The Chinese embassy in London is trying to stop Channel 4 broadcasting a documentary about the trade in stolen children in China.

The embassy is considering seeking an injunction to try to prevent China’s Stolen Children being shown on October 8. It has also been in touch with Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, and is expected to write to Channel 4’s board.

The Chinese are angry that they are not being given an advance screening of the documentary, which claims that the trade in stolen children is widespread. C4 says it is not its policy to show such programmes in advance.

However, the programme makers have provided the embassy with a three-page letter detailing their evidence. Professor Kevin Bales, a consultant to the United Nations programme on people trafficking, says in the film that at least 70,000 young children a year are sold or stolen in China.

Zhao Shangsen, press counsellor to the embassy, wrote to the programme makers saying: “The programme is deeply flawed, ignorant and simplistic.” He denies any link between child trafficking and China’s one-child policy, pointing to trafficking in other countries which do not have state-imposed birth control.

Shangsen wrote that China has made progress in trying to end child trafficking, which was on a far smaller scale than the programme suggested. “There is no good in finger-pointing at China,” Shangsen wrote to C4.

The programme makers filmed undercover in China, speaking to parents who had had a child stolen or had sold a child, and to traffickers. More boys are taken than girls because they will grow up to earn more money. Most are taken for childless couples, although some are sold into prostitution.

Channel 4 has already conceded a right of reply at the end of the programme to the Chinese embassy.

China’s Stolen Children is produced by the same team that made The Dying Rooms and Return to the Dying Rooms in the mid1990s which showed that many second-born children were dumped in orphanages and left to die.

The programmes led to a diplomatic row between China and the Tory government. Since then, trade links between Britain and China have strengthened considerably.

With the Olympics in Beijing next year, China’s human rights and environmental record will be scrutinised in the West.

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