Chinas stolen sons: an age-old preference for sons is fueling the kidnapping of young boys, who are sold to families desperate for sons of their own.

• Author: Jacobs, Andrew
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

The thieves often strike at dusk, when children are playing outside and their parents are distracted. Deng Huidong lost her 9-month-old son in the blink of an eye as a man driving by yanked him from the grip of his 7-year-old sister near the doorway of their home. The car didn't even stop as a pair of arms reached out and grabbed the boy.

He is one of thousands of Chinese boys who have been stolen from their families. Although some are sold to buyers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam, most are bought in China by families desperate for a male heir.

Demand is especially strong in rural areas of south China, where the sale of stolen children has become big business.

Su Qingcai, a tea farmer from Fujian Province with a 14-year-old daughter, explains why he spent $3,500 last year on a 5-year-old boy.

"A girl is just not as good as a son," he says. "It doesn't matter how much money you have. If you don't have a son, you are not as good as other people who have one."

The centuries-old Chinese preference for boys--and the custom that a woman leaves her family when she gets married and moves in with her husband's family--is reinforced by a modern reality: Without a real social-safety net like that in the U.S. and other countries, many Chinese parents fear that without a son, they'll be left to fend for themselves in old age. With daughters, there's also the issue of a dowry, a financial burden which falls to the family of the bride.

In a number of Asian and third-world countries, there has long been a cultural preference for boys. In China, the situation has been aggravated by the country's strict one-child policy, which is designed to control the growth of its population of 1.3 billion.

The extent of the kidnapping problem in China is a matter of dispute. The Chinese government insists there are fewer than 2,500 cases of human trafficking each year, including both women and children. But advocates for abducted children say there may be hundreds of thousands.

Sun Haiyang, whose son disappeared in 2007, has collected a list of 2,000 children in and around Shenzhen who have disappeared in the past two years. He says none have been recovered. "It's like fishing a needle out of the sea," he says.

Desperate families say they get almost no help from the local police. They say the police insist on waiting 24 hours before taking action and then claim that too much time has passed to mount an effective investigation.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Many parents...