He had traveled China on a motorcycle, swallowed thousands of kilometers with the sole obsession of seeing his son again.
After 24 long years of searching, Guo Gangtang has just found his child.
Her son was barely two years and five months old when he was kidnapped outside the family home in eastern Shandong Province, while playing unsupervised.
His kidnappers had sold him to a family, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security said in a statement on Tuesday.
Aged 27 when his son disappeared, Guo Gangtang had resigned to travel the country on a motorcycle to try to find him (photo taken from Guo Gangtang's Weibo account).
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"The police say they finally found him thanks to a DNA match + two suspects (a man and a woman) were arrested for allegedly kidnapping the child and selling him in 1997", reports on Twitter Stephen McDonell, correspondent in China for the BBC.
Twenty four years ago, the two year old was taken from the doorway directly in front of his family's home.
The police say they finally found him with a DNA match + that two suspects (a man and a woman) have been arrested for allegedly abducting the child and selling him in 1997. pic.twitter.com/oNqSmSzwet
- Stephen McDonell (@StephenMcDonell) July 13, 2021
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.
The reunion was organized on Sunday, according to the ministry.
His journey inspired a film
Public television CCTV on Tuesday showed footage of the father crying in his hands and the mother sobbing, hugging their found son.
"All that comes now is happiness," Guo said in a video released by the China News Service news agency.
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.
Na terça-feira, Guo Gangtang, of 51 years, finally meets com seu filho após uma busca of 24 years, viajando but of 500,000 km em sua motocicleta pela China.
Dois suspeitos foram presos por sequestrar seu filho de do anos na província de Shandong, leste da China, em 1997 pic.twitter.com/9nmYTrRXaZ
- Mundo China (@mundo_china) July 13, 2021
Guo Gangtang's fight also helped raise awareness among the Chinese general public about the issue of child abduction, a still sensitive subject.
The news of this family reunion caused a wave of emotion on the social network Weibo.
“Parents never abandon their children!
Mr. Guo's fight shows how deep a father's love is, ”one user wrote, in tune with general opinion.
Read also Interpol case: "enforced disappearances", a very Chinese method
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.