China's Stolen Children on AllMovie

Australian-born Jeeza Neumann presents a scathing indictment of perhaps the largest experiment in social engineering ever conducted with this undercover documentary investigation of China's notorious stolen-child black market. Narrated by Ben Kingsley, China's Stolen Children highlights the tragic consequences of China's controversial one-child policy. In 1979 the Chinese government implemented the one-child policy in an effort to curb the growing population boom. In the wake of this policy, baby boys are kidnapped and sold like valued commodities, and unborn girls are aborted before birth so that parents can ensure that they will have someone to care for them in old age. While such practices are indeed highly illegal, they are so uncontrollable that they have reached epidemic proportions. The Chinese government has worked tirelessly to ensure that the outside world remains totally unaware of the problem, and as a result the film crew was forced to pose as tourists in order to speak with a detective frequently hired to locate missing children as well as a human trafficker who was once forced to sell his own son. A conversation with one of the kidnapped children who was rescued offers unparalleled insight into the disturbing practice, and a look at the dilemma faced by a nineteen year-old expectant mother who is still too young to be legally married emphasizes some of the harrowing decisions often faced by many expectant parents in China.