Guangzhou police reported on March 21 that Xie, nicknamed “Aunt Mei” and suspected of trafficking multiple children, has been arrested recently. Police claimed that Xie’s physical features highly resemble those of “Aunt Mei,” leading to a successful breakthrough in the case. However, sources revealed to the media that the captured Xie’s appearance bears less than a 30% similarity to the suspect portrait previously released by the police. This discrepancy in the police’s explanation has stirred greater public suspicion.
Last Saturday (March 21), the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau issued a report announcing the arrest of Xie, a key accomplice in the child trafficking case orchestrated by Zhang Weiping and others, known as “Aunt Mei.” The police stated that with Xie’s capture, the child trafficking case spanning over 20 years has been solved.
According to the police report, a breakthrough occurred last year when the task force discovered a woman surnamed Xie whose physical features and activities closely matched those of “Aunt Mei.” After months of further verification, it was confirmed that this woman, Xie, was indeed the long-fugitive “Aunt Mei.” Recently, the task force successfully apprehended Xie, who confessed to the crime of trafficking children during interrogation.
Many netizens are curious about the appearance of the captured Xie as, years ago, the police had released a simulated portrait of “Aunt Mei.”
News coverage indicates that from September 2003 to December 2005, a criminal gang led by Zhang Weiping operated in areas like Zengcheng in Guangzhou and Boluo in Huizhou, using deception and home invasions to abduct nine boys aged 1 to 3. “Aunt Mei” was responsible for their resale.
The father of abducted child Shen Cong, named Shen Junliang, resigned from his position as a factory manager, sold properties, and traveled across much of China in search of his son’s whereabouts. The father of another abducted child, Little Yang, Mr. Yang, tragically took his own life unable to bear the pain of his son’s abduction.
Under public pressure, the Ministry of Public Security of the Communist Party of China, and the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department jointly established a provincial, municipal, and district-level task force to investigate the case. In 2016, Zhang Weiping and five others were captured, leading to the identification of “Aunt Mei,” the crucial figure in child trafficking. However, key information about “Aunt Mei,” such as her real identity, remained elusive.
A previous report by The Cover News stated that “Aunt Mei’s” boyfriend recalled that his then-girlfriend, self-identified as “Pan Dongmei,” claimed to have two daughters, hailed from Guangzhou, was in her fifties, and would leave after staying for two days without allowing anyone to see her ID.
In June 2017, Zengcheng police in Guangzhou issued a reward notice describing “Aunt Mei” as 1.5 meters tall, Cantonese-speaking, and knowledgeable in Hakka dialect, active in both Zengcheng and the Xinfeng area of Shaoguan. The notice also included a black-and-white portrait of “Aunt Mei.”
In March 2019, Lin Yuhui, a portrait expert and former senior engineer at the Shandong Provincial Public Security Department’s Forensic Identification Center, was invited by the police to create a portrait of “Aunt Mei.”
Lin Yuhui told the media that he met with an elderly man and his daughter who had lived with “Aunt Mei” previously and described her physical features to him. Based on their descriptions, he spent four to five hours drawing the initial simulated portrait. The witnesses at the time believed the resemblance between his portrait and the real person was 90%. (In 2023, using the first portrait as a reference, Lin Yuhui created an updated portrait of “Aunt Mei” with a slightly older appearance.)
However, following Guangzhou police’s announcement of “Aunt Mei’s” capture, a report by Yangcheng Evening News mentioned sources revealing that Xie, also known as “Aunt Mei,” had undergone significant facial changes, with a similarity to the previously released portrait being less than 30%.
The contradiction between the above statement and the police report claiming a high resemblance between Xie and “Aunt Mei” has sparked public skepticism. Chinese netizens questioned, “The police said they caught the suspect based on a high resemblance between Xie’s appearance and Aunt Mei, but now they claim there’s only a 30% similarity between her and the portrait.” “Did this person undergo plastic surgery?”
Wu Shaoping, head of the Overseas Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Alliance, expressed to NTD that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has lost societal credibility. In order to conceal its flaws, the CCP engages in various fabrications and could potentially resort to falsehoods in solving cases like this.
Mr. Wang, who has worked in the Chinese judiciary for over 20 years, stated that the primary goal of the CCP’s public security is to maintain the Party’s rule. In political cases, they invest more effort, while in other cases, they delay and conceal as much as possible. They do not prioritize the security of people’s lives, property, or the issue of human trafficking.
In recent years, the CCP has aggressively promoted so-called organ donation, even forcibly drawing blood from primary school students. Meanwhile, the number of missing cases involving Chinese teenagers has been increasing, leading many to suspect a connection to the CCP’s heinous practice of organ harvesting.
According to the data in the “China Missing Persons White Paper (2020),” there were a staggering one million missing cases in China in 2020 alone, with the actual number of disappeared individuals likely even higher.