Trees in the Forest V -- Finding Locations, Part 2

In our last essay, we presented data on the three most popular finding locations for children from China: Orphanages, hospitals and government offices. Collectively, nearly 50% of children are found at one of these three locations.

In this essay, we will discuss the remaining twelve locations that comprise the remaining 50% of findings.

#4 -- Roadsides
The fourth finding location we will consider are roadside findings. A significant number of children are left on the sides of roads. These “roadside” children numbered over 1,000, or nearly 10% of the total in 2006. Although one might easily conjure up the worst of images for children found on the side of a road, the opposite is frequently the case, though not always. Often, children are left along the road near a bus stop, for example. Again, one can easily visualize a person placing the child in a box or basket and leaving it on the roadside near a bus stop. After a while people waiting for the next bus discover the child. If more information could be obtained on roadside foundlings, I believe in a majority of cases we would find that there was a logical reason for that location to be picked.

#5 -- Bus/Train Stations
Another frequent finding location are bus and train stations. Up to this point, all of the locations we have discussed are what I would call “local” finding locations. In other words, I believe that children found at the orphanages, hospitals, government offices, and roadsides are left, in a high percentage of the time, by families that live locally.

I receive the same question from a family in nearly every research project I do. "Do you think my daughter was born in city she came from?" It is a popular discussion among adoptive families, and I think there is a lot of misinformation that goes around when it comes to our daughters' actual birth city.

With the exception of a few obviously questionable locations such as bus and railway stations, I think that overwhelmingly our girls were born in the general area where they were found. Usually the locations are such that only a "local" would be aware of them (police stations, hospitals, etc.). But the main reason I believe they are found close to their birth areas is because there really is no reason for a mother to travel very far to abandon her baby.

In the U.S., we grow up believing that the police are able to interview, conduct tests, etc., to solve just about any crime. We take that viewpoint into our impressions of what it means when we read that the orphanage "tried to locate her birth parents for 60 days, but failed." We kind of imagine the police going door to door looking for witnesses, checking hospital birth records, etc. to try and find the parents of a found baby. This never happens.

I researched a girl in one city that was in the hospital for 9 months before being brought to the orphanage. The orphanage told the family she was there because she was so sick when found, but when we met the nurses at the hospital that took care of her, they said that the girl was kept in the hospital in order to give the birth parents another chance to return to get her. The family had been in the hospital for almost a week with the girl before it became obvious that her medical expenses would be more than the family could pay, so they decided to leave her there. It was understood that they knew who the family was. the police never asked anyone who the family was, no records were pulled (the family would have filled out paperwork when they entered the hospital).

Recently, I had the pleasure of discussing abandonment with the Chief of Police in a city in Guangxi Province. I asked him how hard the police search for birth parents when a child is found. He responded that the care and health of the foundling are the most important considerations when she is found. They are often “starving” as he called it, and sometimes sick. Thus, the first priority is to get the children to the orphanage for care. “What would happen,” I asked, “if a child was found in a hospital, IV marks on her head or arm, six days old. Would the police ask the hospital to see the birth records in order to locate the birth family?” “No,” he answered.

The bottom line is that rarely is an attempt made to locate birth parents when a child is found. The police do a short report, call the orphanage, and that is the end of it.

Why don't they try harder? Because everyone in China, from the police to the orphanage personnel to the Civil Affairs officials, all acknowledge that there is a problem with abandoned girls. They are all sympathetic to the reasons girls are being left (more on that later), and they turn a blind eye to it when it happens. Publicly the government tries to show a strong enforcement face to keep obedience to the one-child policy as high as possible, but when a girl is found nothing is done.

Returning to Bus and Train Stations. It is likely that children found in these locations are not abandoned by local families. Rather, they are probably the offspring of migrant workers, or those living in other cities. These children are often found in waiting room, bath rooms, and other areas used by people leaving the city. In the rush to board the train or bus, no one notices a box or basket being left behind. Extremely crowded and chaotic locations make abandonment a low-risk endeavor.

#6 -- Public Parks
Another popular finding location is city parks and squares. One must visit a Chinese Park to appreciate them. Parks in China are not just for kids, but for the entire community. Most are used in the mornings for Tai Che exercises by the elderly, throughout the day for rest and relaxation by the retired and unemployed, who while away the hours playing Majong or Dragon Chess. In the evening the families and young couples appear, performing dances, interacting with their neighbors, and escaping the heat of their homes. Parks serve an extremely important function in Chinese society.

For many of the reasons described above (crowded, easy detection of the child, etc.), parks are also frequent finding locations, accounting for over 3% of the finding locations in 2006.

#7 -- Schools
Another finding location that has characteristics similar to the orphanage is a school. Whether it is a Primary school, middle or High School, 3% of the children placed for international adoption in 2006 were found at the gate of a school. Like orphanages, most schools are guarded. Abandonment rates for schools dropped 40% on weekends in Guangdong, a characteristic that most likely would be seen in other areas, since traffic coming from schools on weekends is lower. It seems likely that schools, another “public” finding location, are chosen due to their perceived love and care for children.

#8 -- Markets
Anyone that has visited a Chinese market knows that this location embodies all of the characteristics we have discussed so far for a “good” abandonment location – they are crowded, noisy, and have hundreds of boxes and baskets laying around. 3% of the children found in 2006 were found in markets. No doubt this “public” location is seen as a very safe location given that many people will witness the finding, and no one will witness the abandonment.

Markets are primarily a local enterprise. Each neighborhood has a produce and meat market within walking distance, and the location is familiar to all. A family member, usually the wife, visits the market several times a week to buy fresh foodstuffs for family meals. Due to their "neighborhood" quality, markets are almost certainly used primarily by local families, in the hope that someone in the area will "adopt" the child and care for her.

#9 -- Private Residences & Villages
All of the locations we have discussed so far have been “public” locations, meaning none of them have an obvious tie to a particular person or family. Our next location is a “private” location – personal residences and village farms. These locations accounted for over 8% of findings in 2006. The difference between a public and private finding location has important ramifications for adoptive families seeking birth parents.

Most of my experiences in locating birth parents have involved children found at the house or farm of a family. These families sometimes have a boy, and the birth family of an unwanted girl assumes the family would like a girl to create the “perfect family” of one boy and a girl. Other families are childless, and the birth family probably assumes the family will take in the girl in order to bring about a pregnancy, a common perception in China. But in almost every case I have researched, the finders knew who the birth family was.

For adoptive families seeking to locate birth parents, a “residence” or village finding location is an almost certain connection.

Abandoning a child in a public location, even if that location is the orphanage, hospital or school, almost certainly represents a consignment of the child to a life in an orphanage in the minds of the birth parents. Few people are aware of international adoption, or even domestic adoption for that matter, in China, so there can be little expectation that a child will end up anywhere else but in the care of the State.

Abandoning a child at a private residence, however, exhibits a desire on the part of the birth family to provide a loving alternative to remaining in the family. Domestic adoption statistics prove that this assumption is valid.

One Province that we have domestic adoption data from is Zhejiang Province in eastern China. In 2006, 215 children adoptions were registered by the orphanage or by the Civil Affairs Bureau, as compared to 113 internationally adopted children.

The children registered by the orphanage are those children that were adopted by a family that went to the orphanage seeking a child, or by a family that found and immediately adopted a young child. In 2006, 55 Chinese families officially adopted a child, and 50% of those children were found at either a private residence or in a village. As a comparison, of the 113 children adopted internationally, only 20 (17%) were found at a residence or village.

The contrast grows starker when you look at the children registered in 2006 with the Civil Affairs Bureaus in Zhejiang. These registrations are for people who find a child and decide to keep it, but don't register the child with the government for several years. Later, in order for the child to attend school, etc., the family applies at the Civil Affairs office to have her registered. Of the 159 children who were adopted by their finders in 2006, only 16 were not found at a residence or village. An extraordinary 90% were found on the doorsteps of their finders.

Thus, if a birth family wants to maximize the chances that their child will be adopted, leaving that child on the doorstep of a local family is an excellent way to do it.

#10 -- Bridges
No finding location strikes me as stranger when I am doing research than our next finding location, bridges. Often have I stood on a bridge in the middle of the countryside, looking for some reason why a family would leave child there. Often one finds a reason: a bus stop, a house, or some other explanation, but often there is no apparent reason. Nevertheless, in 2006 a little over 2½% of children found were found at bridges. There is one common thread that connects most bridges, and that is that they have heavy foot-traffic as farmers, students, and women walk to fields, schools and markets.

#11 -- Stores
Like private residences, stores often exhibit intentional targeting by the birth family. The owner of one pharmacy we visited in Jiangxi Province admitted having a good idea who the birth family was of the child he found at the door of his shop one morning. Some connection no doubt exists for many of the children found at small, “personal” stores.

Some stores -- like bookstores, banks, gas stations, hotels and restaurants – are believed by most people to be frequented by people with financial means. Book stores are perceived as frequented by intelligent and upscale people, while gas stations imply a family wealthy enough to own a private car, no small feat in China. Restaurants are usually frequented by business people, seen as individuals of above average means.

#12 -- Factories and Companies
Over 4% of the children were left at our next location, factories and companies. These locations are likely chosen because the birth parents work or live near the location. In China, large factories and companies support huge communities of families that are employed by the business, and these communities often have their own hospitals, stores, police, and other infrastructure commonly associated with a city or town. The children found at these locations are almost certainly born locally.

#13 -- Old Folk's Homes
Another frequent finding location are the many old folk's homes located in nearly every town and county in China. Like orphanages, old folk's homes are viewed as safe locations to leave children. Orphanages and old folk's homes both fall under the auspices of the “Fu Li Yuan”, or social welfare program. In fact, many orphanages share space with old people's homes, allowing the children to interact with the elderly.

#14 -- Police Stations
No finding location better exhibits the lack of fear involved in abandoning a child than police stations. In speaking with the same Chief of Police in Guangxi that I mentioned earlier, I asked him if children are actually found at police stations, or simply brought to the stations by the finders. He confirmed that in his experience, children are actually found at the stations. No doubt a significant percentage of police station findings, however, are also children found at other locations and brought to the police for reporting.

Summary of the "Forest"
It might be well to recap what we know of the forest so far. Based on an analysis of the finding data for children submitted for international adoption in 2006, the typical internationally adopted child is:

– Female (85%)
– Healthy (90%)
– Found at between 1-7 days of age (64%)
– Found at the orphanage or hospital (40%)
– Born to Married Couples (@85%)

The typical internationally adopted child is female (85%), healthy (90%) and found at less than a week old (64%). If we can extrapolate from the abandonment rate of healthy boys, about 15% of the birth parents are single. This assumes that most, if not all, of healthy boys are abandoned by single woman. The rest are from married parents, usually rural farmers, with another sibling in the family, probably a girl.

But the data varies from Province to Province, and even orphanage to orphanage. Generally, the further north one goes, the closer one reaches parity in gender and health. I believe this is due to the high demand in these areas for healthy children. Most unwanted healthy children in Hebei, Gansu, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and other northern Provinces are trafficked to wanting families rather than being left. This market for healthy children, driven by the parental desires of millions of Chinese couples unable to conceive children, moves large numbers of children from the south to the north of China.

We thus have a good idea what the “forest” looks like in child abandonment in China. The forest, however, is changing from area to area, and year to year. Orphanage directors indicate that the number of healthy children being abandoned is falling, due to factors such as changing attitudes, increased financial resources, and selective abortions. Additionally, increasing numbers of China's estimated 15-18 million childless couples are seeking to adopt children. Thus as the number of found abandoned children falls, the number of families seeking to adopt them is rising. This is already being seen in the international adoption community, where wait-times for families seeking to adopt from China has risen in the last two years from 12 months to over 23 months, with projections going even higher.

The orphanages have sometimes taken steps to increase the number of children entering the international adoption program. The Hunan scandal is a well-known example of this problem, but even today many orphanages continue to offer financial "rewards" to individuals to bring babies to the orphanages. While these "rewards" are seen as a way to keep unwanted children safe, it is peculiar that the orphanages involved in these programs have increasing abandonment rates while other areas are seeing declining numbers. All of these forces bring uniqueness to each orphanage, and the stories of those that are adopted from them.

In the face of these changes, China is quietly modifying its adoption program. Funding under domestic programs such as “Tomorrow Plan” are repairing cleft lips, heart problems, and other fixable special needs in order to make children more easily adoptable. Orphanages are being encouraged to submit all special needs children to the CCAA for adoption. I believe that over the next few years the CCAA will make it easier to adopt special needs children, and more difficult to adopt healthy children. I wouldn't be surprised if the adoption of healthy children ceases before the end of this decade.

Tens of thousands of families in the U.S., Netherlands, Canada, Spain, France, Australia, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark have been touched by Chinese adoption. The information I have gathered from my research with finding ads, orphanage visits, and birth parents interviews has given us, I believe, a good idea of the “forest” that is China's abandonment problem and international adoption program. But ultimately, for me what is most important are three trees in that vast forest – the different stories of the three little girls who are my daughters.

Trends of Abandonments in China

A lot has been made of the recent surge in wait times for families adopting from China. The causes for this increase have been sufficiently addressed on this blog. Recent rumors of changes in the number of orphanages that will participate in the international adoption program require us to take a look at the history of the orphanages from the six main areas that have traditionally provided the majority of children in the International Adoption (IA) program. Those Provinces, in order of declining contribution and with their 2005 IA figures in brackets, are Jiangxi Province (2,900), Guangdong Province (2,600), Hunan Province (2,400), Guangxi Province (1,400), Chongqing Municipality (1,200) and Hubei Province (700). These six areas contributed 11,200 of the approximately 14,000 files submitted for international adoptions in 2005, or 80% of the total.

Jiangxi Province
Jiangxi Province provides more children for international adoption than any other Province in China. Largely rural, Jiangxi's orphanages submit twice as many children for international adoption per capita as the other major adopting Provinces (67.6 children submitted for IA in 2005 per million inhabitants verses around 30 children per million for Guangdong, Hunan, Guangxi and Chongqing Municipality, and 13 per million for Hubei Province).

Submission records are not available for Jiangxi in 2000, so 2003 and 2006 were used. In 2003, the top five adopting orphanages in Jiangxi were Fuzhou, Fengcheng, Xiushui, Hengfeng and Jianxin, each of whom submitted more than 100 children for international adoption, and who collectively submitted nearly 950 children, or a third of the entire Province.

Participating orphanages submitted approximately 2,700 files to the CCAA in 2003, a number that dropped to around 2,450 in 2006. To compensate for the 10% decline in submissions, the CCAA added new orphanages to the IA program, and these five new facilities submitted a little over 300 files in 2006, causing Jiangxi Province’s total submission rate to remain flat over the four years.

In 2003, 37 orphanages were involved in international adoption in Jiangxi. By 2006, nineteen of those orphanages had seen their numbers decrease, four remained constant, and fourteen saw an increase in submission rates. The largest decrease was seen by the Xinyu orphanage, which saw its numbers fall from 96 submissions in 2003 to just 9 in 2006. The largest increase in the Province was in Shanggao, which saw its submissions rise from just eight in 2003 to 63 in 2006, a 687% increase.1The average number of submissions in 2003 was 74 per orphanage, a number that dropped to 66 submissions per orphanage in 2006 as smaller orphanages were brought into the IA program.

Guangdong Province
Second only to Jiangxi Province in IA submissions, Guangdong Province contains large areas of both urban (eastern) and rural (western) populations.

The top five adopting orphanages in Guangdong Province in 2000 were Guangzhou, Huazhou, Lianjiang, Maoming, and Zhanjiang, each of which submitted in excess of 100 files for international adoption. Collectively, these five orphanages submitted 720 children for adoption in 2000, or 40% of the total for the Province.

By 2005, only two of the top five from 2000 remained there – Zhanjiang and Huazhou. Huazhou had experienced a 33% decline in the five years, while Zhanjiang had increased by 28%. Maoming’s place in the top five was replaced by her sister orphanage Maonan, which was created in 2002 as a district of Maoming, and whose geographical boundaries were once part of Maoming City’s. Taken together, Maonan and Maoming City’s submissions for 2005 were 232, the second highest submission for all of Guangdong.

The highest number of children submitted in 2005 were from the Yangxi orphanage. Yangxi joined the IA program in 2002, and submitted 262 files to the CCAA in 2005. The last orphanage in the top five was Gaozhou, which saw a 265% increase in submissions between 2000 and 2005. Thus, by the end of 2005, the top five orphanages in Guangdong Province were the Yangxi, Gaozhou, Huazhou, Zhanjiang, and Maonan orphanages.

Taken collectively the ten orphanages that experienced increases more than offset the twenty-two orphanages in Guangdong that remained the same or decreased. In 2000, all 32 orphanages in the IA program submitted 1,813 children for international adoption. In 2005, those same orphanages submitted 1,908, a 5% increase. Additionally, the CCAA added a total of 21 new orphanages to the program, which submitted nearly 700 children of their own to the CCAA. Thus, for 2005 Guangdong Province submitted a total of 2,603 children for adoption, a 44% increase over 2000.

The increasing submission rates in western Guangdong from 2000 to 2003 drew the attention of the CCAA, and an investigation was launched in early 2004 at several orphanages in Western Guangdong Province. Files were inspected, and finding records verified in Maoming, Gaozhou, Huazhou, DianBai, Wuchuan, and several other orphanages. Apparently no impropriety was found, although record-keeping irregularities were found in Huazhou. Most orphanages reached a submission peak in 2003, and have been declining since then, although submission rates in 2005 were still generally higher than 2000.

Hunan Province
In 2000, Hunan had 23 orphanages participating in the international adoption program. The top five orphanages in adoptions for 2000 were Zhuzhou, Yueyang City, Changde, Yiyang, and Shaoyang, all of whom submitted in excess of 120 children each in 2000. The remaining 18 orphanages ranged from eight (Yuanjiang, Miluo) to 98 (Xiangtan). With 663 submissions, the top five orphanages represented nearly half of the adoptions for all of Hunan Province.

By 2005, only Yiyang remained in the top five, although IA submissions had risen nearly 50%. Zhuzhou’s adoptions for 2005 were 74, a 47% decline from 2000. Yueyang City fell 76% to 33, Shaoyang fell 58% to 51. Although Changde was unchanged over the five-year period, a new group of orphanages rose to push Changde out of the top five.

Taken as a group, Hunan’s orphanages active in the IA program submitted almost 1,400 files to the CCAA in 2000. These same orphanages actually increased their submissions through 2005, but the increase can be mostly attributed to a small number of orphanages. Of the 23 orphanages in the program in 2000, ten of them remained unchanged or decreased the number of submissions made in 2005 when compared with 2000. Changsha First saw its numbers increase over 100% to 142 files submitted in 2005. Yueyang County saw its numbers increase 150% to 75, even while her sister orphanage, Yueyang City, saw its numbers drop 76%, resulting in a net decline for the area. The CCAA invited more orphanages into the IA program, adding Yuanling in 2001, Hengdong and Zhijiang in 2002, Zhishan in 2003, Hengnan, Linxiang, Huaihua and Lanshan in 2004, and Xiangxi, Fengyu, and Ningyuan in 2005. These additions boosted the number of files submitted in 2005 by over 500, for a total of nearly 2,400 submissions in 2005, a 71% increase from 2000.

In looking at Hunan, one might draw the conclusion that this is one Province that is actually increasing their adoption rates, and while it is true that a majority of Hunan’s orphanages increased submissions from 2000 to 2005, a deeper analysis of the numbers shows that the bulk of Hunan’s increase can be attributed to just six orphanages, three of which are the principle orphanages involved in the Hunan trafficking scandal: Qidong, Hengshan and Hengyang County. The two other orphanages involved in the scandal were not in the IA program in 2000, but by 2005 both of these orphanages were submitting in excess of 100 files each, the largest number of any of the new Hunan orphanages that joined after 2000.

Qidong submitted 30 files to the CCAA in 2000, roughly half of the Provincial average of 60. By 2005, however, the trafficking of children had boosted Qidong’s submissions to almost 150, a four-fold increase. Qidong’s partners in the trafficking ring experienced equally impressive increases. Hengshan’s numbers jumped from 40 to over 120, a 200% increase, and Hengyang County, the ringleader of the trafficking ring, saw its numbers skyrocket from 13 submissions in 2000 to over 118 in 2005, an 800% increase. Only one other orphanage in Hunan saw similar increases. Although not implicated in the trafficking story, Yongzhou saw its adoption submissions jump from 35 in 2000 to over 185 in 2005, an increase of 431%. It is perhaps not coincidental that Yongzhou2 lies in the same vicinity as Qidong, Hengyang, and the others. One must also wonder why no alarms went off in Beijing like it had with Guangdong.3

Given the complexities of the baby trafficking case, and its unknown breadth in Hunan, it is difficult to assess if Hunan’s numbers naturally increased or decreased over the 2000 to 2005 time period.

Guangxi Province
In 2000, thirteen orphanages were participating in the IA program in Guangxi. The top five orphanages in 2000 were Nanning, Baihai, Wuzhou, Mother’s Love, and Guilin, which together submitted almost 600 files for adoption, or 60% of the nearly 1,000 submitted by the entire Province. Only three orphanages submitted more than 100 children for adoption, Baihai, Wuzhou and Nanning, which was the largest orphanage for adoptions with over 200.

Total adoptions increased slightly from 2000 to 2005, but average submissions fell from 76 per orphanage in 2000 to 53 per orphanage in 2005. The orphanages participating in 2000 collectively submitted a little over 1,000 files to the CCAA in 2005, a 4% increase. As a group, slightly more than half (7) of the orphanages experienced declines, and six increased their submission rates. Additionally, the CCAA added eleven additional orphanages to the IA program, which collectively submitted around 250 files for adoption. With the addition of these eleven orphanages, international adoptions increased 30% in Guangxi from 2000 to 2005.

Several orphanages saw substantial increases over that period, however. Baihai increased its submissions 42% to 142 file submissions in 2005, while Yulin City more than doubled their adoption rate from 40 to 125. Hepu also more than doubled its submissions to 64, while Guiping experienced the largest growth of all of the Guangxi orphanages, increasing 240% from 2000 to 2005. In 2005, the top five orphanages were Baihai, Yulin, Nanning, Guilin and Guiping, three of whom were also in the top five in 2000.

Chongqing Municipality
Prior to 1997, Chongqing Municipality was part of Sichuan Province, and many adoptive families still refer to Chongqing in that way. In 1997, Chongqing City was merged with Fuling, Wanxian and Qianjiang to form Chongqing Municipality in a desire by China’s central government to increase development in the western regions of China.

In 2003, the CCAA began opening orphanages in the various districts around Chongqing, including Qianjiang, Hechuan, Liangping, Wanzhou, and others. The number of orphanages in Chongqing Municipality tripled in 2003 to nine. An additional three orphanages were opened in 2004, one in 2005, and two more in 2006 (although these two have not yet adopted internationally). By the end of 2006, 14 orphanages were adopting, or in the process of adopting, children internationally in Chongqing.

Prior to 2003, the largest adopting orphanage was Fuling District, which submitted 569 files to the CCAA. Chongqing City was the next largest, with 173 submissions in 2003. The rest of the top five were Dianjiang, Qianjiang, and Liangping, each of which submitted over 100 files to the CCAA. In all, 1,367 children were submitted for adoption in 2003.

Like most Provinces, Chongqing Municipality-area orphanages as a whole saw its numbers decrease. In 2006, the total number of files submitted for international adoption had decreased 33% to 910. The change was sporadic and inconsistent: Fuling’s adoptions dropped 76% (to 135), while Xiushan increased over 600% (to 153). In 2006, the top five orphanages were Xiushan, Fuling, Qianjiang, Dianjiang, and Banan, with two of that group submitting less than 100 dossiers to the CCAA. On average, Chongqing's orphanages submitted 136 files in 2003, an average that dropped to 60 in 2006.

Hubei Province
Hubei has the lowest ratio of IA submissions per capita of any of the main Provinces (13 submissions in 2005 per million people). In 2000, the largest submitting orphanage was Huanggang, the only orphanage to submit more than 100 files to the CCAA. The other orphanages in the top five were Wuhan (94), Dawu (44), Daye (44) and Wuxue (43). The top five orphanages submitted in total 327 files in 2000, comprising nearly half of the children internationally adopted in the entire Province (676).

Like Guangxi, Hubei’s adoption rate stayed nearly constant among the orphanages participating in the IA program in 2000. Six orphanages joined the IA program, and these orphanages submitted only 73 files combined in 2005.

By 2005, Huanggang remained in first place, increasing submissions 22% to 124, still the only orphanage in Hubei to submit more than 100 files. Wuhan remained in second place, practically unchanged over the five years. Third place was a relatively unknown orphanage in 2000, Tuanfeng, which saw a dramatic increase of over 240% in the five years, submitting 65 files in 2005. The remaining orphanages in the top five were also newcomers: Qichun (58) and Chongyang (35).

In all, eighteen orphanages had their numbers decrease from 2000 to 2005, while twelve had increases.

Overview
From the analysis of the six primary Provinces involved in the International Adoption program in China, one can see that the submission rate is generally trending lower, but with pockets of exceptions (see table below). Taken collectively, two Provinces experienced declines (Chongqing, Jiangxi), two remained essentially flat (Guangxi, Hubei), and one was slightly higher (Guangdong). Hunan was substantially higher, but a large part of that increase was due to trafficked children.

In 2000 (2003 in the case of Chongqing and Jiangxi), nearly 9,000 files were submitted by the six Provinces to the CCAA for international adoption. That number fell to a little over 8,700 (a 4% decline) for those same orphanages in 2005 and 2006 (including the Hunan orphanages), and totaled almost 10,700 when the orphanages added to the program since 2000 are added in. This increase tracks with the increasing numbers of adoptions conducted in China (5,053 by the U.S. in 2000, 7,906 by the U.S. in 2005). One can clearly see that as file submissions decline from participating orphanages, additional orphanages are “invited” into the program. Thus, a delicate supply-demand balance is maintained.

But these orphanages, on average, brought fewer and fewer children into the program. Whereas in 2000 the average number of files submitted by each orphanage was 61, by 2005 that number had decreased to 49. If there were hidden pockets of thousands of children, it seems the CCAA would have drawn on them. Instead, new orphanages are, with a few exceptions, small facilities that bring relatively few children into the program. Additionally, many of the new orphanages are simply district orphanages, drawing children from the larger city and county orphanages. This is the case with such orphanages as Maonan district (taken from Maoming City), Qianjiang District (taken from Chongqing City), and so on.

Unfortunately, several factors prevent us from drawing too many conclusions as to how accurately the submission rates of the individual orphanages reflects trends in abandonment rates, since we are not able to determine the other major component in the equations: Domestic adoption rates from these same orphanages. It is possible, for example, that the abandonment rates might be increasing in some areas, but that domestic adoption rates are increasing faster, thus lowering submissions to the IA program. This would lead one to falsely conclude that abandonment rates were decreasing in that area.

Conversely, if abandonment rates are falling in an orphanage’s jurisdiction, but that orphanage is doing fewer domestic adoptions, naturally their submission rate to the CCAA would increase, falsely leading one to conclude that abandonment rates are increasing in that area.

Therefore, one can not make any firm conclusions on abandonment rates on the basis of IA submissions unless other information can be factored into the equation.

One such additional source of information are the directors of the orphanages themselves. In early 2006 I conducted a survey of all of the directors involved with international adoption at that time. In the course of the conversation, seventeen directors directly spoke about abandonment rates, indicating in every case that abandonment rates were falling.

In a few cases, there are orphanages that do only international adoptions, domestic families being barred from applying. This is the case, for example, in Liangping and Qianjiang orphanages in Chongqing. In these two cases we don’t need to wonder if domestic adoptions are impacting our perception of abandonment rates, for nearly every child found in these areas are submitted to the CCAA for adoption.4 Between 2003 (when these orphanages opened) and 2006, both Liangping and Qianjiang orphanages experienced declines in adoption submissions (68% and 12% respectively). Thus, we can safely conclude that at least in these two areas, abandonment rates are declining.

In the case of one orphanage, we do have the number of domestic adoptions that were performed, and we can thus determine its core abandonment rate. Guangzhou orphanage in Guangdong performed a total of 680 adoptions in 2000. Of these, 547 were domestic and 133 were international. The total number of adoptions fell to 194 in 2005, with 148 of those being domestic adoptions, and 46 being international. Thus, although Guangzhou shows a decline in international adoptions from 2000 to 2005 of 66%, total adoptions fell 71%, showing that the abandonment rate in Guangzhou fell more than the international adoption rate.

This example illustrates one problem with drawing conclusions of abandonment rates based on international adoption rates. It seems likely that a director could, upon recording declining numbers of children entering his or her orphanage, shift a greater percentage of those children from the domestic adoption program to the international adoption program. The reason for doing so is obvious: International Adoption provides more funding to the orphanage than domestic adoptions, since few Chinese can match the $3,000 adoption fee required of international families. Thus, even though abandonment rates in a given orphanage district decrease, that orphanage might respond to this decline by submitting a greater percentage of the children to the international adoption program. This would result in our analysis showing an increase over the five year period, falsely leading us to assume abandonment rates are increasing in that area, when in fact the opposite is true.

That this is occurring is supported by the results of our 2006 survey of directors, which revealed that over 90% of the more than 250 orphanages surveyed refused to adopt a child to a domestic family. In fact, the vast majority of orphanages report long waiting lists of domestic families seeking to adopt, even while those same orphanages continue participating in the IA program.

Another component in the equation is the ratio of healthy to special needs children being found in China. This ratio was addressed by many directors in our survey, when they stated that the number of “special” children to healthy children was increasing. Thus, an orphanage may submit 100 files in both 2000 and 2005, but if the number of special needs children is increasing, a declining percentage of those 100 files will be for healthy children.

Conclusions
Files submissions, interviews, anecdotal evidence, and economic and sociological trends in China all point to a reduction in the number of healthy children being abandoned in China. While the number of healthy children being abandoned is decreasing, the number of special needs children being abandoned seems to be increasing. But this trend is not universal. Western Guangdong Province, for example, seems to have experienced increasing abandonment rates in recent years, to the point where investigations were conducted to rule out trafficking.

Thus, it seems that although the CCAA can take limited steps to increase the number of children available for international adoption, trends in China show that the number of healthy children will continue to decline.


Addendum:
For 2006, Guangdong Province orphanages submitted a total of 1,906 files, a decline of 27% from 2005 figures. Interestingly, all of 2005's Top Five orphanages saw significant declines: Gaozhou declined 74%, Huazhou declined 57%, Zhanjiang declined 56%, Yangxi declined 18%, and Maonan-Maoming declined 37%.

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1. For the purpose of these calculations, only orphanages that submit more than five files in any given year are considered in high and low classifications. This is to prevent a distortion of trends, such as using an orphanage that submitted one file in 2000 and 4 in 2005. Although the orphanage did increase its submissions by 400%, I felt such an increase is not representative of the true conditions.

2. I have no solid evidence that Yongzhou trafficked children, but I am impressed by the increase this orphanage has experienced. The orphanages implicated in the trafficking were "shut down" for most of 2006, and thus had very few files submitted to the CCAA (they began to submit again in the fourth quarter 2006). Yongzhou, however, submitted children throughout the year, with its numbers falling to 114 in 2006, a 38% decline from 2005.

3. It is, of course, possible that the CCAA was already aware of the trafficking problems in Hunan when the story broke in late 2005.

4. The only children that are not submitted to the CCAA are those with debilitating deformities or severe mental incapacities (see my blog essay "Creating Paper-Ready Babies" on the procedures and constraints for submitting files by the orphanages).
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Table of Provinces:
Province 2000/ 2005a/ 2005b
Jiangxi = 2,735 (’03)/2,453(’06)/2,769 (’06)
Guangdong = 1,813/1,908/2,603
Hunan = 1,397/1,875/2,396
Chongqing = 1,367 (’03)/837 (’06)/910 (’06)
Guangxi = 988/1,026/1,288
Hubei = 676/650/723

Total = 8,976/8,749/10,689

a denotes totals for those orphanages that were involved in the IA program in 2000. This column allows a true “apples-to apples” comparison in submission rates between 2000 and 2005.
b denotes totals for the Province, including 2000 orphanages plus orphanages added to the IA program since 2000.