Web puts focus on child beggars

AN ONLINE campaign to gather photos of Chinese children begging on the streets is pressuring authorities to crack down on gangs that kidnap children for exploitation and is helping to reunite them with families.

Many of the children seen begging in Chinese cities are snatched from their real families by kidnappers and then sold into virtual slavery, forced to beg by gangs that sometimes maim them to elicit greater sympathy.

Several families have been reunited with their abducted offspring since a Beijing researcher, Yu Jianrong, launched the campaign last month urging people to post photos of beggar children on microblogs - websites similar to Twitter.

The effort is winning fresh support for efforts to protect children from such abuses, though some people have expressed worries over privacy and possible retaliation against the children by their abductors.

Using children under the age of 14 for begging is illegal in China, but is often tolerated, even in big cities like Shanghai. Some, barely big enough to walk, stumble through subway trains, hands outstretched. Others sit out in the cold.

Yu began encouraging China's increasingly online citizens to post photos of children they saw begging after receiving a request from a follower of his microblog appealing for help with finding his missing son. At least six missing children have reportedly been rescued so far.