China’s vast population of internet users has taken the hunt online for the 40,000 people still missing after the devastating earthquake that struck Sichuan province last week.

Dozens of forums and websites have sprung up for users to post names and photographs of their missing family and friends in the hope that among China’s 210 million netizens, someone will have news of their loved ones.

Eight days after the 7.8-magnitude quake struck, the confirmed death toll has risen to just over 34,000 and is predicted to exceed 71,000. Liu Qibao, Sichuan’s Communist party chief, said that 9,509 people were still believed to be buried under the debris, and 29,418 others were missing.

“The women I love most in the world is in Sichuan,” wrote Zongxu0711 on a forum called Let’s Search For Earthquake Survivors.

“She is called Ren Ying…Baby, are you reading this? Perhaps you thought I had forgotten you, but I haven’t. After all these years, you are still in my heart.”

He continued: “If you are dead, I want to be with you. If you are still alive, I only hope you are not married so we can give things another go.”

Zongxu0711 gave out his phone number: “I’ll be waiting for you at Tianjin train station. I know you’ll call.””

At another forum called “Your loved ones are our loved ones”, a desperate husband searched for his wife.

Underneath a photo of the 35-year-old woman with the couple’s young child, Applebamboo wrote: “If any of you have seen my wife, please get in touch with me immediately.

“She was on a trip to Jiuzhaigou at the epicentre of the earthquake when we lost contact.”

On a recently created website called People Search, users can log details of those they are searching for on an automated form. To the side of the page, the names of the registered missing scroll upwards like never-ending film credits.

“Apart from money, material goods and blood donations, information is also valuable,” wrote the website’s founder. “Let it become another kind of rescue tool.

“Wherever you are, we will find you.”

Many of the posters on these forums and websites will never receive the good news they are hoping for. A lucky few however, may.

Even as it reaches 120 hours past the 72-hour “golden relief period”, beyond which, buried earthquake victims struggle to keep going without food and water, rescue workers are still uncovering a slow trickle of survivors.

The Chinese state news agency reported today that a 31-year-old man had been pulled out alive from a flattened power plant in the early hours of this morning after a 30 hour rescue operation.

Ma Yuanjiang, the director of the plant in the small town of Yingxiu, near the quake’s epicentre, had been buried for 179 hours.

He was the second survivor to be found alive more than one week after the earthquake. Nine hours earlier, Peng Guohua, a miner, was rescued. He was transferred to a military medical team in Mianyang and is said to be in a stable condition.

A total of 6,375 survivors have been dug out from quake debris, the Chinese authorities said this morning, and 360,159 people have been relocated to safer ground away from the ruins of their homes.

The death toll is expected to exceed 50,000, and millions have been left homeless.

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