Calls on social media to hand down death sentences to anyone involved in child trafficking have created a heated debate on appropriate punishment for such offenses.

A post with pictures and stories of abducted children on the messaging app WeChat that called for the child traffickers to get the death penalty had been reposted 540,000 times by Thursday evening. Currently, only the most serious trafficking crimes are punishable by death. The minimum penalty is five years in prison.

Last year, police rescued more than 13,000 abducted children. Some of the children had been sold to one of a growing number of childless families.