A policeman holds Yue Yue at the Shenzhen Welfare Center in Futian on Thursday after she was rescued from Jiangsu.Sun Yuchen

Han Ximin

A GIRL who was abducted and taken to Jiangsu Province returned to Shenzhen on Thursday and authorities are now trying to find her biological parents.

The girl, aged between 3 and 4 and whose identity is not known, was taken to the Shenzhen Social Welfare Center. She was found by Shenzhen police when the officers rescued a boy, Peng Wenle, in a village in Peizhou, Jiangsu Province, on Tuesday.

According to Pei Dongchun of the criminal investigation department of the Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau who coordinated the rescue, DNA tests of the woman who raised her and the girl showed the woman was not the biological mother. The girl was abducted in Shenzhen by her husband, Han, who died of cancer in June last year. Han also abducted Peng Wenle.

Police are hoping the public can provide information to help identify the girl and find her parents.

In another development Wednesday, police also rescued three children who were forced into begging in Shenzhen.

A video clip posted on a microblog by a netizen named Zaizai showed the police action Wednesday.

Zaizai received information that three children had been forced into begging in the Dongmen shopping area. After three days of observation, it was found that the children were controlled by three adults, Zaizai said in his blog.

“The three children looked healthy but appeared to have been beaten by the adults. They were afraid to take food offered by people passing by,” Zaizai said, quoting a witness.

He called Luohu police who took immediate action but the three adults escaped into the crowd and the three children were rescued. Police had taken the blood samples from the children and hoped to find their parents through DNA testing.

A microblog campaign to help child beggars was initiated by Yu Jianrong, a professor at the Urban Development Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. It is gaining support from the public. The blog has more than 3,000 photos of child beggars posted by netizens and has had more than 140,000 visits. A total of six trafficked children had been reunited with their families since the microblog was launched Jan. 17.

Ordinary citizens are being encouraged to take photos or videos of child beggars and then call the police.

However, because the microblog is a public platform, there are shared concerns over the possibility that human traffickers seeing the photos could take revenge on the children and those who take and post photos.

As online activity expands and more photos appear on the microblog, sorting the information would present a challenge. Yu said he would contract social organizations and government departments to coordinate the program.