Lu Libing knew he had only one choice as the birth of his third child approached. He couldn't afford hefty fines that would be meted out by Chinese authorities, so he put the unborn child up for adoption.
On the Internet he found "A Home Where Dreams Come True", a website touted as China's biggest online adoption forum, part of an industry that has been largely unregulated for years.
Expectant couples, unwilling or unable to keep their children, go to the website looking for adoptive parents rather than abort their babies or abandon them.
There are no clear statistics on how many people use these websites but "A Home Where Dreams Come True" said 37,841 babies had been adopted through its website from 2007 to August 2017.
More than 380 babies were rescued and 1,094 people arrested when the government cracked down on the industry last month. Adoption websites such as "A Home Where Dreams Come True", whose founder was arrested, were shut because they were deemed illegal and responsible for the trafficking of babies.
An official with China's state-run adoption agency, the China Centre for Children's Welfare and Adoption, said parents could apply to the civil affairs ministry to give up children.
The official, who declined to be identified, said it was "definitely wrong" to use websites.
"These are children, not commodities," the official said.
Baby trafficking has been a perennial problem in China and recent reports on online trafficking rings show how an underground industry has made use of the Internet to connect people quickly, making it easier to buy and sell babies. This has presented a new challenge for the government.
Demand for such websites has been fuelled by rural poverty, China's one-child policy, limiting most couples of only one child, and desperate, childless couples.
Lu, 30, who asked to use a pseudonym for fear of official retribution, lives on the outskirts of Ganzhou in southern Jiangxi province, a barren place scarred by water contamination and heavy metal pollution.
He and his wife, Mu, live from hand to mouth in a two-bedroom home in an unfinished block. Their two children, aged two-and-a-half and 10 months, live with Lu's parents in northern Shaanxi province.
"SEEKING HONEST FAMILIES"
He says he would have to pay family planning fines of about 50,000 yuan to 80,000 yuan ($8,000-$12,800) for the third child, more than 10 times his monthly income.
Mu is five months pregnant. Lu wrote on his first post on the website on February 24 that he could not raise the child and was "seeking honest families who are willing to adopt".
The post drew 40 responses. During his interview with Reuters he received a call from a prospective adoptive mother who was worried he may have been arrested after state media reported on the crackdown earlier that day.
Lu said there was no hope of sending the new child to school or paying the necessary fines to secure a "hukou", or household registration. Failure to pay would make his baby an undocumented "black child" with no access to schooling or healthcare.
Baby trafficking has been encouraged by the one-child policy and a traditional bias for sons, who support elderly parents and continue the family name, leading to the abandonment of girls. Even as China starts to relax the one-child policy, allowing millions of families to have a second child, it still penalizes people who flout the rules.
Traffickers have often resorted to kidnapping. In late February, state news agency Xinhua warned parents to guard against kidnappers who could pose as nurses in hospitals or lie in wait outside school gates.
The increasing use of websites is changing adoption from what was once a hush-hush process between friends to one where details can be shared anonymously with strangers over the Tencent QQ instant messaging service.
Many Chinese Internet users were outraged after media reports of the crackdown.
Much of the anger was directed at Zhou Daifu, the 27-year-old founder of "A Home Where Dreams Come True". Zhou denied being involved in baby trafficking but acknowledged that traffickers surfed his website.
"Whenever we find suspicious cases of human trafficking, we always tell the police," he told Reuters in December. "But it seems to me that they just don't care."
"GRATITUDE FEES"
Reuters spoke to three "agents" who used Zhou's website to sell children. One, a man who declined to be named and was brokering the adoption of three girls, said he gave several thousand yuan to the birth parents and charged the adoptive parents more than 10,000 yuan.
About 70 percent of the parents giving their babies away asked for 30,000 to 50,000 yuan, Zhou said.
It is unclear whether such parents could face criminal charges. China's Supreme People's Court said selling children for profit constituted trafficking, although accepting "fees for nutrition" and a "gratitude fee" were not illegal.
Yi Yi, a Beijing-based adoption lawyer, believes such websites should be regulated but not banned, saying they meet the needs of a growing population.
Some 10,000 children were abandoned in China every year, said Wang Zhenyao, president of the China Welfare Research Institute at Beijing Normal University. Media reports say many of these are girls and disabled children.
Of 280 posts on "A Home Where Dreams Come True" from July to September 2017, Reuters found that people were giving away 98 baby girls and 61 boys. The others did not indicate a gender.
Some of the parents using the website told Reuters their pregnancies were the result of extra-marital relationships, while others were in a similar position to Lu Libing and his wife.
Lu had initially short-listed three people to adopt his unborn child but said he was leaning towards a housewife in her late 30s. The woman offered to let the child meet his or her birth parents and siblings when the child turns 18, but Lu wasn't sure that was a good idea.
"The child will hate us," he said. "Just think, if he's in his teens and he suddenly finds out that his biological parents are not his current father and mother, how would he feel? I think it would be a huge blow."
陆礼冰（音）知道，面临即将出生的第三个孩子，他只有一种选择。因为付不起中国政府要求的高额罚款，他决定把即将出生的孩子给别人收养。
他在网上发现了名为“圆梦之家”的网站，它被吹捧为中国最大的网上收养平台，属于一个多年来基本不受监管的行业。
准父母们因为不想或无法抚养孩子，就会在这个网站寻找孩子的养父母，而非选择堕胎或者抛弃孩子。
没有明确的数据统计使用这类网站的人数。但是，“圆梦之家”网站称，从2007年到2017年的八月，有37,841个婴儿通过该网站得到收养。
上个月，政府打压该行业，逮捕了1094个人，并救出380多个婴儿。包括“圆梦之家”在内的众多收养网站的创始人遭到逮捕，网站也被关停，因为他们涉嫌非法贩卖婴儿，对此负有责任。
中国儿童福利和收养中心是中国官方收养机构，一位该机构的官员称：“父母可以向民政部门申请放弃抚养孩子”。
这位不愿透露姓名的官员称，使用这些网站是“绝对错误”的。
他说：“他们是孩子，并不是商品”。
在中国，拐卖儿童一直是个长期存在的问题。而且最近关于贩卖团伙的报道揭示了地下行业是如何使用网络快速联系买卖双方，从而更容易买卖婴儿。对政府来说，这是一项新的挑战。
对此类网站需求起推动作用的是以下原因：农村的贫困情况、中国的计划生育政策、限制大多数夫妻只能有一个孩子以及那些绝望的无子女夫妻。
30岁的陆先生住在江西省南部的赣州郊区，水污染和重金属污染给这个贫瘠的地方带来了严重的影响。为了避免政府的惩罚，他要求使用化名。
他和妻子穆女士住在一间未供完按揭的两室房屋，收入勉强糊口。他们有两个孩子，一个两岁半，一个只有十个月大，都跟着爷爷奶奶住在陕北。
“寻找可靠的家庭”
陆说，因为第三个孩子，他不得不支付计划生育的罚款，数额高达5万到8万元不等(8千—1.28万美元)，这些钱比他月收入的十倍还多。
穆太太已经有五个月的身孕了。2月24号，陆在网站上发了第一个帖子，说他无力抚养孩子，并且在寻找那些“愿意收养孩子的可靠家庭”。
该帖子得到了40个回复。当天早上，在官方媒体报道了政府对此行业打压之后，陆接到孩子未来养母的电话，她担心陆可能已经被捕了。那时陆正接受路透社记者的采访。
陆说，送第三个孩子上学，或为了给孩子上户口而支付必要的罚款都是不可能的事。付不起罚款，他的孩子就成了非法的“黑户”，不能享有教育和医疗服务。
由于计划生育政策和传统的重男轻女观念助长了贩卖婴儿的风气。因为儿子可以抚养年迈的父母并延续家族的姓氏，所以女儿往往遭到人们的抛弃。即使中国开始放松单独一胎的政策，允许成千上万的家庭生第二胎，但它依然惩罚那些违反规定的人。
人贩子常常采取诱拐儿童的手段。二月下旬，新华社提醒父母防范诱拐者，这些人可能装作医院的护士，或者在校门外埋伏以待。
越来越多的人使用收养网站，这让收养过程从原本的朋友间秘密进行变成了通过腾讯即时聊天工具匿名与陌生人谈论细节。
在媒体报道打压事件之后，许多中国网民义愤填膺。
大部分人把愤怒的矛头都指向了27岁的“圆梦之家”创始人周代富。虽然周否认参与贩卖儿童，但是他承认人贩子曾浏览过其网站。
他于去年12月份对路透社说道：“我们一发现有可疑的人口贩卖情况都会报警，但是在我看来，他们根本就不怕。”
“感恩费”
路透社与三个使用过周的网站卖出孩子的“中介”进行对话。其中一名男子拒绝透露真实姓名，他促成了三个女孩的收养。他表示，自己给了孩子的亲生父母几千块钱，然后向养父母索取一万多元。
周说，大约有70%的弃养父母要求获取3万到5万元的补偿。
目前还不清楚这些父母是否会面临刑事起诉。中国最高人民法院称，为了盈利而售卖孩子是非法交易，但是接受‘营养费’和‘感恩费’并不违法。
北京的一名收养法律师易毅（音译）认为这类网站应该进行监管而不是遭到禁止，因为它们满足了不断增长的人口需要。
北京师范大学中国公益研究院院长王振耀称，在中国，每年大约有一万个孩子遭到遗弃。媒体报道称，当中许多都是女孩和残疾儿童。
在“圆梦之家”2017年7月到9月的280个帖子中，路透社发现，98个女婴和61个男婴遭到抛弃，其他的并没有指明性别。
一些使用该网站的父母对路透社说道，他们因为婚外恋导致怀孕。而其他父母的处境则与陆礼冰及其妻子相类似。
陆最初有三个收养人选，但是他更倾向于其中一个将近40岁的家庭主妇。她主动提出当孩子满18周岁时就让他和亲生父母见面，但是陆并不确定这是不是个好主意。
他说：“孩子会恨我们的，试想看看，如果孩子在十几岁的时候突然发现自己不是父母亲生的，他会有什么样的感受？我想这可能会是个巨大的打击。”
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