A couple in southern China rediscovered their missing son in an emotional ceremony on Monday (8), ending a 14-year search that inspired a hit movie.
Sun Zhuo, who is now 18, was kidnapped in Shenzhen City in 2007 at age 4, but his parents never gave up hope of seeing him again.
His father, Sun Haiyang, and mother, Peng Siying, sold properties to finance the search and offered a reward of up to $31,000 for information about their son’s whereabouts, Chinese state media reported.
Sun Haiyang said he had traveled to nearly every region in China over the years to look for the boy, according to a Ministry of Public Security website.
“Honey,” a 2014 film by Hong Kong director Peter Chan, was based on the Sun story and grossed more than $50 million at the box office, according to IMDb. The production brought to the spotlight the widespread issue of child abduction and trafficking in China.
Experts say the kidnapping problem has been exacerbated by China’s one-child policy, which has been relaxed in recent years. For decades, those who had a second son or daughter received hefty fines or were forced to abort their pregnancies.
Traditionally, families – especially those in rural areas – saw boys as better able to support the family and maintain the family line, forming a clandestine market for boys and putting pressure on many families to hand over baby girls for adoption.
Authorities found Sun in the eastern province of Shandong after police used facial recognition technology to help them identify a suspect, surnamed Wu, whom they accuse of kidnapping the young man, the ministry’s website reported.
Sun’s identity was confirmed by DNA analysis. Wu was arrested in connection with two child abductions, including Sun’s, police said. The young man’s adoptive father and mother were released on bail, pending trial, state media added.
In a plot twist, Sun told the Chinese media that he will stay with his adoptive parents because they raised him for over 10 years and he was unaware of his true origins.
Under Chinese law, the maximum penalty for trafficking in persons is death. Buyers of trafficked persons can be jailed for up to three years.
It is unclear how many children disappear in China each year, although estimates run into the tens of thousands. China is rated Tier 3 by the US State Department’s Anti-Trafficking Agency – the lowest level, meaning the government “does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.”
According to Chinese authorities, more than 8,000 abducted children were reunited with their biological parents in 2021, with many cases resolved using China’s massive police DNA database and facial recognition technology.
Jessie Yeung of CNN contributed to this report.
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Reference: CNN Brasil
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