On Thursday a father walked into an Chinese orphanage and promptly burst into tears - before him stood the son that had been stolen from him as a baby two years earlier.

Confused, the toddler started to cry. Wang Bangyin gathered the child into his arms, aware that his son was probably weeping from fear rather than from any sense of familiarity but also of how lucky he was to have recovered the child from China's baby-traffickers.

His son had been found by police in May along with 15 others. But with no original identity documents there was little hope of reuniting him with his family.

A picture of Hua Guokang - the name on his police papers - was plastered across television news broadcasts, newspapers and the internet.

The campaign - with a total of 60 unidentified children - was a first in China and the "Babies Looking for a Home' website, with victims ranging from infants a few months old to young adults, labelled the child "number 39". It was enough.

His father was able to contact him through police in southwestern Guizhou province, China’s poorest. Officers have already determined through DNA checks that the boy - 10-months-old when he was taken and now nearly three - is indeed Mr Wang’s son. After completing the paperwork and other bureaucratic formalities, the boy will be able to go home.

Mr Wang was undeterred by the difficulties he will face to reintroduce the child back into his home.

He said: “The first thing I want to do his cook him a meal. I want him to eat his father’s cooking.”

Many more child victims of China’s lucrative baby-trafficking trade remain unclaimed.

Police say they will issue yet more pictures of rescued children as their six-month-old battle against theft of children gains momentum after groups of parents began to publicise their plight. The pictures have been released because the usual methods of DNA testing and detective work were not always enough to track down the families of stolen children.

Police said they have recovered 2,008 kidnapped children since their latest campaign began on April 9. It was not clear how many of those abducted children had been returned to their real families.

The recovered children are likely to be a fraction of the total that disappear into China’s child trafficking industry. Police say between 30,000 to 60,000 children are reported missing each year, though not all of those have been taken.

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