Finding a Lost Child

"This year's big DNA drive by the police seems to be working in terms of finding some of those taken quite a while ago. But it would be hard to solve more recent cases in this way because the strategy relies on people coming forward for blood tests and children (who may not even know they had been abducted and sold to their current parents) are hardly going to be presenting themselves for blood tests. Either way, given the bleak nature of the situation and the desperate sadness of many who've lost their children, seeing Guo Gangtang reunited with his son after decades of perseverance has been both heart-breaking and heart-warming at the same time."                                                                                                                     Stephen McDonnell, BBC China correspondent

Mr Guo has travelled across China searching for his son   Weibo

"I've found my son, and I want to get back to normal life as soon as possible."

"It seems we have new relatives. If our son is willing to support his adoptive parents, we also accept that and respect his decision."

"Now that my boy has been found, everything can only be happy from now on [and he regards the couple who raised his son as] relatives."

Guo Gangtang, father of kidnapped child

The little boy, barely more than an infant, was playing outside his home. Unattended. An irresistible target for those on the prowl for such children whom they could find a buyer for, people unable to conceive themselves and desperate for a child. For a son specifically, since boys are more highly valued traditionally than are girl babies. And at the time the child was kidnapped the 'one-child' rule obtained. M. Guo and his wife actually had two other children, but the loss of the little boy was unbearable to him. He set out on a 24-years-long journey across the country of 1.4 billion people by motorcycle in an attempt to track down his son's whereabouts. 

The effort took him all over China, with the exception of Tibet and Xinjiang. And he wore out ten motorcycles during that time. He also established a support group for people like himself and his wife who suffered the loss of a child through criminal abduction. A not uncommon crime in China at the time his son was taken from him, and a crime that continues to this day. Some children older than his have been kidnapped and put to work in factories. Most, however, were sold to be sole, treasured children in childless families.

The Guo family lived in the eastern province of Shandong. In 1997, when their son was two years of age, a woman took the child from outside their home, travelling with him at a bus station where her partner was awaiting her arrival. The little boy was trafficked to a family in central China. There is little doubt that the child was loved. He was sent by his adopted family to university, and became a teacher. Now 26, after his father's seemingly endless search, the young man was re-united with his father and his birth mother. The torment of a child lost finally eased.

In the many years before that final reunion, Mr. Guo rode motorbikes everywhere in  his far-reaching journey, his experiences replete with episodes of highway robbery, sleeping under bridges, and succumbing to begging for handouts when his finances collapsed. Eventually, DNA samples matched father and son through a police operation. Police helped track down Mr. Guo's son and they arranged a meeting between himself and the couple who had raised his son. He retained no resentment for their role in his child's absence.

Mr. Guo's son, Guo Xinzhen, had given a blood sample in June, part of a police operation to discover the whereabouts of missing children. The sample enabled police to match his sample with that of his father. The deputy director of the ministry of public security criminal investigation bureau announced the arrest of a man and a woman whom investigation had connected to the child's abduction, and an enquiry is in motion.

In this image taken from a video footage run by China's CCTV via AP Video, Guo Gangtang at right embraces his long lost son Guo Xinzhen during a reunion after 24 years in Liaocheng in Central China's Shandong province on Sunday, July 11, 2021. Guo was abducted as a toddler outside their home. (CCTV via AP Video)

Social media, on news of the high-profile reunion, responded with a lavish display of public emotion. Mr. Guo's story was a well-known one in China. A film had been produced in Hong Kong titled Lost and Love, portraying a distraught father in search of his lost child. Child abduction was so well known in the country that many people empathized with the personal suffering of parents whose children had been taken from them.

Mr. Guo did much more than search assiduously to locate his son. He helped other families find their own lost children through a website he set up in 2012 “Tianya Xunqin” which translates as “Find your family on the edge of the world”, which functioned to help families locate their missing children, while raising awareness about child  trafficking, a topic not much otherwise discussed in China. 

 

Even so, Chinese authorities have themselves been involved in attempting to solve the mysteries of abducted children's locations. Authorities of the ministry of public security rescued over 700 missing or abducted children, in the process arresting 86 people connected with their disappearances.

Guo Gangtang, 51, and his wife reunite with their son Guo Xinzhen, who was abducted 24 years ago at the age of 2, at a family reunion arranged by the police, in Liaocheng, Shandong province, China July 11, 2021. Picture taken July 11, 2021. China Daily via REUTERS