China's lost children: Adoptees search for answers

China opened its doors to international adoption in 1992. Since then, over 150,000 Chinese babies have been adopted by foreign couples. The objective was to match abandoned children with would-be parents. But what we discovered during this report is that many infants had received incomplete or even forged documentation, putting into question the very nature of their presence in an orphanage.

Indeed, at the height of China's one-child policy, some babies were torn away from their families and sold for overseas adoption. Others were kidnapped and sold to childless couples, or even brideless men in China. Chinese authorities have since cracked down on such trafficking. They set up a DNA database in 2009 to ensure children were not actively being sought after by a family member before domestic or international adoption. Today, this database is also being used to match adoptees with their birth families.

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But the wounds of the past are still raw for victims. The parents who lost their children three decades ago hang on to old photographs. The adopted babies of the one-child policy era are now adults. Some of them have more questions than answers about their origins.

In this documentary, we follow one adoptee on a quest to find out more about her background. Ten years after the end of the controversial family planning policy, we look at what happened to China's lost children.