‘Kinship is irreplaceable’: Chinese mother teams up with trafficker who stole her son 24 years ago to retrace abduction route in search of clues
- A Chinese mother has teamed up with the recently released from prison trafficker who abducted her son almost quarter of a century ago
- Her son, Wang Lei, was only four-and-a-half years old when he was snatched by the man now helping her retrace the abduction route for clues
The heartbreaking story of a mother who has enlisted the help of a human trafficker who kidnapped her son 24 years ago in a bid to find him has renewed the focus on China’s serious child abduction problem.
It has also sparked intense social media interest after The Paper, a Shanghai-based media outlet, reported that the mother had teamed up with the man responsible for her son’s disappearance on his release from prison.
The pair are hoping to retrace the route taken by the kidnapper in a desperate bid to find clues as to the whereabouts of her long-lost son who was four-and-a-half when he was taken.
At the time of his abduction in 1999, the boy’s mother, Tang Weihua, was running an electrical shop in Shanghai with her husband.
The trafficker, known by the alias, Li Wei, was an employee of the shop, and Tang told The Paper that he was very resourceful and often offered to help the nanny feed her son, Wang Lei.
However, this was a ruse and little Wang Lei was abducted from the electrical appliance shop on August 26, 1999.
A month later, Li was arrested near his hometown in Liuzhou, a city in the southern Chinese autonomous region of Guangxi.
The whereabouts of Wang Lei, who is understood to have been sold, remain unknown.
In 2011, Li was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to life imprisonment.
For the past 24 years, Tang and her husband had often travelled to Guangxi in search of their son.
At one point, in a desperate state after almost having a car accident, Tang says she thought: “It’s such a normal thing for other families to be reunited, but how come it’s so difficult for our family.”
Tang and her husband also approached Li’s father and siblings to ask them to write to Li in a quest to get the truth from him. Tang even offered to forgive Li for his crime if he would help them find their son.
Li’s sentence was reduced for good behaviour and he was released in November 2022.
According to The Paper, when Li, 45, met Tang after his release during this Lunar New Year, he immediately fell to his knees before her and said: “I’m sorry, boss lady”.
After days trying to convince him, Li eventually agreed to retrace the abduction route he had taken 24 years ago.
The Paper followed Tang and Li on their journey and during the trip Li told Tang: “Now that I am free, I still have to sincerely atone for my sins. I need to be a responsible person with a sense of duty.”
But so far the journey has been futile.
During his trial, Li gave six statements, in one of which he stated that he pushed the little boy into a river and watched him drown. However, the police found no evidence to confirm this.
During the trip, on the bridge over the river into which Li claimed to have pushed Wang Lei, Li “swore to God” that he had not drowned the child and claimed he said he had done so in the hope of getting the death penalty.
Despite the lack of success, Tang said: “After 24 years of searching, although there have been times of despair and thoughts of giving up, I have not given up on finding my son.”
Numerous online observers left their opinions, with one saying: “Kinship is irreplaceable”.
Another said: “This couple have been grieving for many years. Just don’t have too many expectations. Get on with your life, but don’t forgive Li Wei.”
“Showing mercy to traffickers is the same as indulging human trafficking!” another angry observer said.
Another recent high-profile story of a search for an abducted child in China is that of Sun Haiyang.
Sun, who runs a bun shop in Shenzhen, lost his son Sun Zhuo to human traffickers in 2007 and staged an ultimately successful nationwide search for him.
His story was adapted into a film.
