Chinese mother strangles ‘costly’ newborn second child and leaves him to die in rubbish bin

A young Chinese mother strangled her newborn baby before throwing him in a rubbish bin – where his desperate cries were heard shortly before he died – because her family could not afford another child, mainland media reports.

Wan Hongyu, 25, pleaded guilty to the intentional homicide of her baby son after giving birth in July last year, when she appeared in Beijing’s Second Intermediate Court on Wednesday, the news outlet Qq.com reported.

A neighbour heard the cries of a baby boy coming from a rubbish bin outside the residential building where Wan lived in the city’s Daxing district, but by the time the person had looked inside the bin the baby had already died.

Wan told the court she now regretted strangling her baby and then putting his body in a plastic bag, which she threw in a rubbish bin outside her home.

She said at the time of the killing she was already exhausted by having to care of her first child, a one-year-old baby son, and the family could not afford to raise a second child.

Wan told the court she had kept her pregnancy a secret from her husband and his family, with whom she was living at the time.