Man Kidnapped When He Was Eight Returns Home 21 Years Later

A man has been reunited with his family after being kidnapped more than 21 years ago.

Xu Wenbin was abducted by a man on his way home from school in 1998 when he was only eight years old.

He was renamed Zhang Hao but always remembered his biological parents and dreamed of being reunited with them over the course of the next two decades.

It is unclear why Mr Hao waited so long to contact the authorities about finding his mum and dad, but the police confirmed his identity through further DNA tests and finally brought him back home on 28 March. It is also unclear what sort of life he has lived since his abduction and whether his foster parents have faced any charges.

A ceremony was held to mark the family reunion last week and Mr Hao and his mum can be seen hugging each other and crying in pictures and videos.

Ji Shaojie, a police officer who worked on the case, said: "DNA technology was not sufficiently developed at the time [of the kidnapping]. His parents searched and the police searched for many years but came up empty.

"Around 2000, his parents provided their DNA samples for the national database. Their kidnapped son entered the database in 2018, then a match was found."

The man who abducted Mr Hao reportedly offered him a type of dumpling called a momo and encouraged him to follow him. He has not been caught.

Child abduction is a serious problem in China, in large part due to the country's one-child policy, which was introduced in 1979 and eliminated in 2015.

The preference for sons can lead to abductions, while the disproportionately low amount of women in the country can make it hard for men to find wives, which can result in girls being sold as 'child brides'.

Last month, Chinese politician Zhang Baoyan proposed the introduction of the death penalty for convicted child traffickers, arguing that the current penalty of five to 10 years imprisonment was an insufficient deterrent.