
A Chinese mother whose five-month-old baby was abducted and sold two decades ago has been reunited with her long lost son after detectives used cutting-edge facial recognition technology to track down the now 20-year-old student.

Wang Hua, from Shenzhen, Guangdong, was left grief stricken when her tenant Zhou conspired with child traffickers to snatch and sell her newborn in May 1999.

For years, she and her husband criss-crossed the country desperately searching for her kidnapped infant.

A 20-year-old student (left, pixelated by Chinese media) who was kidnapped as a five-month-old baby (right) has finally been tracked down using cutting-edge facial recognition technology

Wang Hua (left with husband), from Shenzhen, Guangdong, hugs her long lost son (pixelated by Chinese media) after he was snatched by her tenant and sold by child traffickers in 1999

Wang For years, she and her husband criss-crossed the country desperately searching for her kidnapped infant (pictured before abduction)

She said: 'I carried my son's baby pictures with me for 20 years, asking people about him wherever we went.'

Although police eventually managed to catch Zhou and her accomplices, they were no closer to tracing the whereabouts of the missing boy.

But remarkably, new scanning software able to sift through massive amounts of data managed to match Wang's baby photos to a student living only a few miles away in the Guangdong province.

A DNA test confirmed the 20-year-old as Wang's biological son and the pair were reunited on Wednesday.

The university student called the reunion 'very emotional', but admitted he was feeling 'confused inside'.

New scanning software able to sift through massive amounts of data managed to match Wang's baby photos to a student living only a few miles away in the Guangdong province, leading to Wednesday emotional reunion

Wang said: 'I carried my son's baby pictures with me for 20 years, asking people about him wherever we went'

The boy (face pixelated by Chinese media) was sold for the equivalent of £1,165 but his foster parents were not aware of the grim circumstances of the boy's origins, according to police

In 2018, police were tipped off that Zhou, their main suspect, had been spotted in faraway Urumqi, Xinjiang Uyghur.

Zhou and her five fellow kidnappers were tracked down and arrested after selling the boy for the equivalent of £1,165.

The baby's foster parents were not aware of the grim circumstances of the boy's origins, according to police.

Wang and her husband provided photographs of themselves and their long lost son to input into the facial recognition system.