By Fu Wen
The Ministry of Public Security will collect DNA from children of unknown origin over the next six months and boost its database, officials announced Tuesday.
In a high-profile nationwide television conference that made long-suffering parents both pleased and suspicious of official motives, Vice Minister Zhang Xinfeng said police will place such children's DNA information on the national abductee database in hopes of finding a match with their relatives.
The database has more than 20,000 blood samples from children and parents, helping to identify 1,040 children, the Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday.
The police will also build a "quick search" system to make use of the vital first 24-hour window when there is the best chance of getting a child back, Zhang said, with local public security bureau directors responsible for each case.
"We will never give up on any abducted child as long as their case remains open," Zhang said.
Zhang's words did not impress Zheng Jinwei, who lost his 7-year-old son Zhen Chuze on January 21, 2005 near his home in Shantou, Guangdong Province, one of the most densely populated regions of South China.
Zheng is still angry with local police for ignoring his own pleas for 48 hours, he told the Global Times on Wednesday.
"The police lost the precious first 24 hours to find my son," he said.
"I hope local police authorities will put this new investigation system into practice, not just issue more warm words."
"But I still retain hope and confidence the ministry's actions can help me find my child," he said.
Shen Hao, an Anhui Province-based freelance journalist who has run an information website for abducted children since 2006, told the Global Times on Wednesday that he was "delighted" by the news.
"We're happy to see the government agencies are finally starting to do their job on this issue, which we have been pleading for them to do for years," he said.
If the government  agencies had only done this earlier, then China's child abduction problem would never have gotten so out of hand, wrote Yu Jianrong, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, on his microblog on Wednesday.
It was Yu who in February employed his online talents to help hunt for abducted children, posting their pictures on the Internet, with a few heartwarming results.
Rural couples with beliefs that "boys carry the family line" were the culprits behind "adopting" abducted children, Chen Shiqu, head of the ministry's office for the crackdown on child abductions, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
Anyone who buys an abducted child faces a maximum sentence of three years' imprisonment under the criminal law.
China has handled 34,212 human trafficking cases since April 2009, saving 23,085 women and 13,284 children, according to the ministry.