Photo: Sina Weibo

A 17-year-old boy in North China's Hebei Province who committed suicide on Monday had claimed that he was a victim of child trafficking and had been rejected by his birth parents. The local police said on Monday that the case is being investigated.
 
The local police in Datong, North China's Shanxi Province said they have received several reports about the boy who claimed to be a victim of child trafficking. The case is under investigation and they will issue a notice to the public when the results come out, The Paper reported on Monday.

One police officer said the boy's birth parents had been asked for a written statement. The boy's relatives said he had received antidepressants for over a year, according to media reports.

The boy named Liu Xuezhou was found to have committed suicide by taking antidepressants of an excessive dosage at a beach in Sanya, South China's Hainan Province early on Monday morning. Liu was rushed to hospital by a passerby but still died around 4 am on Monday, The Paper reported. 

Weibo administrators have cleared 290 illegal posts related to Liu for leaking personal privacy and provoking conflict, and they called on netizens to be objective and rational. Weibo will add new functions to protect users' privacy including blocking comments and private message attacks.

Before he committed suicide, Liu posted a long post on his Sina Weibo account in which he recalled that his short life was destined for misfortune.

According to the post, Liu was born when his biological parents were not married. The young couple gave him away to his adoptive parents through a human trafficker in exchange for thousands of yuan as a bride-price to pay his mother's family. 

Liu's relatives later claimed that they spent 27,000 yuan ($4,259) to receive a boy, according to media reports.

In 2009, when Liu was 4 years old, Liu's adoptive parents both died in an explosion caused by fireworks and firecrackers at home. He dodged the bullet of tragedy since he slept at his grandparents' home. However, he did not have good fortune after surviving the great disaster. 

As an orphan, Liu constantly suffered from bullying at primary school and was even molested by a male teacher during junior high school. The aunt of his adoptive family treated him like her own child but left him and passed away after she got divorced. 

Since childhood, he had heard hearsay that he was an adopted child. After he confirmed it with his grandparents, he posted a video on the website where abducted children's information is released to look for his biological parents. Many netizens were concerned about him and offered him help to find his biological parents. 

On December 15, 2021, the police in Linfen, North China's Shanxi Province found Liu's biological father through DNA matching technologies but told him that his biological parents had divorced and got remarried to start new families. 

Although Liu finally met his biological parents in person, in Liu's words, the reunion between them seemed to be a mere formality, nothing like that of other parents who found their long-lost abducted children. Both his biological mother and father, who had established new families and had new children, were unwilling to take him back. According to Liu, he had three half-brothers and one half-sister from his biological parents. 

After he proposed to his parents to buy or rent a house for him since he had been staying in others' homes, his parents cut off contact with him and his mother even blocked him on WeChat. 

He later suffered from cyberbullying after exposing online his conversations with his mother, with many netizens criticizing that he just wanted a house from his parents and smearing him for his clothing style, which Liu explained was made up of counterfeit brands which he bought with his part-time job income. 

He had thought of proposing a civil action against his parents for abandoning him but dropped the idea. He posted last Tuesday about his adoptive parents' house that exploded and questioned if it was his fault to ask for his biological parents to provide him with accommodation. 

Liu posted his last words online at 2 minutes past midnight on Monday and swallowed dozens of antidepressant pills at a beach in Sanya. The local police confirmed his death at around 4 am. 

Many netizens felt sympathetic for his sufferings and death, and reflected on how to avoid such a miserable matter in the future. 

Global Times