Original subtitles

With 20,000 Chinese children are kidnapped every year.

Their purpose,

to feed a voracious baby trafficking industry

that thrives on high demand and huge rewards.

If you want to adopt a Chinese baby,

someone, somewhere, can make that happen.

Doctors, officials, orphanages

and even the man on the street are looking for a piece of the action.

Leaving helpless parents to wonder, how has this happened?

Who's behind it?

And can anyone stop it?

China.

One of the fastest developing countries in the world.

An almost completely reformed economy

has lifted millions of Chinese out of poverty.

But such rapid change has also opened the door

to a new world of criminal opportunity.

Trading Chinese babies is one of them.

Thousands of Americans want to adopt a Chinese baby

but the country doesn't have enough orphans.

So, a supply chain has sprung up to provide babies by any means possible.

Wang Shu is a lawyer based in Hunan Province.

His firm has dealt with cases related to missing babies.

Today, Duan Zilin is a sales assistant in a supermarket.

She lives a quiet life, taking care of her children.

But she was once part of the baby trafficking chain,

acting, together with her family,

as a supplier of over a hundred babies to orphanages.

It started in 2001,

when Duan's mother received an interesting proposition

from an orphanage she had been volunteering at.

The request was not unreasonable.

Because of China's one child policy,

thousands of baby girls were being abandoned

by couples desperate for a boy.

Faced with a surplus of unwanted girls,

China opened its doors to international adoptions in 1992.

They soon proved popular among Americans

as the adoption process was thought to be easier and faster

than it was back home.

With high demand for Chinese babies,

orphanages started paying people like Duan and her family

to acquire them, no questions asked.

Duan's family started buying infants

from a supplier in Wu Chan city in Guangdong province,

600 miles away.

Up to 40 babies were available to them at any one time.

The supplier claimed they had been abandoned.

Duan didn't ask too many questions.

For Duan and her family, this was a gold mine.

For the first baby girl they delivered to the orphanage,

they were paid over 350 dollars,

more than the average monthly salary for an engineer at the time.

The orphanage, however, considered this a good deal.

Over five years,

Duan and her family sold more than a hundred babies.

Massive profits were made all along the supply chain.

Their supplier made 10,000 dollars,

enough to send her son to college and pay the family's medical bills.

But the situation was getting out of hand.

Demand was so high and prices so outrageous

that abducted children started appearing on the market.

The problem was becoming severe enough for the government to take notice.

Duan and others like her

were about to find their businesses attracting unwanted attention.

In 1992,

China legalized international adoptions,

allowing Chinese babies to find homes outside the country.

But the policy became too successful.

With Americans paying 30,000 dollars in administrative fees per child,

a baby trafficking industry has sprung up,

supplying not just abandoned, but abducted children as well.

Official reports estimate that 20,000 Chinese children

are kidnapped every year for adoption.

The country's strict family planning laws

could in fact be creating opportunity for kidnappers.

Before a woman gives birth,

she and her family must apply for a birth permit.

Officials run a variety of checks, for example,

on whether the couple is married.

The process can take up to three years.

Unsurprisingly, many women bypass the system.

Illegal clinics lack safeguards and security,

making it easier for traffickers to snatch the baby.

But even those who opt for the legal route are at risk.

In August 2013,

the deputy director of Fuping County Maternity Hospital,

Zhang Shuxia was detained on suspicion of human trafficking.

Zhang, an obstetrician,

allegedly convinced numerous parents to give up their babies.

Stating that the babies had serious health conditions,

she would stop parents from seeing them,

and convince parents to give them up.

Investigators knew that it had to be an inside job.

Following an investigation,

three government officials

and three senior management staff of the hospital

were sacked in connection to the scandal.

Zhang Shuxia was sentenced to death.

Babies from such scams would end up in the hands of traffickers,

who would then sell them to orphanages.

One such trafficker was Duan Zilin.

Working with orphanages keen for babies for international adoption,

Duan and her family scoured the country,

buying babies from suppliers.

After receiving the baby,

the orphanage would falsify paperwork,

stating where the baby was found, when and by whom.

Then the baby would be put up for foreign adoption,

probably by Americans.

Since 2000,

more than 65,000 Chinese infants have been adopted by American families.

It's a huge business.

Baby trafficking was at its most lucrative in the early 2000s.

But the authorities started to take action.

In 2002, trafficker Duan Zilin visited her regular supplier.

Together with her mother and sister,

she purchased six baby girls for 20 dollars each.

Carrying them in a cardboard box,

she boarded the train for home.

It was on the train that the babies were discovered by the police.

Duan and her family were arrested but escaped serious charges.

Upon their release a month later,

Duan and her family continued trafficking babies.

With the years, their reputation soared.

More and more people approached them with trafficking opportunities

and their business boomed.

In 2005,

when the family was delivering three babies to an orphanage,

the police pounced and arrested them again.

This time, their luck had run out.

In 2006 Duan Zilin and five of her family members stood trial.

They were sentenced to jail terms ranging from three to 15 years.

Now, released and retired from baby trafficking,

Duan still can't quite come to terms with what happened.

It's an especially bitter pill to swallow

when some culprits in the baby trafficking business

are none other than law enforcers themselves.

In China,

with adoption fees reaching up to 30,000 dollars per baby,

a baby trafficking trade has sprung up.

Babies are acquired through any means necessary,

so, they can be sold into adoption.

With big profits to be made,

even family planning officials are in on the act,

taking advantage of China's policies.

The fine in Hunan province, for example,

is over 1,500 dollars for every child exceeding the quota.

That's more than what the average Chinese farming household earns in a year.

In some provinces, the fine is even higher.

With large amounts of money at stake,

whether from fines or adoption fees,

officials prowl neighborhoods looking for unregistered newborns.

Baby clothes hanging on laundry lines

or the sound of crying could be enough to give the children away.

Even if a baby is an only child,

it can be seized if it has been adopted without following proper procedures

or been born out of wedlock.

Yuan Jia Shi, a village farmer from Hunan Province,

can testify to the cruelty of losing a child to the agencies.

In adopting a girl,

Yuan was in fact alleviating one of the problems of the one child policy,

a large number of abandoned baby girls.

Yuan's adopted daughter had found a loving family,

but even this was not enough to save her from the hands of the agencies.

One day in 2004, Yuan left for work,

leaving his one-year-old daughter at home with his elderly mother.

Within minutes of him leaving, his mother got a visit.

After identifying themselves,

the officials snatched Yuan's little girl from the hands of Yuan's mother.

In Hunan province, when a child is seized,

local welfare officials must place notices in the local newspapers for 60 days,

appealing for its parents to pay the fine to reclaim the child.

But even if they are able to pay,

many farmers are illiterate and unable to read the notice.

After 60 days, the baby is labeled an orphan.

Its arrival date is recorded as its birthday,

its name is changed and it is put up for adoption.

Yuan never got his daughter back.

By 2005,

with kidnappers,

hospitals and even officials getting involved,

the Chinese government clamped down.

Hundreds of traffickers have been arrested,

and tens of thousands of children rescued.

At the same time,

the conditions for international adoptions of Chinese children

have become stricter.

Applicants must now meet age,

marital status and income requirements.

Approval to adopt a healthy child can now take years.

As a result,

the number of adoptions by Americans fell from around 8,000 in 2005

to around 2,000 in 2013.

These actions seem to be having a positive impact,

but it remains to be seen whether baby trafficking in China

can really be stamped out once and for all.