About 10,000 children in China are abducted and sold each year, but the United States State Department and Chinese state media have estimated that the figures could go up so much more, about 10 times than stated.
Zhang Fuqiang was one of those children who were stolen from his parents when he was just a child. According to a report by Beijing Youth Daily via the South China Morning Post yesterday, April 29, Zhang was abducted 24 years ago, when he was just 3, while playing in the sand near a construction site where his parents worked.
His parents relentlessly searched for him throughout the country, moving first to Shanxi province back in 2000 and eventually to the Hunan province. His parents did not have a childhood photo of him, although it was said he could be recognized for his “soybean-sized mole below his right eye.”
The Ministry of Public Security has since established a national DNA database in the past ten years. This initiative is a big help to families who were victims of abductions and kidnappings, encouraging family members and abductees themselves to donate blood samples to help reunite them with their loved ones.
Zhang’s parents, after being disappointed time and time again, eventually submitted their DNA samples to the police, hoping instead that Zhang would someday look for them.
Just January of this year, a man — known only as Wong — reached out to the police of Shenzhen for help in finding his parents. His adoptive family reportedly bought him in Guangzhou. The criminal investigation department of the Shenzhen police took Wong’s DNA sample and found a match in the national database.
Wong has since discovered that his real birth name is Zhang Fuqiang. He was just reunited with his parents on Friday, April 27. Cody Cepeda/JB
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