffickers suspected of pocketing up to £35,500 through selling 52 children. Police arrested 42 suspected ring members who allegedly trafficked 19 boys and 33 girls in northern Hebei and Shanxi provinces as well as eastern Shandong and the capital Beijing, Xinhua news agency said. Often, it is the children of poor farmers or migrant workers who are targeted by traffickers. And these children’s parents have complained that officials have overlooked their cases. Recently, there have been several high-profile cases of abducted children being rescued from mines and brick kilns. Beijing has promised to do more. A national DNA database was set up this year to help trace missing children.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children