China sets up website to recover trafficked children: report

Police in China have set up a website aimed at locating the families of up to 60 children recovered during a six-month crackdown on human trafficking, state press reported Tuesday.

Police have recovered 2,008 children in the crackdown, but parents and relatives for a handful of the youngsters have not yet been located, the China News Service reported.

To help find the families, the public security organs have set up a webpage with pictures of 60 youths and information on when they were believed to have been kidnapped and where they were recovered, the report said.

The DNA and blood type of the children have also been registered, it said.

The recovery of the children was linked to over 1,700 cases of child trafficking uncovered by police since April this year, the report said.

The trafficking of women and children remains common in China, a phenomenon often linked to China's one-child family planning rule which has forced women to give up their second and third babies.

Women are also trafficked to be sold to men in remote areas who are unable to find brides due to a growing gender imbalance stemming from sex-selective abortions of baby girls, which also stems to the family planning policy, experts have said.

Last week, police in north China said they recently busted a ring of baby traffickers suspected of pocketing up to 400,000 yuan (58,000 dollars) through the sale of 52 children, state media reported.

Police arrested 42 suspected ring members who allegedly trafficked 19 boys and 33 girls in northern Hebei and Shanxi provinces as well as eastern Shandong and the capital Beijing, Xinhua news agency said.