TOKYO - JAPANESE police on Thursday arrested a Chinese man following an Interpol request, an official said, amid reports he is a suspected member of a gang that has kidnapped children in his home country.

Police suspect He Guangqiang, 39, entered Japan on a fake passport two years ago and has stayed at a Tokyo apartment ever since, a spokesman at the metropolitan police department said.

The suspect was caught after international police agency Interpol in Beijing requested Japanese cooperation, the official said, without giving further information. The suspect was expected to be extradited to China shortly.

Media reports said He was a suspected member of a kidnap gang responsible for the 2005-2007 disappearances of three children in China. Two of the three have been found but one remains missing, the reports said.

He, living under a false identity, had been working at a food processing company in Japan's capital, the reports said.

China has recently launched its sixth nationwide campaign to fight human trafficking, where children are often stolen and adopted by families or used as cheap labour.

According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, around 3,000 kidnap cases involving women and children are reported and investigated in China every year.

Some experts estimate that 10,000 to 20,000 people have been abducted annually in China. -- AFP