China Focus: Chinese police launch online platform to help find missing children

A two-year old girl was rescued in central China's Henan Province early Sunday morning, 32 hours after she was abducted, thanks to a new online platform.

The girl from southwest China's Sichuan Province went missing around 4 p.m. on Friday afternoon while she and her family were changing trains in Hengshui, a city in north China's Hebei Province.

Police identified a man suspected of snatching the girl on the railway station's CCTV and broadcast his description via both traditional media and the new Ministry of Public Security (MPS) platform. More than 5,000 police officers can provide updates on missing children via the app "Tuanyuan" -- "reunion" in Chinese -- developed by Alibaba.

Police everywhere can now share information and work together via the app, said Liu Zhenfen, chief risk officer of Alibaba. The new system went live on May 11 and already has more than 150,000 followers.

Users near to where a child disappears receive push notifications, including photos and descriptions. The scope of these push notifications will be expanded over time, depending on the success of the system.

"If the child has been missing for one hour, the push notifications are sent within a radius of 100 km; after two hours, 200 km; three hours, 300 km and thereafter, 500 km," said Meng Qingtian of the MPS anti-trafficking squad.

Many people passed on information about the missing toddler to the police via the platform, despite it only being on trial at the time, said Meng. This directly helped police to find the missing girl within two days.

The suspect, a native of Anyang City, Henan Province, was arrested in in the provincial capital of Zhengzhou. Further investigation into the case is under way.

Meng said the platform will bring together more mobile apps, encouraging the public to help in anti-trafficking work and reunite more stolen children with their families. Endi