Police trace or rescue over 1,600 missing children, adults

Chinese police have located or rescued 1,680 missing or abducted children this year, including adults who went missing or were kidnapped as children, the Ministry of Public Security said yesterday.

Since the nationwide campaign of "Tuanyuan," meaning reunion in Chinese, was launched in January, police have resolved 85 cold cases involving child abduction or trafficking, the ministry said.

One victim had been separated from the family for 54 years, it said. A total of 223 suspects were arrested in connection with abduction cases during the period.

Lin Chun, a 52-year-old mother, waited for 27 years before she and her husband finally reunited with their son, who was abducted when he was four. Police in the city of Beipiao, northeast China's Liaoning Province, located their son working in Beijing in April, and arranged the family reunion following a DNA test.

Their son, Lin Chengjia, then followed them to their hometown in Zhejiang Province with his newlywed wife. "I haven't got any plan yet. Perhaps, I'll hold another wedding ceremony at my original home," said the junior Lin, now 31.

Beipiao policeman Fu Dahe witnessed the reunion. "I felt delighted seeing the family back together than celebrating the New Year," Fu said.

In 1994, Fu received a phone call saying a 7-year-old boy named Zhang Jinhu was missing, the fourth child missing in less than two years in the city. After a probe, a gang led by a local man Hui Huaili was suspected of their abduction.

Because of the limited technological means in those days, police failed to locate Hui, and finding the abducted children became the common goal of Beipiao police. "Hui's look was engraved in my mind. For years, I kept an eye on passersby so that I could find and arrest him," Fu recalled.

With technological means including big data, police located and captured Hui, who had renamed himself Luo Heng, in Tianjin.

Hui confessed that he abducted nine boys, including four from Beipiao, and sold them in east China's Fujian Province from 1993 to 1995.

The Ministry of Public Security established a national DNA database to fight child trafficking in 2009 and launched the online platform Tuanyuan in May 2016. Over the past five years, it has helped find more than 4,700 missing children.