A police officer publicizes anti-child trafficking information at the Shijingshan Amusement Park in Beijing on June 1, 2015 (CFP) 

A 12-year-old boy who had disappeared for several hours was found by Tianjin police, thanks to a new online platform.

The boy, named Jiang Yuzhe, went missing around 9 p.m. on May 23 from Tianjin's Hexi District. The next day, his information that included a photo and other descriptions were put on an emergency response system, which alerted local mobile phone users. Police subsequently found the boy in a library in Tianjin at 3:30 p.m. on May 25.

The new system was launched on May 11 by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The platform is similar to the United States' Amber Alert for emergency information broadcasts on missing children.

It is based on Alibaba's mobile app, DingDing. According to the MPS' Criminal Investigation Bureau, more than 5,000 police officers around the country will provide updates to the platform after receiving reports of missing children.

"With the platform, police in any place around the country can share information and work together to find the missing children," Liu Zhenfei, Chief Risk Officer of Alibaba, told Guangzhou-based Time Weekly.

Chen Shiqu, Deputy Inspector with the MPS' Criminal Investigation Bureau, told a press conference on May 15 that the establishment of the missing child broadcasting platform is in line with the Internet Plus strategy, which the Chinese Government has used to integrate information technology with conventional industries.

"It provides a more efficient channel for anti-trafficking authorities and the public to work together to collect clues," Chen said. According to Chen, the police used to hand out thousands of printed leaflets to find information on missing children.

"The method was somewhat inefficient. Today, the new platform helps solve the problem. It can instantly publish a child's information to the public via the Internet," Chen said.

 

(CFP) 

 

The Internet era 

China has long pledged to fight child trafficking. In 2009, the Chinese Government launched a publicity campaign and established a DNA database for child-trafficking cases. According to MPS' figures, the database has helped find about 4,000 kidnapped children since its establishment.

In May last year, the Children's Safety Science and Technology Fund established an online emergency response platform for missing children. For the first time, the public could get information about missing children via a mobile app.

The platform was nonetheless an unofficial system which had many shortcomings, Chen Jianfeng, Director of the Anti-Trafficking Office under the MPS' Criminal Investigation Bureau, told Beijing-based Guangming Daily. "For instance, the system cannot guarantee the authenticity of the information published there."

In order to solve the problem, the MPS decided to establish an official platform to share information on such cases. After careful contemplation, the ministry decided to seek help from Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. "It's a good combination of our technical skills in information integration and the ministry's determination to fight child trafficking," Liu, from Alibaba, told Time Weekly.

"The system, called Tuanyuan, is based on DingDing's technology. With the system, only those 5,000 police officers with authorization have the right to upload and verify information regarding missing children," Liu said.

According to Liu, in order to further guarantee authenticity, the information is only uploaded to the Tuanyuan platform. "Unlike the previous platform, users can now only receive but not publish information," Liu said.

Sina Weibo--a microblogging platform--and the AutoNavi map app are also used to lure more users to the Tuanyuan platform. "The system can guarantee that the information is accurately sent to those nearby users via Sina Weibo and AutoNavi apps," Liu added. Data from AutoNavi shows that it has more than 500 million users, with more than 10 billion positioning quests handled every day. "With the strong positioning technology, alerts on missing children can be spread to nearby users in a precise and timely manner," Liu said.

According to Chen, the scope of those notifications will be expanded over time. "Taking the location from which the child went missing as the center, notifications will be sent to users within a 100 km radius within an hour of a missing report, 200 km within two hours, 300 km within three hours and 500 km after three hours," Chen said.

"Notifications beyond 500 km will also be considered," Chen added. According to Liu, Alibaba is experimenting with ways to connect more mobile apps to the platform to encourage more people to become involved. "In the future, all businesses and apps under Alibaba that can be used and have functions that can aid anti-criminal efforts will be connected to the system," Liu said.

With comprehensive efforts taken in recent years, including the establishment of the DNA database, and the previous and the new online platforms, the rate of success in combating such cases has reached over 90 percent, according to Chen.

"In the next step, we will choose more companies and organizations to cooperate with to expand the new anti-trafficking concept to more people and places," Chen said.

Deep roots 

Child trafficking is a problem that has plagued China for a long time.

A report released by the National Bureau of Statistics said that the police broke a total of 1,460 cases of child trafficking nationwide in 2014. Regarding the reason for child trafficking in China, Chen said that the problem has social, economic and cultural roots.

"First of all, we must put the blame on poverty. In some remote areas, such as southwest China's Yunnan and Guizhou provinces and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, selling and trafficking children has become a business to solve the livelihood problems of poverty-stricken parents and traffickers," Chen said.

According to a report by the Wuhan-based Changjiang Times, a child can be sold for 20,000-30,000 yuan ($3,044-4,566), which is more than 10 times the annual income of one ordinary family in remote areas in southwest China.

Meanwhile, Chen also put the blame on buyers. "In many rural places, people still believe in the importance of 'carrying on the family line' and 'having sons to support them in their old age,' which determines that they prefer boys to girls," Chen said.

However, since the implementation of family planning policy in the late 1970s, many families had lost the chance to raise sons. Some would therefore go as far as to buy boys from child traffickers.

"The strong market demand has led to today's rampant child-trafficking phenomenon," Chen said.

A report by Caixin.com last year showed that nearly 70 percent of the abducted children under the age of 6 were boys.

In order to crack down on those buyers, an amendment was made to the Criminal Law last year, which stipulates that those who buy an abducted child but do not maltreat the child nor obstruct his or her rescue shall now be punished, though that punishment will be lighter than those who do abuse the children or hamper their rescue.

Previously, the law would exempt buyers from punishment if they had not mistreated the abducted children.

"The amended law will be of some deterrence to buyers and will help gradually reduce the market demand," Dai Peng, Director of the Criminal Investigation Department at the People's Public Security University of China, told People's Daily.

China's law on adoption has also been a target for many legal professionals who've pointed out that some parts of the law, implemented in 1992, have become outdated.

"High requirements set for foster family applicants, deficient adoption procedures and a lack of supervision all form obstacles to those who urgently wish to adopt children," Chen Shu, Editor in Chief of Guangzhou Lawyers, a magazine sponsored by the Guangzhou Lawyers Association, told Shenzhen Business News.

"If the people cannot get a child legally, they may resort to extreme ways to achieve their aims," Chen said, proposing to amend the existing Adoption Law.  

Copyedited by Bryan Michael Galvan 

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