Kidnapped when he was two years old, a Chinese reunited with his family 24 years later ... A reunion filmed by public television and on which we discover the emotion of the father and mother, embracing their found son.
Guo Gangtang's son was kidnapped as a child in front of the family home in eastern Shandong province, while he was playing unsupervised.
His captors then sold him to a family, according to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.
Child trafficking flourished in China in the 1980s and for several decades, following the application of the so-called “one-child” policy.
The traditional preference for sons, coupled with birth restrictions, has accentuated the kidnappings of boys, who are then sold to couples desiring a male heir.
After a DNA test, the police told Mr. Guo that a 26-year-old teacher living in central Henan Province was indeed his missing son.
Since the launch of a dedicated DNA database in 2016, the police have helped more than 2,600 kidnapped children to find their biological parents, according to the Ministry of Public Security.
Aged 27 when his son disappeared, the father had resigned to travel the country on a motorcycle, on which large flags with the photo of his son had been attached. He traveled 500,000 kilometers across China, sometimes being forced to sleep under bridges or beg. A journey that had earned him the inspiration for a film.