This was the headline of a front page article in the New York Times in late July. Although attention throughout the summer focused close to home on the escalating debate on Health Care Reform and the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the haunting story from China was one that deserved sharing in 'Dimensions.' Here it is.

Each student in China has a file, called a dangan, a sealed Manila envelope stamped top secret that contains test results, grades, and evaluations by teachers and fellow students. As students progress through high school and college, the Communist Party application is included, most important for any future job prospects. The files, locked away in school, government or workplace cabinets, are irreplaceable and essential to the future of every student. During the past years, a growing number of college graduates from poor families have discovered that their files have been stolen. They describe this terrible event as having "lost their identities and their futures."

The town of Wubu is a case in point. Located on the banks of the Yellow River in north-central China, it is surrounded by steep hills and coal mines. Most families struggle with poverty and sacrifice to send their children to high school - some make it to college. Two years ago, a dozen college graduates with outstanding academic records, all from poor families, learned that their files had vanished. Local officials said the files were lost when state officials moved them from the first to the second floor of a government building. The graduates charge that the local officials stole them to sell to other students who were underachievers who would adopt the new identities. Similar incidents have been occurring across China with almost no recourse for the students and their families.

Xue Longlong, one of the Wubu students, is from a family who live near a dirt mountain path, cooking over a wood fire and drinking well water. They earn only $450 a year growing dates and had hoped that education for their oldest son, Longlong, would be the way out of poverty. A strong student, he wore second hand clothes and skipped meals in high school. When he won admission to a university, 400 miles away, his parents borrowed $1,500 to cover the expenses and Longlong worked while in college. He was aiming at a job with an oil company that would pay $735 a month. Then his Manila file disappeared. "It was a catastrophe!" he said. Now, he earns a base salary of $90 a month as a door-to-door real estate salesman.

Longlong also lost the woman he had hoped to marry when her parents said he would never have a good paying job. In his own family, his mother suffered a nervous collapse and his father said they now owed more than $10,000 for his college expenses - more than twice what their property was worth. "What is the point of continuing to live?" he said. "Sometimes I want to commit suicide. These corrupt officials destroyed all our hopes." Longlong's younger sister, in 11th grade, now says, "I want to quit. My brother graduated from college. What good did it do him?"

The story of this one family is repeated across China as the corruption of local officials has been recognized as a national scandal in the Communist Party. In 2005, teachers in Jilin Province, caught selling two students files for $2,500 and $3,600 were suspected of planning to sell twelve more. In May, 2009, the former head of a township government in Hunan Province admitted he had bought the file of a high school classmate of his daughter for $7,000 so she could attend college. Yet, President Hu Jintao said in October 2008 that a clean party is "a matter of life and death." And reformers argue that a one-party system encourages graft while party leaders call for better oversight and crime fighting. In June, 2009, the government created an anti-corruption hot line for whistle blowers and a few local areas require officials to disclose their family assets. Of course, "a few areas" in a country as vast as China is inconsequential.

Follow-up by government officials to complaints from families of students with stolen files has been negative and harsh. For two years, parents in Wubu sought help at every level of the bureaucracy in their province and beyond. Their complaints and calls for inquiry were rejected. Instead the parents were placed under police surveillance and repeatedly detained. In Feburary, 2009, five parents trying to petition the national government were locked in a jail in Beijing for nine days. "We are so exhausted," said one mother. "Our nerves are about to snap from the torture. The officials who were responsible not only have not been punished, they have been promoted."

One of the Wubu college graduates whose file was stolen, Wang Jindong, lost his chance for a position at a state chemical firm. He is now a construction laborer, earning less than $10 a day. He said of his lost file, "If you don't have it, just forget it! No matter how capable you are, they will not hire you. Their first reaction is that you are a crook." A Chinese television journalist reported that he had asked Wubu officials how they were resolving the matter of the lost files. They answered that they were creating new folders. But families said the new folders had none of the original signed documents collected over years in grade school, high school and college. They hold brief resumes filled with errors that future employers would reject as fake.

Wang Jindong summed up the big picture as well as his personal loss, saying, "When the central government talks about the economy and development, it sounds so great. But at the local level, corrupt officials make all their money off of local people."

Joyce S. Anderson is the author of "Courage in High Heels," "Flaw in the Tapestry," "If Winter Comes" and "The Mermaids Singing." She can be reached at JSAWrite@aol.com.