CCTV9英语新闻：Internet plays increasingly important role in finding missing children

In fact, the internet has been playing a vital role in finding missing children here in China. Through viral sharing of information on social networks and online campaigns launched by volunteers, the internet has served as a powerful tool for both police and relatives to track down missing children and hunt child traffickers.

 

You can't put a price on a life, but there's a market for human beings in China.

 

The families of missing children are desperate for any bit of information and they go online.

 

On Weibo, China's Twitter-like service, there are many accounts which post missing children information and campaigns launched by volunteers. There are also websites, like "Babies Come Home". They've gathered 150 thousand volunteers and helped over 11-hundred people get back home.

 

And such efforts have gone mobile。

 

Zhongxun, an app dedicated to finding missing children, was developed by Li Xiuquan's team.

 

“We developed an app for parents to post information of missing children and for the public to post new leads if they find children unattended or begging in the streets，” Li said.

 

It took this team of six IT professionals less than 24 hours to launch the first edition. They posted the QR code on Weibo and got nearly 80 million hits.

 

And within a week, their first success.

 

"Six days after the launch, we helped find 2 missing children the first was a boy in Taizhou city in eastern Jiangsu Province. And another was a girl. Unfortunately, she was already dead by the time local police found her," Li said. 

 

It's been only about 20 days since the launch, but more children have been found.

 

Xiuquan's team is small, but they are dreaming big... They want to build the AMBER Alert, a child abduction alert system, in China.

 

And they are not alone... China's top internet companies are also taking concrete actions. Tencent is getting the word out through its 800 million user-base. And 360 is developing a wearable tracking device.

 

Such efforts can help both parents and police find the children and bring the traffickers to justice.

 

China has established one of the world's largest networks to combat human trafficking, with thousands of police officers across the country. But more efforts are needed to rescue missing children. By harnessing the power of the internet to mobilize the public, there is clear hope that fewer children will go missing and more will be reunited with their families.