On November 25, 2005 the world was alerted to "Orphanages in central China's Hunan Province" buying "at least 100" children and adopting them for "8,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan". While the earliest report did not connect this buying by the orphanages to international adoption, later press coverage began to make the connection. Xinhua News, in an update to the story published the following week, stated that officials involved indicated that "some of them were even sold to foreign adopters."
The Chinese Government, seeing the story becoming a firestorm of concern and controversy in the international press, shut down coverage two weeks later, forbidding any press coverage of the story inside China. It then began mounting a significant damage control campaign to reassure the world that children were not being trafficked into the orphanages for purposes of adopting them to Western families.
The first step was to limit the scope of the investigation and trial to a small geographical area -- Hengyang City in southern Hunan Province. This narrowed the orphanages implicated to just six: the Qidong, Hengnan, Hengshan, Hengyang and Hengdong County orphanages, and the orphanage in Changning City. Second, the government focused the investigation on just 85 children: the number of children trafficked into these six orphanages in 2005.
Additionally, the CCAA instructed the Hunan Provincial Civil Affairs to immediately stop processing adoption submissions for the entire Province. As a result, adoption submissions stopped in late December 2005, although children processed before the shut down continued to be adopted into 2006.
Once the Chinese government shut down reporting on the story, it was able to guide attention away from orphanages originally named as involved in the trafficking. Initial reports, for example, named Changsha First orphanage in Hunan's capital as "a stable client" that "had bought many babies from the Hengyang orphanage." Additional orphanages named in the early reporting included "Binzhou [Chenzhou] and Zhuzhou" and orphanages in "Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guangdong Province."
In February 2006, twenty-three officials were tried for child trafficking. Most of the officials were given a slap on the wrist, with only one receiving jail time:
"Chen Ming, former head of Hengdong Social Welfare Home, was sentenced to one year in prison. The heads of Hengyang and Hengdong county civil affairs bureaus Deng Guangyang and Zhou Liqun, among others, were sacked for their negligence of duties."
While Chen Ming, director of the Hengdong Orphanage was sentenced to one year, he would in fact only serve three months. Three of the primary traffickers, including Liang Guihong, Duan Meilin and Dai Chao, were sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Liang Guihong was the source of most of the children trafficked from Wuchuan City in Guangdong Province to Hunan. In late 2002, she was put in touch with Duan Meilin, a resident of Changning City in Hunan. Over the next three years, over 1,000 children would be moved from Wuchuan and sold to orphanages in Hunan and other areas.
With the well-publicized trial over at the end of February 2006, the CCAA informed the Provincial Civil Affairs office to recommence processing of adoptions from Hunan orphanages, excluding the six involved in the trial. Adoptions for these six would be delayed for another five months, and quietly restarted in September 2006.
A March 11, 2006 Washington Post article seeking to show that children have been kidnapped in order to be internationally adopted prompted the CCAA to issue a short, exactly worded statement four days later. In this statement, identical except for the country being addressed, the CCAA assured the world that "all of the children" involved in the trafficking "were legitimately orphaned or abandoned and that there are no biological parents searching for them." While many in the adoption community assumed that this meant that no trafficked children had been adopted internationally, the purpose of the statement was to refute the charges of kidnapping raised by the Post article.
Adopting families are given a "Progress Report" on their prospective child at the time of referral that gives informal information regarding their child. Often this progress report includes information that doesn't end up in the final adoption documents.
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That is the case with the adoption paperwork for Ning Mei Lin (name changed to protect the child's identity). In March 2004, Ning Mei Lin's adoptive parents, a family living in Canada, excitedly received a referral for a one-year old girl. She was found, the Progress Report stated, "at the entrance to the Quanfeng Station of our city by Duan Meilin, a resident of Yiyang Town." Duan Meilin would be arrested almost two years later for trafficking children.
Ning Mei Lin was trafficked to the Changning orphanage early in the trafficking program, in January 2003. What is significant is that the orphanage did not even feel compelled to change the name of the trafficker. Also significant is that Ning Mei Lin proves that trafficked children were adopted internationally.
Chen Ming, director of Hengdong County's orphanage during the trafficking period, described in a recent Dutch Documentary how Duan Mei Lin and her partners would "shop" the children from one orphanage to the other:
"Normally we paid 3,000 yuan. If you offered only 2,000 yuan or less, then they brought the child to someone else’s orphanage. The men with the children came by and compared the prices."
Thus, it is hard to know for sure which orphanages Duan Mei Lin and her partners dealt with, but we can see the impact their business had on the orphanages that were implicated and prosecuted.
Adoption Statistics of the "Hunan Six"
It is interesting to look back and see the effect the trafficking had on the adoption rates of the orphanages involved. While the Chinese Government sought in the press to minimize the number of children involved, adoption rates and court testimony both show that hundreds of children were involved.
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Testimony at trial was limited to the 85 children trafficked by Duan Mei Lin and her partners to the six Hengyang City orphanages in 2005: Hengnan County (22), Hengdong County (18), Hengyang County (11), Changning City (7), Qidong County (15), and Hengshan County (12). Observers at the trial, however, indicate that the numbers were actually much higher. For example, informants close to the orphanages indicate that between 2003 and 2005, Hengnan County had purchased 169 children, Hengshan County 232, and Hengyang County 409 children from Duan Mei Lin and her fellow traffickers. All of this ignores other sources of children that the orphanages employed independently of Duan Mei Lin and her family.
It is important to realize that the Hunan trafficking scandal began as a directive in 2001 by the director of the Changning orphanage for his employees to begin looking for adoptable children in the area. Finders of unwanted children were "rewarded" with 1,000 yuan, an attractive amount of money in a rural area where average annual wages are less than 3,000 yuan. A similar program was instituted in the Hengyang County orphanage, where employees were promised bonuses if they located three adoptable children.
In late 2001, Duan Mei Lin and her family located Liang Guihong, an elderly woman in Wuchuan City in Guangdong Province. Ms. Liang was a baby-broker, a woman known fro taking in unwanted children and finding adoptive families for them. When Duan Mei Lin found Ms. Liang, she and her family "became wild with joy." For them, they had located a gold mine. They purchased a child for 720 yuan and brought it to the Changning orphanage, where they were paid 2,300 yuan for their trouble.
It wasn't long before other orphanages heard of the easy supply of children coming out of Guangdong. In 2003 employees of the Hengyang County orphanage journeyed south to Wuchuan to visit Ms. Liang. They offered to pay more for the babies. The price paid for each child climbed from a few hundred yuan to 3,500 yuan in the matter of a year. By the end of 2004, other orphanages, including Qidong County orphanage, had joined in the competition for these Guangdong babies.
Three of the six orphanages did international adoptions in 2000, Qidong and Hengshan Counties and Changning City. Collectively, these three orphanages adopted 138 children in 2000. The number remained practically unchanged in 2001, falling to 135 children. The number of adoptions began to increase in 2002, with the adoption rates of these three orphanages increasing 66% to 225 children. Rates in these three orphanages increased further in 2003, with 280 children being adopted.
In 2004, Changning's adoption numbers began to fall precipitously as competition from other orphanages in the area denied them many of the children from Wuchuan. Whereas Changning had seen a doubling of adoptions from 2001 to 2003 (40 to 118), in 2004 its numbers fell back down to 52, falling again in 2005 to 14. It appears from this data that the orphanage concluded that further purchases of the children from Duan Mei Lin was too expensive or impractical.
Qidong County, however, picked up much of the slack. After doing 19 international adoptions in 2002, Qidong's numbers increased 289% to 55 in 2003. In 2004, Qidong's IA submissions increased an additional 24% to 68. As a result, adoption submissions for Qidong and Hengshan Counties and Changning City totaled 217 children, a 23% decline. In 2005, Changning (now practically invisible with 14 adoptions), Hengshan and Qidong Counties submitted 285 children for adoption, a 31% increase. Qidong County more than doubled its adoption submissions from 2004 to 2005, submitting 68 in 2004 and 148 in 2005. Thus, from 2000 to 2005 these three orphanages saw adoption rates skyrocket 206%, while adoption rates in the other Hunan orphanages climbed only 40%.
The other three orphanages involved entered the international adoption program after 2000. Hengdong County started international adoptions in 2002, submitting 58. This number almost doubled to 105 in 2005. Hengnan County began adoptions in 2004 with 27 submissions, a number that increased to 121 in 2005. This explosive growth was duplicated in Hengyang County, which submitted 14 files in 2004, a number that climbed to 118 in 2005.
Collectively, the six orphanages involved in the trafficking adopted 629 children in 2005.
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And then "on November 11th 2005, at approximately 3:00 pm at the Hengyang train station, two women had just placed the three infants with them into a black carriage when the police began to encircle them." The trafficking business of Duan Meilin and her family was closed.
The adoption submissions for these six orphanages cratered in 2006, partially as a result of the CCAA's actions in halting adoptions from these orphanages. As a result, 2006 saw a total of only 72 files submitted by all six orphanages. This number continued to decline in 2007, when the six submitted only 33 files for adoption.
In hindsight, the adoption patterns of these six orphanages should have raised red flags. While Hunan Province collectively fell 27% from 2002 to 2005 in adoption submissions, these six increased on average 222%.
Adoption Statistics of Other Implicated Orphanages
Three orphanages were implicated in the initial reporting on the Hunan trafficking, but were not formally prosecuted in Qidong -- Changsha First, Zhuzhou and Chenzhou (Binzhou) orphanages. Changsha First, Chenzhou and Zhuzhou were among the largest adopting orphanages in Hunan in 2005, with Chenzhou itself having the largest adoption program in Hunan Province. How do their adoption rates compare to the "Hunan Six" orphanages we just studied?
Changsha First was described as a "stable client and had bought many babies from the Hengyang orphanage." In fact, police, in the raid on the Hengyang County orphanage compound, "confiscated a car at the orphanage, which it reportedly received as a gift from a similar [orphanage] in Changsha, Hunan's capital."
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Changsha First saw its numbers increase from 73 in 2000 to a peak of 348 in 2002 before falling to "only" 177 in 2005, a 242% increase over the six year period. Following the arrest of the Hunan traffickers, Changsha's numbers declined from 177 in 2005 to 58 in 2006. Last year (2007), Changsha First submitted only 11 files for international adoption.
Zhuzhou saw its adoption numbers increase from 139 in 2000 to 281 in 2002 before falling to 116 in 2005. Following the scandal, Zhuzhou's adoption submissions fell to 50 in 2006 and 31 in 2007. It is possible, even probable, that Zhuzhou was not a participant in the Duan family "business". In 2002, "the Duan family sold three infants to the welfare center of Zhuzhou City in Hunan province, capturing 6900 yuan, but as soon as they exited the building the Zhuzhou police seized them. The Hunan Provincial police immediately went to Wuchuan for further investigation. Upon learning about Ms. Liang the Wuchuan City Welfare Center went to her house and took the children away." The Wuchuan orphanage received seven children as a result of this raid. Thus, it appears that the Zhuzhou orphanage attempted to stop the Duans by reporting them to the police.
Chenzhou, a medium-sized international adopting orphanage in 2000 with 69 adoptions, grew to be among the largest by 2003, when it submitted 212 files for international adoption. Also known as Binzhou is some press reports, Chenzhou's adoption numbers fell from 188 in 2005 to 141 in 2007. Chenzhou orphanage has seen the smallest reduction in adoptions following the Hunan trafficking story.
Suspected Non-Implicated Orphanages
With the exception of Chenzhou City orphanage, all of the orphanages implicated by press reports as participants in the baby-buying program of Duan Mei Lin experienced dramatic declines in adoption rates in 2006 and 2007. In fact, collectively the nine orphanages implicated declined 81% from 2005 to 2007. Clearly, the disruption of Duan Mei Lin's trafficking network had dramatic repercussions for these orphanages.
Why were the Qidong area orphanages prosecuted, and the others not? I believe it was due to the fact that Chenzhou and Changsha were orphanages scattered to the north and south of Qidong, far from the center of the story. Prosecution of these large orphanages would open the door to investigations of even more orphanages in those areas, something the Chinese Government was loath to have happen. Additionally, these orphanages represented a significant portion of the international adoption program in Hunan. For that reason, when the trial began in February 2006, no mention was made of these orphanages, either in press releases or during the trial.
There were more orphanages purchasing children from the Hunan traffickers who were not named in either the press reports or in court. These were described only as orphanages in "Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Guangdong Province." Does a review of adoption statistics reveal any likely candidates for these un-named orphanages?
On the border region of Guangdong and Hunan Provinces are two orphanages that actively participated in the international adoption program in 2005. Shaoguan City and Qujiang District orphanages, located a short distance south of Hunan Province, experienced adoption patterns similar to the Hunan orphanages involved in the trafficking. In 2000, for example, Shaoguan City orphanage submitted 14 files for international adoption, while the neighboring orphanage of Qujiang submitted 12. Both programs saw dramatic increases from 2000 to 2005, with Shaoguan sending 56 files to the CCAA in 2005, and Qujiang submitting 66.
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Like their Hunan counterparts, both orphanages also saw their submissions decline in 2006, even though no action was taken to slow adoptions in Guangdong Province. By 2007, Shaoguan's submissions had fallen from 56 to 8, and Qujiang's numbers collapsed from 66 to 0 submissions in 2007.
It is of course possible that these two orphanages were victims of coincidence, and had nothing to do with the Hunan traffickers. All we know is that orphanages in Guangdong were involved. Perhaps one day we will find out which ones they were.
Stopping Trafficking
Stopping this traffic will be no small feat. The basic economic incentives that rule markets have a powerful hold, even when the trade is for humans. Infants can fetch anywhere between $5,000 and $25,000. Even if the biological parents see only a small fraction of that amount, in impoverished countries that may be a hefty sum. And parents in receiving countries buy babies in spite of corruption, in the hope of giving them a better life, without realizing that they may be encouraging more trafficking ("The Baby Trade", Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003, p.119).
The U.S. State Department was of course aware of the trafficking allegations coming out of Hunan in December 2005. Relying on assurances from the Chinese Government that this was a small, regional problem, the State Department was no doubt encouraged by the CCAA's actions in shutting down Hunan to further adoptions until its "investigation" was completed. Apparently trusting that the Chinese Government was being forthright in is statements, the U.S. State Department took no action to limit adoptions in progress, or restrict future referrals. Additionally, it mounted no known independent investigation to determine how many other orphanages were involved in similar buying programs. For all intents and purposes U.S. State Department didn't, or couldn't, conduct its own investigation.
It must be realized that the U.S. State Department, and parallel bureaucracies in other receiving countries, are loath to push China to make changes, even when evidence of wrong-doing is found. Whether it is tainted toys, bad food, or purchased children, officials are slow to come out and demand investigations into known problems. It is only when public outcry rises, when the risk of inactions increases, will the pressure to act see results.
There was no such outcry with Hunan. Families in the adoption community were largely silent, hoping that the story remained small and that the program would continue on. For the most part, attentive parents were those who had not yet adopted their first or second child, and thus were emotionally invested in having the problems resolved. The State Department was thus under no significant public pressure to do anything other than wait for the Chinese to give them the green light.
Few in the adoption community asked how it could be that the problem could be limited to only six orphanages in a small area of Hunan Province. Few asked why these directors felt it necessary to reward employees and pay traffickers to locate babies for adoption when the conventional wisdom held that the orphanages were full of children. And few asked how many other orphanages across China had similar "reward" or baby-buying programs. By looking at Hunan in retrospect, we can see clues to the larger issue of baby-buying by China's orphanages.
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Here are the adoption statistics for each orphanage in Hunan Province from 2000 to 2007 (click on image to enlarge):
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Sources:
1) Initial news report in China Daily, November 25, 2005
2) Follow-up Xinhua article from December 2, 2005
3) China shuts down press coverage on the trafficking story from December 16, 2005
4) Chinese authorities incorrectly report "Hunan adoptions not halted"
5) Hunan trial transcript (English) under "Vonnis"
6) English translation of best Chinese coverage of the Hunan story
http://research-china.blogspot.com/2006/10/hunan-one-year-after-part-one.html
http://research-china.blogspot.com/2006/10/infant-trafficking-one-familys-story.html
http://research-china.blogspot.com/2006/10/hunan-one-year-later-iii-reactions.html
7) Washington Post article concerning Hunan Trafficking