Police rescued two babies from an illegal clinic in Shenzhen as an unlicensed midwife was trying to sell them, a south China newspaper reported yesterday.

Officers from the Longhua police station in the Guangdong Province city raided the black-market infirmary at about 11:30 am on Tuesday just as Liu Jun, the midwife and the clinic's owner, was negotiating to sell the children - a 12-day-old girl and a two-month-old boy, the Nanfang Metropolis Daily reported.

The chain of events that led to the discovery began when Liu allegedly told one of her patients she was selling two abandoned babies. She said the boy belonged to an unmarried migrant worker whose boyfriend went missing and the girl was born to a couple from Jiangxi Province who already had two daughters and wanted a boy.

After her meeting with Liu, who said she had delivered the babies, the woman called the newspaper.

Liu allegedly told a reporter who visited the clinic that the girl could be bought for 20,000 yuan (US$2,924) and the boy 50,000 yuan.

The midwife reportedly said the babies were unnamed and had no memories of their families. Their parents would not be looking for them and there would be no trouble adopting them, she said, adding that she had spent a lot of money on them, according to the newspaper account.

After being tipped by the reporter, the police took the babies to a local hospital and contacted the parents of the girl in Jiangxi. There was no report on whether the police had detained Liu. Abandoning or selling babies in China is a crime.

(Shanghai Daily February 19, 2009)