Context behind this question:
So I watched some Chinese Youtubers recently (apparantly they crossed the firewall and there is a “trend” of this recently? not sure…) and watching some footage, which then triggered some old memories, again…
So when I was a kid in Guangzhou City, it was like 2008 and I had issues with home (fight with older brother) so I remember “running away” (not actually running away just impulse decision lol, I was 6 years old, what was I gonna do? no survival skills lmao) from home for a few hours… and I wandered like a very long distance away from home so when I came back several hours later, I noticed the police were only searching nearby my house, they might not have found me if I didn’t get scared and decide to come back myself.
So fast forward to now, with all these cameras everywhere…
Hypothetically, if I was a kid again and I did that same “running away” thing, how long would it take for the police to find me? Like one hour? 10 minutes?
Like I can imagine them just stopping me within 5 minutes and be like: (in Mandarin) “Hey kid where to do think you’re going? Stop being a disobedient child and go back home” 💀
Okay maybe this is a stupid question, lol (still kinda traumatized from that day, so this is sort of cartharisis for me)


According to World Population Review, about 109 countries publicly report missing children statistics and China is not one of them. I don’t think that’s any indication of not having missing children, rather that they’re apathetic to the entire concept.