Longhui

Beekeeper Lu Kongjiang gestures as he wears tens of thousands of bees during a bee bearding contest in Longhui county, Shaoyang, in central China's Hunan province.

NY Daily News GABRIELA RESTO-MONTERO 2011

In a scandal that has drawn widespread coverage, parents and grandparents claim that officials from Longhui, a county supervised by Shaoyang, illegally seized at least 16 children between 1999 and 2006 because of alleged violations of family planning rules.

NYT > Home Page By SHARON LaFRANIERE 2011

Zeng Dingbao, who leads the Inspection Bureau in Shaoyang, the city that administers Longhui County, has promised a diligent investigation.

NYT > Home Page By SHARON LaFRANIERE 2011

Mr. Yuan's daughter was among at least 16 children who were seized by family planning officials between 1999 and late 2006 in Longhui County, an impoverished rural area in Hunan, a southern Chinese province, parents, grandparents and other residents said in interviews last month.

NYT > Home Page By SHARON LaFRANIERE 2011

The practice in Longhui came to an end in 2006, parents said, only after an 8-month-old boy fell from the second-floor balcony of a local family planning office as officials tried to pluck him from his mother's arms.

NYT > Home Page By SHARON LaFRANIERE 2011

Despite a few news reports outside the Chinese mainland about government-sanctioned kidnappings in Longhui and other regions, China's state-controlled media ignored or suppressed the news until this May, when

NYT > Home Page By SHARON LaFRANIERE 2011

A Hunan-based Web news portal said the officials were guilty of "negligence and handling work in a simplistic way." a scandal that has drawn widespread coverage, parents and grandparents claim that officials from Longhui, a county that is administered by Shaoyang, illegally seized at least 16 children between 1999 and 2006 because of allegations that family planning rules were violated.

NYT > Home Page By SHARON LaFRANIERE 2011

In a scandal that has drawn widespread coverage, parents and grandparents claim that officials from Longhui, a county supervised by Shaoyang, illegally seized at least 16 children between 1999 and 2006 because of alleged violations of family planning rules.

NYT > Home Page By SHARON LaFRANIERE 2011

Thus Yuan Chaoren, a villager from Longhui county in Hunan province, describing in

The Economist: Daily news and views 2011

But parents in Longhui say that in their case, it was local government officials who treated babies as a source of revenue, routinely imposing fines of $1,000 or more - five times as much as an average local family's yearly income.

NYT > Home Page By SHARON LaFRANIERE 2011