Parents believed the 'one child' policy did not apply

In its report, the Southern Weekend said the eighteen baby boys were seized in early morning raids.

Shock

Several family members who argued with police were detained for two weeks, and the adoptive grandmother of one of the babies has become deranged as a result of the shock.

The authorities in Jinjiang said the children had been adopted without official registration and their removal was a warning to others not to follow suit.

But the newspaper said the action appeared to break local rules which state that the punishment for illegal adoption should be a cash fine.

The paper noted that police had not removed any illegally adopted girls, reportedly saying that nobody would want a female child.

Trusted census

The children's existence apparently only came to light because their families had trusted official propaganda for China's national census.

World Populations

China 1.3bn India 1bn United States 275m Indonesia 210m

Source: UN Population Division

This promised that no action would be taken against parents who declared children born or adopted outside China's strict family planning regulations.

The Southern Weekend suggested the authorities may have removed the babies because they did not want the embarrassment of large numbers of previously unregistered children showing up in their census figures.

The adoptive parents say they are willing to pay fines to get their children back.

They claim the new foster parents are unable to take care of the children because they're too poor or in bad health.

Several clashes are reported to have taken place between the new foster families and parents seeking to reclaim their children.

Desire for male heirs

According to the Southern Weekend, some of the adoptive parents were unable to have their own children and so were entitled to adopt if they had the correct documents.

Other families said they had taken the babies to help out friends who could not bring them up.

The traditional desire of farmers in the Chinese countryside to have a male heir has led to frequent breaches of rules allowing only two children per family in rural areas.

It has also led to the kidnapping of many children for sale to childless families, something which Chinese police have been seeking to stamp out in recent years.