Stolen as a child, Hong Kong man finds his way back home to family in China
Zhang Fuqiang was three years old when he was abducted while playing in Guangzhou. A DNA database ended a two-decade quest to find his parents
A Hong Kong man abducted as a child from southern China more than two decades ago has been reunited with his birth parents through a DNA database, Beijing Youth Daily reports.
The man was taken 24 years ago as a three-year-old while playing in sand near a construction site where his parents worked in Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
The couple scoured the country in search of their son, moving to Shanxi province in 2000 and later to Hunan province.
Without a photo of the boy, the couple said he could be identified by “a soybean-sized mole below his right eye”. They also said he liked playing in sand and could speak Mandarin.
After years of disappointment, they submitted samples of their DNA to the police, hoping their son could one day find them, the report said.
In January, the man, identified only as Wong, turned to Shenzhen police for help to find his birth parents, saying his adoptive family had bought him in Guangzhou.
Shenzhen police’s criminal investigation department took a sample of Wong’s DNA and found a match in the national database.
Wong was reunited with his birth parents in Shenzhen on Friday and was told that his birth name was Zhang Fuqiang.
At least 10,000 children are abducted and sold each year in China, according to official estimates, but the US State Department and Chinese state media estimate that the true figure could be anywhere up to 10 times that number.
Over the past decade, the Ministry of Public Security has established a national DNA database, encouraging abductees to give blood samples to help reunite them with their families.
Last year, seven victims, most of whom were men and kidnapped two or three decades ago, were reunited with their families through the DNA database in Sichuan province.