Missing children alert system set up in China has a 98 per cent success rate
- The system partners with popular apps such as social media platforms to send alerts about missing children to hundreds of millions of users
- Police have also used the system to crack down on child trafficking in China
A national missing children alert system has managed to find 4,707 children five years after its roll-out, China’s public security authority has said.
The system called Tuan Yuan, or Reunion, has sent out alerts relating to 4,801 missing children since it was set up on May 15 2016 and 98 per cent of these were located, including 58 who had been murdered, according to a statement by the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security on Sunday.
More than 25 popular Apps, such as Xinhua News, Weibo, AutoNavi, Taobao, Alipay, Baidu and Tencent QQ, have been connected to the system so that users of these Apps that are in the areas where a child has been reported missing can receive alerts and help local police with any information they might have.
The Tuan Yuan system has proved with excellent results that it is not only a successful example of the internet working well with anti-trafficking, but also a good story of cooperation between police and enterprises
The first case that put the system to test was a two-year-old girl who was reported missing in 2015 at a railway station in Hengshui city in northern Hebei province. Police officers had identified a male suspect after checking video footage and pushed an alert through social media platform Weibo and navigation software AutoNavi.
A taxi driver who saw the alert called local police and provided vital information. The girl was rescued in Zhengzhou a day after the alert was sent.
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“The Tuan Yuan system has proved with excellent results that it is not only a successful example of the internet working well with anti-trafficking, but also a good story of cooperation between police and enterprises,” China’s public security authority said in a statement.
