The Washington Post

Sunday saw the publication of another article dealing with the Hunan baby-trafficking story, one that is intended to convince adoptive families that their child was possibly abducted instead of abandoned, and that foreign adoption is the root of the problem of child abductions in China.

Since I assisted Peter Goodman in the researching of his article, let me start by saying that Peter's article is accurate in presenting information on several disturbing trends in Chinese culture. Children are regularly abducted in China. The newspapers are filled with stories of missing children. There is no doubt that the episodes he describes in his article happened.

Second, it is a fact that the foreign adoption program has had a huge impact on the "value" of infant children in the Chinese orphanages. As I described in "The Finances of Baby-Trafficking", the orphanages that deal with foreign adopting families have made it more difficult for domestic families to adopt. As hard as one tries to refute these points, they are fact.

However, Peter tries to connect dots in the story that I feel can't be connected. Neither of the children profiled in his story ended up in an orphanage. None of the evidence (except for the Government-issued verdict, which is not evidence) in the trial of the participants in the Hengyang County trafficking case suggested that the children were abducted. In fact, ALL involved insisted they were not. Nevertheless, Peter boldly asserts (including in the title to his piece) that abducted children were adopted internationally. This is speculation, unsupported by fact.

I have spoken with directors of orphanages who have confirmed that they too have been approached by traffickers offering infants for sale. A Google search of the trafficking stories in China over the past few years reveals a common M.O. for traffickers -- contacting a trusted local representative, often a doctor in a birthing hospital. This person solicits birth parents that do not wish to keep their newborn child. The birth parents are told that contacts have been made to find their child a good home. The birth parents relinquish their child, since their alternatives are abandoning the child themselves, or keeping an unwanted child.

The traffickers then "adopt" the child for a fee to domestic couples that badly want children, or in this case to hungry orphanages that wish to increase their revenue through international adoption.

Some people in China seek to bypass even that system and abduct children from the streets.

To put this bluntly -- there are many, many available unwanted children in China. When one looks at the finding ads for the cities that do international adoptions, frequently one sees abandonment patterns that reveal "hot spots" -- Huangpo Town in Wuchuan and Zhanjiang cities in Guangdong(and the likely origin of the Hunan children); the Daiyutai area of Huainan City in Anhui. It seems that most cities have areas that are poor, uneducated, and locations of frequent findings. An enterprising or compassionate individual could easily establish a network of collecting some of these children and trafficking them to couples or orphanages. This is precisely what Liang Guihong swears she did.

I appreciate Peter's reporting. But I take exception to his weaving of two issues to make it appear that they are one. Lisa Ling did the same thing in her National Geographic piece in dealing with female abduction. Yes, children are abducted in China; yes, trafficked babies were adopted by international families; no, there is no evidence that abducted children were adopted by international families. Those dots cannot be convincingly connected.

P.S. -- My "It's a corrupt system" comment was made in the context of local Chinese government, not specifically about the orphanage program. As I have written in the past, I personally feel that the orphanage program is over-all fairly honest. Yes, directors skim funds from the adoption fees, some more than others. But in the context of overall Chinese society, which is filled with graft and corruption on the government level, it is almost expected that directors would do this. However, I am amazed by the number of directors I meet that are honest and selfless. They truly seek the best interests of the kids.

Additionally, China has recently made bold announcements of change in their orphanage program. These changes involve closer scrutiny of those in places of leadership in the orphanages. This is well and good, but the single most effective step that could be taken is the imposition of a quota system on each individual orphanage. Only by destroying the "each child is $3,000" mentality will orphanage trafficking ever truly stop.