Encouraging kidnapping

The Washington Post offers more on the monsters of Beijing. It has long been known that their one-child policy has produced orphanages full of abandoned girls, as well as girls and young women kidnapped into marriage. It turns out there is more.

In the quiet village of Shang Di, wedged among factory towns in southern China, Deng Huidong wheels out a dusty two-seater tricycle that her 9-month-old son rode the day he was abducted outside her family house in 2007.
Little Ruicong, who was snatched by men in a white van as he played in an alleyway, hasn’t been seen since.

He is one of hundreds, perhaps thousands of children who go missing in China each year, victims of roving criminal gangs preying on vulnerable areas.

“My heart is bleeding,” said Deng as she cried beside a framed photograph of her son splashing in a bath tub.

“I just want to find my son. Every time I see a child, it reminds me of my son and I wonder whether I will see him again.”

While China has made giant economic and social strides over the past few decades, the number of abducted children remains alarmingly high in a nation whose wrenching one-child policy and yawning income disparities have fueled demand for children particularly male heirs, trafficked by underground syndicates.