Touching moment kidnapped Chinese man is reunited with his father - 24 years after he was stolen and sold to childless couple

Chinese kidnapping victim Sun Bin collapses in tears - as he’s reunited with his real father 24 years after he was taken and sold to a childless couple.

Sun, now aged 28, was snatched off the streets at a food market in Chengdu, Sichuan province and sold in Xuzhou, almost 1000 miles away, in 1991.

He always knew he had been kidnapped, but had also grown attached to his adoptive parents.

But when a sample of his DNA handed in to a government backed database revealed that his real father was still alive, and had also submitted DNA in the hope that his son might one day turn up, he admitted that he was filled with joy.

His dad Ku, 45, had given up looking for his son by 1995, after spending four years travelling around China with his wife Lo in the hope of discovering the boy.

The young man decided in 2010 that he wanted to start the search for his parents and gave a DNA sample which went into the database that had been started in 1994.

His father had also made a donation of his DNA, and it is not clear why took so long for the match to be made. The young man's mother had died in 2011.

And it was arranged for him to meet his father, and the sister he never knew he had. They were reunited this week in touching, emotional scenes.

Sun Bin said: ‘The fact that they had paid the men who stole me from my real parents always meant there was a distance between us at least a start, but I admit I grew to love them for their kindness as years went by. When I was old enough to start to look for my real parents on my own, I didn't tell them at first because I didn't want to upset them. But I knew that I had to try and find my real parents.'

'I don't want them to be punished, and I will look after and care for both my families.'

Sun’s father Ku added: ‘I still have this photo that was taken of him four days before he vanished. I had been working selling vegetables in a food market in Chengdu and had taken him with me. I was dealing with a customer and when I looked round he had gone.

'All I had left of him was this photo taken during the mid-autumn festival, when he was four years and 15-days-old. My wife and I travelled everywhere, and she became sick with worry over the years. She used to suffer from blackouts and I believe it was part of the reason that she eventually died before her time.'

'I gave up in 1995 because I need to spend time with the child I did have, and look after her health and provide for her. Before that though I travelled all over the country, every time there was a lead, followed it up. We found so many rescue children but we never found our son, and in 1995 we drew a line under it and stopped.'

He said he had not expected much from the DNA database and was overjoyed when he got the call to say his son had been found.

Police from Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province, said they are investigating the case and have arrested a suspect surnamed Wang and accomplices who sold Sun Bin to a couple, husband Wang and wife Luo, in the city of Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, for the sum of £250.