Chinese parents reunited with son abducted 32 years ago

BEIJING: A Chinese man kidnapped as a toddler over three decades ago has been reunited with his biological parents after police used facial recognition technology to help track him down.

Mao Yin was just two when he was snatched outside a hotel in Xian city in central Shaanxi province in 1988 and sold to a childless couple in neighbouring Sichuan province who raised him as their own son. 

According to the state broadcaster, police conducted aging on one of Mao’s childhood photos and used the model to scan the national database and find close matches.

Xian’s public security bureau said they were acting on a tip-off that a person had bought a child in the late 1980s. The now 34-year-old man had a tearful reunion with his birth parents who had never given up the search for their missing boy.

Mao’s mother Li Jingzhi said she quit her job after her son was taken and sent over 100,000 flyers to officials and appeared on several TV channels to appeal for his return.  She had followed 300 false leads for her missing son over the past three decades.

In late April, police in Xian were tipped off that a man in Sichuan province had bought a child from Shaanxi in the late 1980s. Police tracked down Mao and later confirmed he was the abducted son after a DNA test.

Mao’s adoptive parents had renamed him Gu Ningning and he grew up without any knowledge of his birth parents or that he had been abducted.

Xian police organised reunion where Mao emerged from a side door to a conference room and ran into his mother’s arms. “I don’t want him to leave me anymore. I won’t let him leave me anymore,” Li said as she held onto her son’s hand. Mao said he would move to Xian to live with his birth parents.

There are no official statistics on the number of children who disappear every year in China, but a system was established in 2016 to send alerts about missing children through social media and mobile phone texts.

Police have helped more than 6,300 abducted children to reunite with their families over the past decade through the DNA matching system.