Power of retweeting

Yu started the campaign in the form of a snapshot micro blog, and it has expanded to an online network of more than 220,000 people. They frequently exchange messages and routinely retweet photos of child beggars and missing children, trying to reach as many people as possible.

"It is as easy as lifting a finger, and we might have helped people, why not," Jiang You, 28, said Sunday. A computer engineer from Fujian province, he had just published his snapshot of a 2-year-old child beggar to the network.

"And guess what," he said. "That piece of micro blog of mine was retweeted over 1,500 times within a day. It shows people's hatred for traffickers and compassion for abducted children."

Through Yu's team and tens of thousands of netizens, more than 3,000 tweets with children's pictures and other details were collected and published via the network, with each one retweeted hundreds to thousands of times. "I now have six volunteers helping me with the campaign," Yu told China Daily. "They are based everywhere and they take turns to manage the micro blog."

Yu and his team met over the weekend to discuss operational problems and development plans.

"Whenever we see a micro blog revealing a possible abduction case, we pass on the information to the police for verification," Yu said. "Our volunteers are sorting out all the sources. We will try to set up a child beggar database for further investigation."

At the same time, micro blogs have proved effective at finding missing children.