Chapter V. The Missing Chinese Children — Kidnapped Children at Helsinki Airport

Listen to the fifth chapter of my new, 7-episode, true crime investigative journalism series: 

Kidnapped Children at Helsinki Airport — The Human Trafficking Network China and Finland are Desperate to Hide.

Listen to the full series: https://www.sashatobago.com/#listen

Read the full story: https://www.sashatobago.com/worldly/kidnapped-children-at-helsinki-airport-trafficking-network-china-and-finland-are-desperate-to-hide 

MORE TO LOVE! 

Are You a Jedi or Darth Vader? — Faith, Love, and the Force in Your Life (Part 1)

Listen or read via: https://www.sashatobago.com/worldly/are-you-a-jedi-or-darth-vader-faith-love-the-force-in-your-life-part-1

Transcript

Baby where are you? 

I lost you that day… 

I will spend my whole life 

trying to find you.

This is the mournful song of Xiao Chaohua, a Chinese father who says his 5-year-old son was kidnapped on Valentine's Day in 2007.

Xiao's heartbreaking story is just one of millions, in a tear-drenched ocean of Chinese parents whose children have disappeared without a trace.

"The pain the traffickers have caused me is unspeakable," says Luo Xingzhen, a mother whose son and daughter were abducted in 1996.

"There is a huge problem with kidnapping in China," says Winston Sterzel, host of The China Show. 

Winston lived in China for over a decade before an alleged series of political threats, surveillance, and intimidation tactics prompted him to move his young family far and away from China.

"You ask any Chinese parent if they would feel comfortable letting their kid run off out of their sight anywhere in China, and they would tell you, ‘No,’” he says.

"It's horrifying how bad kidnapping is in China."

Years ago, the U.S. state department estimated over 20,000 children were kidnapped in China annually.

Chinese media outlets, on the other hand, estimated that the actual number of child kidnappings was over 200,000 a year.

Both estimates are politically sensitive and strategically downplayed to curb the retaliatory wrath of China's ruling party: the Chinese Communist Party.

"The Chinese government does not want the rest of the world to know that they've got a huge human trafficking and [child] kidnapping problem," Winston says.

Quite frankly, in a country of over 1.4 billion people, with an estimated 8 to 10 million births a year, the number of vanishings nationwide is likely between 500,000 to 1 million Chinese children a year.

Some of these children are sold or abandoned by their own parents. While others are abducted by one parent during child custody battles.

"In China, courts often grant custody to whomever is currently housing the child," CNN reports.

Some children are snatched by traffickers and stolen away to other provinces in China, where they are sold to childless parents; or to families desperate for unpaid labor; grandchildren (via forced marriage); or an "adopted" male heir.

Abducted when he was two-years-old, Guo Xinzhen was trafficked and sold to a family in a different province. A DNA test reunited Guo with his real parents 24 years later.

Devastatingly, other kidnapped children in China have it much, much worse. They are sold domestically into a life of sex work; forced marriages; forced pregnancies; criminal gangs; or slave labor.

Abducted when she was five-years-old, Yang Niuhua was trafficked and sold to an elderly couple 1,243 miles (2,000 km) away from her hometown. Yang says her fake mother was abusive; forced her to drop out of school in the sixth grade; and was grooming her to be a child bride to the couple's deaf son. 

In the tragic aftermath, both of Yang's real parents died from grief. 

But what about the rest of China's missing children? 

What about the countless babies and children who are smuggled out of China?

Far beyond its borders.

Vanished without a trace.