What Are the Problems in China?

I receive inquiries on almost a daily basis asking if I feel a particular child being adopted has been trafficked or stolen. One thing that is apparent from these e-mails is that there is a lot of confusion among the adoptive community as to what the issues are with China's adoption program.

China's international adoption program began in 1992 at the behest of foreign aid organizations concerned with the care of orphans in China's orphanages. It was presented as a win-win proposal -- China would receive funding to improve their social welfare system, something they were apparently unwilling or unable to do themselves, and the orphans would find homes with loving families.

The program began with 252 adoptions in 1992 (to the U.S. and Netherlands). The number increased to 679 in 1993 when Canada joined the program, and doubled in 1994 to 1,328. In 1995 the program exploded, with nearly 3,000 children adopted internationally, and adoptions increased each year following until reaching a peak of over 14,500 children in 2005, when children were adopted to the U.S. (7,906), Spain (2,753), Canada (973), the Netherlands (800), Sweden (462), France (458), Norway (299), Denmark (207), the United Kingdom (165), Australia (140), and Belgium (63) (Non-sourced numbers available in "Intercountry Adoption in the New Millennium: UK Experience in a Global Context," Peter Selman, Paper presented at Imperial College, London, March 1, 2008).

The China Myth
China’s international adoption program has historically been attractive to adoptive parents for several reasons, outlined succinctly by Chinese Children Adoption International (CCAI), one of the largest China-only adoption agencies in the U.S. CCAI emphasizes the attractiveness of the China program due to its consistency and predictability (no surprise fees, delays, etc.), the overall health of the children referred, and the fact that children in China are largely abandoned, and thus have no birth parent records:

Children placed through China adoption are abandoned children. Because child abandonment is illegal in China, birth parents leave no trace of their identity. During their trip to China, adoptive families receive a certificate of abandonment that proves the biological parents have relinquished their parental rights through abandonment. There is no legal avenue for the birth parents to reclaim custody. (http://www.chinesechildren.org/Adoption/WhyChina.aspx)

Families have historically been told that the number of children abandoned each year numbers in the hundreds of thousands. One adoption agency states that “There are over 15 million orphans in China. Most are healthy young girls, abandoned due to China's one child per family law.” (http://www.achildsdesire.org/chinaadopt.htm). Another charity states that “upwards of 200,000 children are abandoned each year.” (http://www.hopesheart.com/AboutHopesHeart/newspaper.lsp). Joshua Zhong of CCAI writes that there are 573,000 orphans in China, but “Interestingly, the study showed that fewer than 69,000 orphans are living in Chinese orphanages, compared with 450,000 living with their relatives” (http://www.chinesechildren.org/Newsletter%5CWindow%20to%20China/WTC_03_2006.pdf).

With propaganda such as those described above, most adoptive families from China have seen little reason to question the reality of their child’s orphanage story, or the integrity of the program itself. The conventional wisdom of the past 15 years has been that without the international adoption program, thousands of children would remain in China’s orphanages, and have no chance of finding or experiencing the love of family.

But is it true?
In 1991, a year before international adoptions formally began in China, New York Times reporter Sheryl Wudunn reported that in Changsha City in Hunan Province "the proportion of baby girls given up for adoption -- most come from rural areas -- has been increasing each year." However, Su Kejun, director of the Civil Affairs Bureau in Changsha, was quick to add that "the number of couples who want kids exceeds the number of kids we have to give."

While I harbor the same long-held traditions as most adoptive families, I do question these assumptions in light of growing evidence. Was there ever a true need for the international adoption of China's healthy young children? Do we truly think that in a country of China's population domestic families could not be found for the seventeen thousand children adopted internationally from 1992-2000? Wudunn's article, as well as a companion article by Time's writer Nicholas D. Kristof, show that prior to the introduction of the international adoption program a healthy domestic adoption program existed. This program was enhanced in 1999 with a major overhaul of China's laws concerning domestic adoption.

China Adoption Law Changes
China began legalizing and codifying laws regulating domestic adoption in 1992: “In April 1992, the Chinese government published the Adoption Law, the first law of its kind in China’s modern history, to legalize and promote domestic adoption.” (http://www.chinesechildren.org/Newsletter%5CWindow%20to%20China/WTC_03_2002.pdf). Initial requirements that Chinese adoptive couples be childless and over 35 limited the number of families able to adopt. As Chinese demographer Kay Johnson states, “This was hardly a law aimed at finding adoptive homes for abandoned children within China.” Because of the inadequacies of the 1992 Adoption Law, the regulations were changed in 1999, reducing the parental age requirement to 30 years old, and allowing couples with another child the opportunity to adopt (ibid.). Statistics published in 2001 indicate that domestic adoption increased significantly in 2000 (ibid.).

Orphanages participating in the international adoption program saw demand for healthy children increase substantially after 2000. Increasing domestic demand as a result of the 1999 adoption law changes, coupled with increasing international demand from families being drawn to the China program by positive press and favorable program qualities (outlined by CCAI above), created a situation that put domestic families inside China desiring to adopt in competition with international families seeking to adopt the same children – healthy young infants. International families had a distinct advantage, however -- they donated $3,000 for each adoption, something many Chinese families couldn't afford. Thus, long lines of domestic families formed while healthy children continued to be adopted to foreign families.

Problems Begin to Appear
It wasn't long before directors of orphanages began to realize that adoption represented a lucrative business -- financially and professionally. Much like city managers gain prestige by governing a larger city over a small one, directors sought to increase the size of their programs in order to obtain prestige in their communities, obtain larger and more elaborate facilities, and to obtain higher adoption donations to fund their programs and to increase their personal incomes.

Beginning at least in 2002, but most likely going back years earlier, orphanage directors in Hunan began to create financial incentives for employees to procure children for international adoption. The extent of the program wasn't known until late 2005 when the Chinese press revealed that at least eight orphanages (6 would end up being prosecuted) in Hunan and neighboring Guangdong Province had aggressive baby-buying programs in place. It might be useful in the following discussion to define some terms that will be used in recounting these episodes of malfeasance on the part of various orphanage directors.

The most common activity instituted by orphanage directors is the creation of "incentive" programs in the areas around their facilities. The development of this type of program involves contacting area hospitals and informing doctors and other medical personnel that the orphanage is willing to offer rewards to anyone referring a birth family to the orphanage. Doctors then communicate this information to birth parents that have children in the area hospitals, or who come in for pre-natal exams. Families are made aware that they can receive substantial sums of money (usually around 2,000 yuan) if they relinquish their newborn child to the doctor or the orphanage directly.

Additionally, orphanage employees, including foster families, are offered incentives to be on the lookout in their villages for pregnant women. Rewards are again paid for referrals.

In addition to the initial story of incentive programs revealed in the Hengdong, Hengnan, Hengshan, Hengyang County and Qidong orphanages, recent Media expose's have shown the incentive programs are in place in Changde and Fuzhou orphanages. My own experience leads me to believe that over 50% of the children adopted from China come from orphanages that offer incentives to birth families or finders.

"Incentive" programs do not directly involve kidnapping of children, or forced relinquishment of children by birth families. Rather, they involve the free-will abandonment of children in return for a financial reward. While the Hague Agreement allows the payment of a "reasonable" fee to finders, it strictly prohibits the payment of any money to birth families.

The following conversation (recorded in April 2008) explains the reasons why many orphanages get involved with incentive programs. This interview with an orphanage worker in Jiangxi's Fuzhou orphanage, illustrates how the incentive programs operate.




This is a classic example of an incentive program being needed to bolster adoption rates falling as a result of the success of a Family Planning program. The more successful the Family Planning office is at reducing unwanted children in their area, the fewer babies are found, so the orphanage feels it necessary to increase the money offered to draw children in. Clearly without the financial incentive Fuzhou would have few babies rather than being the largest adopting orphanage in China.

The problem, as this video also clearly articulates, is that there is no checks on who sells the child to the orphanage. Anyone -- a finder, a kidnapper, or a birth parent -- can turn in a child for the reward. It is a "don't ask, don't tell" arrangement, opening the door to substantial abuse. One recent example of this occurred in Dianjiang orphanage in Chongqing. There a small child was kidnapped off the street and brought to the Dianjiang orphanage. She was submitted for international adoption. When her birth parents inquired if their daughter was in the orphanage, they were denied access to see. Finally, after many attempts to see if their daughter was in the orphanage, the birth mother finagled her way in and found their daughter. Such are the problems of offering money in China -- everyone responds.

The biggest issues, in my opinion, have to do with these incentive programs. By offering such a large sum in the poorest areas of China, orphanages open the door to people kidnapping children for the "ransom". Orphanages open the door to women producing children simply to sell, creating "baby farms." I must be clear that I don't believe that orphanages create these problems in China -- these problems are much larger than the orphanages. But in promoting incentive programs to bolster adoptions, orphanages become participants in the baby trafficking problems in China. They become a piece of the overall puzzle.

Evidence also suggests that orphanage directors frequently launder the children brought into their orphanages. The Qichun orphanage, according to one adoptive father from that orphanage, reported that the director “admitted to us that this orphanage deliberately changed the date of birth, so that no family could later come back (though none ever did so) to claim a child that they claimed was born on a particular date: no such child would ever be recorded in the orphanage registry” (correspondence in files). On a recent research trip to the Fuzhou orphanage (Jiangxi), a majority of the “finders” listed in the adoption paperwork of the children denied ever finding a child. In the Fuling District (Chongqing) orphanage, children brought from neighboring Youyang County are listed as “found” at the gate of the Fuling orphanage, the finding location for virtually every one of the children adopted from Fuling since May 2006. Thus, it is clear that orphanages systematically launder the children to prevent birth families from locating lost children and adoptive families from interviewing finders and obtaining pre-adoption histories. Of course all of the laundering activities are designed to keep illegal trafficking hidden and to prevent birth families from retrieving confiscated or lost children.

In conclusion, let me be clear -- I do not believe that most children adopted from China are kidnapped from their birth parents, although press reports show that some are. I believe that a majority of children, however, originate from orphanages that offer incentives -- "baby-buying" programs. I do not believe that the orphanages are a primary cause for infant trafficking in China, but willing participants in this larger issue.

Detecting Trafficking
How might an adoptive family find out if their child's orphanage is involved in trafficking of children? There are several tell-tale indicators to watch for, including:

1) Higher adoption rates than the other orphanages in the area -- If your child's orphanage has increasing adoption rates while orphanages nearby have declining rates, that should be cause for concern.
2) Common finding locations -- Fuzhou had many kids found within sight of hospitals, for example. Other orphanages with baby-buying programs list all of their children as being found at "the gate of the orphanage." An unusual finding location pattern is strong evidence for an incentive program, since finding locations should be fairly random.
3) Frequent finders -- Xiushan in Chongqing, for example, has a handful of people finding most of the kids, while Fuzhou's finders were almost all employees of residence committee offices.
4) A reluctance by the director to answer questions -- If a director seems to obfuscate during questioning at the time of adoption, it may be that they are hiding information about their program.
5) Most kids healthy and young -- Orphanages that have a very low special needs rates are suspect, since a growing majority of true foundlings possess special needs. Thus, if an orphanage adopts a high percentage of healthy children, they probably have incentive program in place.
6) Larger than average number of male adoptions -- Much like a skewed Healthy-SN ratio is a tell-tale sign, so is a large number of male adoptions. Healthy male children are greatly prized in China, and a woman that gives birth to an unwanted male child has many options available to her -- family friends, village "mediators", and traffickers. Thus, simply abandoning a healthy boy is fairly rare. Therefore, if an orphanage begins adopting significant numbers of healthy boys, it could mean they are offering incentives to birth parents.

Of course, discovering these indicators involves sharing information among other families in your orphanage group. Unfortunately, there is a long tradition of adoption agencies and others instilling in adoptive families a feeling of secrecy -- "Your child's story is private, and should not be shared." This mentality accomplishes one thing -- it disallows families from discovering evidence of trafficking, and thus keeps them ignorant of their child's true history.

The "Hidden" Supply of Children

Now that the Olympics are past, waiting families hope that the flow of children will accelerate and wait times will decrease. Hope is often pinned to the large number of non-IA orphanages in China's Social Welfare system. Once some of these orphanages join the international adoption program, the thinking goes, they will submit large numbers of dossiers to the CCAA, and wait times will begin to fall.

There are several problems with this assumption. The CCAA has been adding new orphanages to the program since it began international adoptions in 1992. Each and every year has seen new orphanages join the program. Some of the early orphanages eventually had large adoption programs, but the last orphanage to join with any significant numbers was Suixi County in Guangdong, who joined in 2002. Since that time, I am aware of no new orphanage that has submitted any significant numbers of children.

There is a very good reason for this. In my conversations with directors of non-IA orphanages, all have expressed little desire to become part of the IA program. There are several reasons for this reluctance. First, the CCAA requires orphanages to make substantial investments in the facilities in anticipation of visits by foreigners. Additionally, orphanages are required to hire medical and nanny personnel beyond their current levels. Lastly, the paperwork required for an international adoption is significantly more cumbersome than paperwork for a domestic adoption. All of this obviously adds to the overhead of a facility, and consequently many directors have chosen not to participate.

But what about the financial benefits derived by the international adoption program? Won't that create an incentive for orphanages to join the program?

Many of the orphanages joining the program begin by submitting files for special needs children. For example, Huidong County (Guangdong) joined the IA program in May 2007, submitting five files. Four of the five children had special needs, and the fifth child was over four years old. Thus, the adoption of special needs children can be a motivation for directors to join the program.

But what about the orphanages? Are there not possibly large numbers of untapped children that could be brought into the international adoption program?

Probably not. The problem has several facets. China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs reported in 2001 that there were 1,550 state-run welfare institutions, 160 of which specialized in the care of orphans. These facilities were said to have cared for approximately 41,000 children (Kay Johnson, “Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son – Abandonment, Adoption and Orphanage Care in China”, Yeong & Yeong Book Company, p. 204). The problem is that in the Chinese, "Social Welfare Institute" (fuliyuan) encompasses not just orphan care but also old people care. A significant portion of the 1,550 State-run "welfare institutions" take care of no children whatsoever. In fact, upwards of 30-40% of the above numbered facilities take care of only old people.

Thus, the pool of potential participants in the IA program realistically stands at around 1,100 facilities, still a large increase over the approximate 450 facilities currently in China's international program. (A 2004 Chinese Government pronouncement states that “Today, China has 192 special welfare institutions for children and 600 comprehensive welfare institutions with a children's department, accommodating a total of 54,000 orphans and disabled children. If accurate, and I have no reason to believe it isn't, that would reduce the number of non-IA orphanages to a little over 300 facilities).

It is difficult to make contact with the 700 non-IA orphanages. There is no centralized listing, and often even local 114 (Information) directory assistance have no phone numbers for the small orphanages scattered around China. Thus, conducting a systematic survey of the non-IA orphanages is practically impossible. However, in July we contacted thirteen non-IA orphanages located in Fujian, Guangdong, Hebei, Hubei, Hunan, Liaoning and Zhejiang Provinces. While not a large survey, the results of our conversations with these directors is nevertheless informative.

Keep in mind that these thirteen orphanages are not direct participants in the international adoption program. Conventional wisdom suggests that these directors should have large numbers of children in their care, and be anxious to cooperate with any family seeking to adopt a child in their care.

Duplicating the protocol of our April 2006 survey of international orphanages, I had a caller pose as a domestic family from the area interested in knowing if there were any children available for adoption. Two of the thirteen (15%) indicated that they did not care for children, and were strictly in charge of old people care. Four of the thirteen (30%) flatly stated that they currently had no children in their care, and that there were waiting families. The number of families waiting averaged about 25. One of the orphanages (Lianzhou, Guangdong) indicated that they transferred all of their foundlings to the Qingxin orphanage for international adoption. Only one orphanage (Xianyou, Fujian) indicated a single available child, adoptable with a 20,000 yuan donation.

The remaining six orphanages reported that they only had special needs children in their care, with waiting lists of families desiring healthy children (in the case of Enmei orphanage in Zhejiang the list has 600 families). One director indicated that his orphanage would not adopt a special needs child domestically because "we don't trust a family to care for the special needs child long-term." Experience has apparently shown this director that domestic families may indicate a willingness to adopt a child with a special need, but that most, if not all, change their minds some time down the road.

I am convinced that none of the non-participating orphanages in China's welfare system has any significant number of healthy children that can be brought into the IA program. Every non-IA orphanage I have ever visited or contacted had no healthy children available, and nearly all of them had waiting lists of families ready to adopt any children that arrived in the orphanage.

Thus, non-IA orphanages don't join the international adoption program for several reasons -- high capital expenditure requirements; few children that need placement in the IA program. In other words, the orphanages not in the IA program already have a working adoption program outside the IA program, programs that don't require the bureaucracy of the CCAA.

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The thirteen orphanages contacted were:
Xianyou, Fujian
Doumen, Guangdong
Lainzhou, Guangdong
Xinfeng, Guangdong
Hengshui, Hebei
Hongshan, Hubei
Zigui, Hubei
Ningxiang, Hunan
Hongwei, Liaoning
Rixin-Dalian, Liaoning
Huangnanzhou, Qinghai
Enmei, Zhejiang
Tongxiang, Zhejiang

James Garrow's "Pink Pagoda" Program

The article over the weekend in the Guelph-Mercury News on James/Jim Garrow allows me to finally come forward with what I know about James and his "Pink Pagoda" program. I became aware of Jim in early June 2008 when an article published by "Mimi Magazine" was forwarded to me. This article, still available on Garrow's website, goes into his "Pink Pagoda" program, a program that supposedly has brought over 24,000 baby girls into China's orphanages.

The sheer number of children Garrow claims to have "saved" raised red flags in my mind of course. 24,000 children (now supposedly 34,000) represents approximately half of all the children adopted internationally from China since 2000. But the basic assertion -- that Garrow's employees were passing out vouchers in China's countryside offering financial payments for relinquishing a child -- fits very comfortably into what we know about incentive programs in China generally. In other words, one could not dismiss his assertions out of hand.

The following day, I called Jim,1 using an alias of "Lance Davis" (I suspected he may have already heard of Brian Stuy, and thus wanted to use an unknown alias), an adoptive father with a child from Xiushan, Chongqing. I asked him about his "Pink Pagoda" program, and how exactly it worked. He largely confirmed what was written in the Mimi article, but added a few new insights. In our conversation he admitted that he worked extensively in Chongqing Municipality, particularly with the Chongqing City orphanage. Readers of our subscription blog know that most of the Chongqing-area orphanages display patterns consistent with "non-random" findings, so Garrow's assertion that he works in Shapingba and other areas of Chongqing was plausible. According to Garrow, he is responsible for 80% of the children that have been adopted from the Chongqing area, especially from the Chongqing and Fuling orphanages.



James Garrow's claim that he is protected by politically powerful people inside China is also very interesting. In the following interview he goes into this in more detail, revealing that his protector is none other than Hu Jintao, China's President. According to Garrow, President Hu's niece attended one of Garrow's schools in Shenzhen, where they met. Also according to Garrow, connections resulted from this meeting, as well as from the "Lucky Money" (bribes) envelopes that he subsequently "liberally" dispersed to various officials.



During this time I contacted a number of press outlets to initiate an investigation into Garrow's program. It was hoped that either the press or the Canadian government (who was also notified) could thoroughly investigate the situation without alerting Jim. Unfortunately, in the midst of this Jane Liedtke was made aware of Jim's program, and began to raise concerns on her various adoption groups and newsletters (I got Jim's side of that issue in the second conversation). This caused Jim to begin removing references to his program from his websites and to begin covering his tracks.

At the end of the second interview, Garrow introduces another program that he had just started the previous April (and which he completely denies in the Guelph-Mercury article) -- the smuggling of Chinese infants directly into Canada and the United States. At the time of our conversation he alleged that he had smuggled over 30 children to Canadian and U.S. families, which then re-adopted the children (using fabricated paperwork). We arranged another phone call to go more into that program. I edited this interview to eliminate the caller's voice out of safety concerns. For that reason, the conversation tends to jump as questions are asked, but the details of Garrow's smuggling program are evident.



It is clear from Garrow's account that what he says is possible. Having had experience with immigration procedures myself, it is very possible to see how immigration officials would not pay close attention to infant visas, allowing someone like Garrow to smuggle a child using a Chinese student.

Is James Garrow really doing what he says he is doing, offering poor Chinese families money vouchers to turn their children into the orphanages for international adoption? It is very possible. Is he doing it with the full knowledge of the Chinese government? Also possible. As we saw in the Hunan scandal, the government is less concerned with stopping the baby-buying than it is with saving face in the international community. The abduction of children unwillingly from birth parents seems to be taken seriously by the CCAA and the rest of the government; but the willing relinquishment of children for money to IA orphanages is systematically ignored, and even encouraged by the government. Thus, there is every possibility that the Chinese would allow a program such as Garrow's "Pink Pagoda" one to operate freely in China's orphanages.

In the end I don't know if Jim Garrow is actually doing what he says, or is simply seeking attention and money. Reporters from the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, as well as Dateline have investigated and found no substantiation of his program in China. But it could be happening on a localized and informal basis. What is needed is for someone to look seriously at these assertions: Did the Bethune Institute pay students to smuggle infants into Canada between March and June 2008? If so, who adopted these children? Has anyone in the Canadian Government audited the citizenship applications for Chinese children adopted in 2008? What about Chongqing? Has anyone investigated Garrow's claims about funneling infants through vouchers into the Chongqing and Fuling orphanages? This program, if indeed it exists, is not a new program -- advertisements for his "Certification Programs" discuss his "Pink Pagoda" program as far back as 2004. There must be many people aware of his "voucher" (baby-buying) program in these areas, if it exists.

In the end it may be that Garrow is a fraud, and to be ignored (it is easy to claim a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, for example, since the nominees aren't revealed for 50 years). But if what he says is accurate, it would mean that the entire China adoption program since 2000 existed largely as a result of children being purchased for "significant" sums of money by orphanages, working in connection with a Christian crusader driven to "save China's children", and fully supported and protected by the President of China himself.

_______________________

1) All phone calls were recorded by myself, and are protected activity under Federal law, since Utah is a one-party State under Federal taping guidelines(http://www.pimall.com/nais/n.tel.tape.law.html; http://floridalawfirm.com/privacy.html). These recordings were sent to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and are part of their investigation.

The Finances of Baby Trafficking

The recent news story of baby trafficking in the Hunan Province of China offers a disturbing view into the hidden market for young children. Although many Western adoptive parents read such stories with awe and puzzlement, this case has struck particularly close to home, given the involvement of individuals involved with the international adoption program. This recent event represents a convergence of two powerful market forces, the international adoption program, and the domestic demand in China for infants.

Unfortunately, Western News organizations have misunderstood both the causes and forces behind these stories. Reuters, for example, asserts “The sale of children, and women, is a nationwide problem in China, where stringent rules on family planning allow couples to have just one child, at least in cities.” (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK244547.htm). This statement is flawed factually and logically, but the truth does lie beneath the surface.

Baby trafficking has its foundation in childless couples wanting offspring, a condition that exists in every country of the world. Since childlessness has nothing to do with the one-child policy, the demand for children in China is not related to any governmental policy. It is important to understand that most of the people buying these black-market children are married and have no children. Thus, they are seeking young, healthy infants of either sex.

What puzzles most adoptive families is why there would be a black market at all for babies, given the perceived abundance of unwanted baby girls in China’s orphanages. Why don’t these families simply go to an orphanage and adopt a child, rather than face the potential consequences of buying a baby on the black market? The case of “Xiao Mei” (not her real name) will serve to answer that question.

Xiao Mei is a 33 year-old married ovarian cancer survivor. Unable to have biological children, in 2004 she began contacting orphanages to arrange an adoption of a baby girl. The first orphanage she called was the Guangzhou orphanage, since she and her husband live in that city. She was told that only registered residents of Guangzhou are permitted to adopt from the Guangzhou orphanage. Additionally, she was informed that families adopting had to be at least 30 years old, have a stable income, and have no other children. She was told to contact the orphanage in the city where she was registered.

She then contacted the Zhuzhou orphanage in Hunan Province, her city of registry. There she was informed that because she was married to someone from Henan Province, that she must contact the orphanage in that area. Zhuzhou was unwilling to allow them to adopt a child from their orphanage.

When she contacted the Zhumadian orphanage in Henan Province, her husband’s city of registry, she was informed that there were no healthy babies available for adoption. She was told, however, that if she were willing to adopt an older child, or a child with special needs, that there were some available. Since Xiao Mei wanted a child less than a year old and healthy, she declined (Xiao Mei is atypical in requesting a child up to one year old. Most domestic adoptions occur before the child is 2 months old).

Finally, Xiao Mei contacted the Yulin City orphanage in Guangxi Province. Here at last she met with success. Having few adoption criteria, the Yulin orphanage indicated that there were several healthy young babies available for domestic adoption.

But by this time, Xiao Mei was contacted by a friend who knew a family that had just given birth to an unwanted baby girl. This family already had an older girl, and didn’t want to keep the second girl. Would Xiao Mei be interested in adopting this child? Xiao Mei jumped at the chance, and after paying the mutual friend 700 yuan ($90), and assisting in the delivery expenses of 6,600 yuan ($800), she assumed custody of the week-old child. All arrangements were done orally, and neither party knew of the other.

Why was Xiao Mei willing to purchase her daughter instead of formally adopting her from an orphanage? The decision was not financially motivated, since in addition to the delivery expenses she will also have to pay the fine to register her daughter and obtain the I.D. card required for schooling. Xiao Mei simply decided that it was easier to obtain a black-market baby. In addition to the paperwork that all orphanages would require, Xiao Mei was frustrated by the bureaucracy she had experienced in her discussions with the orphanages.

As adoptive parents, we might find this puzzling. Often we assume that the children that are adopted internationally from China are the children that remain unadopted by Chinese families. But as Xiao Mei’s experience shows, this might not in fact be the case. It seems that some orphanages engaged in international adoptions have established barriers to domestic adoptions, be they high adoption donations (upwards of 20,000 yuan ($2,500) in some cases), demographic constraints, or geographic requirements. Two of the four orphanages Xiao Mei contacted were unwilling to adopt a child to her, when there were patently children available; instead, they erected geographical constrains that prevented her from “qualifying” to adopt. Only one of the four, the Yulin orphanage in Guangxi, seemed willing to adopt a child to her.

Why would the Guangzhou and Zhuzhou orphanages be unwilling to adopt a child to someone within China, while actively participating in the international adoption program? As in most questions of this nature, it is helpful to follow the money.

Prior to around 2001, orphanages participating in the international adoption program were permitted to submit a CCAA-calculated number of dossiers each year. Under this program, the CCAA anticipated the number of children that would be internationally adopted each year, and assigned each orphanage a number of children they could submit for adoption. Although this resulted in a balance being struck between “supply” and “demand”, it had the unfortunate consequence of having the directors hold back dossiers for older children or those with special needs. In 2000 and 2001, I would read of families being told by the CCAA that there were no older children available for adoption, yet simultaneously touring orphanages with scores of older children playing in their halls. This discrepancy was a result of simple market forces – directors, working under their quota, were submitting only what they perceived as the most marketable children – healthy infant girls.

In 2001, the CCAA lifted the quota system and allowed orphanages to forward dossiers on all the children in their care. The Waiting Child program was established, and many more older and special needs children were adopted. But now another result occurred: the perception by some directors of their children as internationally adoptable commodities.

The simple reality of the international adoption program is that each child in an orphanage that is in the CCAA’s program is worth $3,000 in donations to that orphanage. The more children an orphanage adopts internationally, the more revenue it receives. For these orphanages, the $100,000 to $500,000 in annual donations represents a huge resource with which to build new facilities, improve salaries and wages for orphanage employees, and otherwise improve the lives of the other children. Thus, some directors have sought opportunities to increase their revenue by various means, some legal and others illegal.

One legal method employed by some orphanages is to make alliances with nearby non-internationally adopting orphanages to provide children to the orphanage. No doubt some sort of “profit-sharing” arrangement is devised. This allows the primary orphanage to submit more dossiers, and also allows the secondary orphanage to obtain much needed revenue that would otherwise not be available. Both benefit.

But the recent case in Hunan illustrates another method, this one illegal, to increase the supply of children. Allegedly the director of the Hengyang County orphanage (an orphanage that participates in the international adoption program) brokered kidnaped children into his orphanage, as well as orphanages in other Provinces. Given the highly lucrative nature of the international adoption program, the question is not how did this happen, but how come it hasn’t happened more often. As the above-quoted Reuters article accurately stated, "Some families that cannot have children of their own are desperate for kids, so these factors combine into a way for orphanages to make big money." Big money indeed.

Something must be done to rectify the current program. One possible solution would be the re-implementation of the quota system, with a few variations. First, special needs and older children would be exempt from the quota. Thus, only healthy infant girls would be subject to dossier limitations. Although this would cap the potential income a particular orphanage would obtain through international adoptions, it would discourage and prevent abuses like those seen in Hengyang – there would no longer be the financial incentive. Additionally, the quota would necessitate more orphanages being brought into the international program, since each of the current orphanages would no longer be able to submit as many dossiers. This would effectively spread the benefit of foreign adoptions among more orphanages, resulting in quality of life improvements being received by more of China’s orphans.

The exposure of this trafficking ring has cast a seriously bad light on the Chinese adoption program. No doubt the participants will be dealt with swiftly and harshly. But the real problem lies in the underlying financial structure that forms the basis of the foreign adoption program. Until the CCAA addresses the inequalities brought about by the current system, it is simply a matter of time before another director seeks to gain in the same way as Hengyang’s did. Perhaps some already do.

"The Truth About Intercountry Adoption's Decline"

A recent article by the Chronicle of Social Change entitled "The Truth About Intercountry Adoption’s Decline" attempts to rightfully refute assertions made by the National Council for Adoption (a pro-adoption lobbying group) that the decline in international adoptions is a result of increased regulations imposed by the U.S. State Department. After chronicling episodes that resulted, possibly, in fewer adoptions from countries such as Russia, South Korea and others (I say "possibly" because my area of expertise is not in those countries, and thus I am unable to ascertain the validity of those contentions), the article cursively mentions the declines seen in China, the adoption elephant in the room for the past two decades. 

Susan Jacobs, the article's author, makes the following assertion:

"Domestic adoptions have increased in some countries like China, resulting in a decrease in international adoptions."

Ms. Jacobs is not alone in making this assertion. In fact, the idea that domestic adoption is the reason for the decline in international adoptions has been promoted by "Love Without Boundaries," Holt International, and others. That the decline in international adoptions is a result of an increase in domestic adoptions from the orphanages is the conventional wisdom of the at-large adoption community.

And it is wrong.

What were the reasons for China's substantial decline? When did it start, and why did it happen? We have a lot of data that detail when it started, and we can rule out many reasons proposed by the adoption community and others as to why, including Ms. Jacobs' theory.  

First, let's establish some basic facts regarding China's adoption program. Receiving countries, including the U.S., publish annual adoption figures for all children arriving from foreign countries through adoption. This data show that intercountry adoptions from China peaked in 2005, when 14, 481 children were adopted to the U.S., Canada, Spain, and other countries (Graph has 14,397 due to my ignoring very small country adoptions. I include in the graph the U.S., Australia, Italy, Spain, the U.K., the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Canada and France). That number declined to 10,759 in 2006, a decline of 25%, and fell nearly 20% the following year to 8,744 total adoptions. By 2017, only 2,211 total international adoptions were done from China, a decline of 85% from the program's 2005 peak.

To quickly eliminate one possible reason for the decline: Provincial finding ads mirror the declines after 2005, and thus it is known that the reason for the decline in China adoptions is "supply" related, not "demand" related. The increasing wait times, etc., prove that the declines are a result of fewer children being submitted for international adoption, not a result of fewer Western families wanting to adopt, an arrow in the heart of the "State Department is to blame" contingency.  

So, it is clear that something happened between 2005 and 2006 that dramatically altered the number of children coming into China's orphanages and being submitted for international adoption. Is it possible to "zoom in" and see what month the change occurred?

When we compile the findings by month of the top six adopting Provinces in 2005 (Anhui, Chongqing, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi), we can clearly see when the decline began. Looking at submissions for the twenty-four months between January 2005 and December 2006, a noticeable decline began in December 2005, when findings dropped from about 897 findings per month between January and November 2005, to 608 findings per average between December 2005 and December 2006. Findings continued to drop beyond 2006.  What occurred in December 2005 that can explain the nearly 33% drop in one month?

Long-time adoptive families will remember that on November 25, 2005, the Hunan trafficking scandal was revealed inside China and around the world. Prior to that event, families inside China were largely unaware of the international adoption program, and realizing that children were being "sold" to Western families angered many. 

Families can debate the "why" behind the Hunan scandal's impact on international adoption numbers -- Was it birth families avoiding the orphanage, or was it orphanage directors changing their programs, for example -- but there is no question that the scandal forever changed the face of China's program, both in numbers of adoptions, and the gender and health status of those adopted. The Hunan scandal is the dominant force behind the decline in China's adoption rates.

But to return to the original assertion. Has domestic adoption had any significant impact on the international adoption program? Have children been adopted to domestic families, resulting in fewer children being adopted internationally? It depends on how you look at the numbers.

China's National Civil Affairs Bureau compiles the total numbers of children adopted each year from China's orphanages, both internationally and domestically. The following graph (drawn from data published here and here) shows the number of domestic adoptions logged by all of China's orphanages (whether they participate in the international adoption program or not) between the peak in 2005 and 2015.

One can clearly see that domestic adoptions from orphanages have also trended down over the past ten years, but did see a small increase in 2006 and 2009. These increases did not, however, make up for the declines experienced in the international adoptions. Clearly, total adoptions from China have declined, not simply a movement of children from international adoption to domestic adoption on the part of China's orphanages.  

So, if the children were not adopted domestically or internationally, where did they go? 

It seems likely that the collapse in international adoptions after the Hunan scandal resulted in birth families inside China being more cautious when relinquishing a child. In other words, children that could not be parented that may have gone into an internationally adopting orphanage prior to 2005 were now placed in extra-legal domestic adoptions. Although it is doubtful that the agencies quoted above had this in mind when they stated that China's domestic adoption program was growing (it is not), they are still partially correct that more children were being placed informally, rather than allowed to enter an orphanage, even if that orphanage did not participate in international adoptions.  

To summarize: The single greatest reason why China's international program declined following December 2005 was the reporting on the Hunan trafficking scandal. Whether it was a result of increased awareness that domestic families inside China got that orphanages in China were adopting children to Westerners outside China for money, or whether orphanage directors changed their programs is not known with certainty, although orphanage-by-orphanage experience tilts probabilities to the former.  What is known is that orphanages with known incentive programs saw the steepest declines in adoptions, and many of those orphanages continue offering rewards for children to this day. China's domestic adoption program was also negatively impacted.  Thus, a statement that China's international adoption program declined because of an increase in domestic adoption from orphanages is incorrect, unless one attaches "informal" to "domestic adoption" and removes the orphanages from the statement.
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The Impact of the Hunan Scandal on China's Adoption Program

This essay was published orginally on our subscription blog in 2012, but seeing some recent comments by waiting families made me think the info might still be of some relevance to interested families.  
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I was reading a waiting family's blog last week, and saw a discussion about how slow the CCAA is referring children.  The waiting families were understandably frustrated that the wait has increased from a year to over five years since many of them have sent their adoption dossiers to China, and with only a small number of referrals taking place each month, many asked the question "Why?"

Answers have been thrown out to explain the increased wait time, running the gamut from the 2008 Olympics to a decrease in abandonments due to increased economic affluence and access to abortion.  Some uninformed families believe that children are still coming into the orphanages, but that the CCAA has implimented a quota system that keeps them there, hidden from the world, and unadoptable.  All of these ideas can be tested, drawing on evidence from China's orphanages.  By focusing on the data from China's main providers of internationally adopted children, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan and Jiangxi Provinces, we can test each hypothesis to see if it stands up to scrutiny, and ultimately determine what exactly caused China's program to so radically change over the past ten years.

First, let's begin answering the question of why by answering an even more basic question:  "When did the wait time begin increasing?"  After we have determined that fact, we can go on to address why.


 DTC Wait Times

The first clue as to why jumps out when we look at the wait time graph above.  Through most of 2003, the wait time for families ranged from eight months to fourteen months, with the overall trend being a decline in wait times.  Wait times in 2004 were very flat, ranging from six to eight months, a situation that continued through 2005.  It isn't until January 2006 that wait times break out to the upside, climbing to nine months, a trend reversal that saw wait times reaching 41 months in August 2009 and 72 months as I write this.

 This graph alone eliminates most of the "macro" reasons for the slowdown in referrals.  While there is little question that abortion and increased economic wealth have a global impact of abandonments, these changes occur slowly, over years, if not decades, not suddenly in the space of a few months as we see above.  Clearly something happened in late 2005 or early 2006 to cause wait times to increase, for the graph above points to a dramatic change in the "supply-demand" equation of China's program.  Either the number of children being referred declined in January, or the number of families submitting files to adopt increased sharply.

I say "supply-demand equation" because, at its most basic, that is what the wait time represents.  It is very much like a line at the corner coffee shop.  The shop can produce a limited amount of coffee each morning. If a Cappuccino machine breaks, the processing of customers begins to slow, and the line of waiting patrons increases, and further increases if morning commuters continue to get in line.  If an employee is particularly adept one morning at making the brew, he is able to serve the shop patrons more quickly, and the line shrinks.

 Imagine that the China program is represented by a single day at the coffee shop.  Obviously one would expect the number of abandonments to change due to macro influences like abortions and rising incomes, but since these changes would occur over a very long period of time, they would not impact the program in the extreme short term.  Such changes would be analogous to a rise in coffee prices -- they would have little impact on the number of people coming into the shop on any given day.

What we see in the graph above is akin to the complete shutdown of nearly all the coffee makers in the shop.  Only one machine continues, and the line of customers has begun to increase out the door and down the block.

"But," one might ask, "how do we know if the machines have broken down, rather than a bunch of new patrons are getting in the line?  Perhaps the 'supply' has remained constant, and the number of customers has simply increased."

A view of total adoptions from China shows that the number of adoptions being completed peaked in 2005, and fell by more than half by 2008.

 Clearly this is not a demand problem, since the patrons for China's adoption program are still stretched out the door and down the block.  The falling adoptions can only be a result of falling supply -- China's program experienced a sharp change in how much coffee it can produce, or to make it more accurate, how many children are available for adoption.  We will focus our attention on four Provinces in the discussion that follows: Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan and Jiangxi Provinces.  These are the four largest adopting Provinces, accounting for over half (57%) of all submissions in 2009.



 One thing becomes quite clear when comparing the orphanage submission numbers above with the wait time graph at the start of this essay -- they are nearly perfectly inverted.  In other words, when submissions were at their peak in 2003, the wait time was at its minimum.  When submissions dropped in 2006, the wait times increased as a result.  This, of course, ignores the increasing demand seen over these years, but clearly something happened between 2005 and 2006 to drastically change the number of children entering the orphanages. 

So, what game-changing event occurred around January 2006 that would change the equation so dramatically?  Possible explanations include China's signing the Hague Agreement in September 2005, and the Hunan Trafficking scandal in November 2005.  No other event that I am aware of took place that would have such a substantial impact on China's orphanage program in such a short time frame.

If we zoom into 2005 and 2006, we can see if there is a specific month when things changed.  This would allow us to decide if signing the Hague Agreement was the cause, or if the Hunan scandal was at fault.  Fortunately, we can break down the findings for these four Provinces by month:



 Here one can graphically see that all four Provinces (Guangxi = Blue; Guangdong = Pink; Hunan = Yellow; Jiangxi = Rust) saw their finding rates substantially fall beginning in December 2005, with another steep drop being seen in February 2006.  By April 2006, submissions from the top four Provinces had declined from a little over 300 children per month to about 100, a decline of over 66%.

Other Provinces saw similar declines. While the Hague Agreement was ratified in September 2005, the Hunan scandal broke on November 25, 2005, with the trials taking place in February 2006.  Both events were accompanied by substantial national press attention inside China.  The timing of these two scandal events coincides perfectly with the decline we see in findings in our four Provinces.  Thus, it seems clear that the scandal is the cause for the slow-down, and not the Olympics, signing of Hague, or any of the other macro forces proposed.

Besides the slowdown in findings, what other characteristics of China's program changed concurrent to the Hunan scandal, and after?  One significant change occurred in the gender ratio of the children submitted. While overall findings declined after 2005, the decline was limited exclusively to females; male findings continued increasing unabated, as they had since 2000 (2011 is under-represented since many findings from 2011 appear in 2012 finding ads).



 In February 2006, a few weeks before the trials for the Hunan scandal directors was set to begin, the CCAA met with the major orphanage directors in Tianjin.  At this meeting, the focus was encouraging directors to submit as many files as they could, even special needs children that the directors may have felt were unadoptable before the scandal.  As a result, submissions of SN children began to increase.  Many of these children had been found many months, if not years before the scandal broke, and were residing in the orphanages, viewed as unadoptable before the February meeting.  But following the meeting, directors began processing the paperwork for these children.  When one graphs the average time between the finding date and the finding ad publication date from 2000 to 2011, one can easily see how the submission of these older children began to increase average "lag times" beginning in 2006.



Between 2000 and 2005, the orphanages published finding ads (the first step to an international adoption) within about 100 days of finding a child.  Hunan Province was the most "efficient", publishing ads on average less than 80 days after finding, while Guangdong was the least "efficient", averaging about 150 days between finding and finding ad publication.  "Efficiency" declined sharply in 2006, as orphanages began submitting children that had been found long before for adoption.  Guangdong's orphanage "lag time" hit a peak of almost two years in 2009 as they responded to the CCAA's pressure to submit previously unadoptable children (This discussion makes the assumption that the finding dates listed are accurate.  There is evidence that such may not be the case in all instances, and that children, particularly older children, have their finding dates artificially altered to much earlier. I have not seen evidence that this is widespread however).

Speaking in generalities, the impact of the Hunan scandal on China's program can be summarized in the following ways:

 1)  Prior to the scandal, the children submitted for international adoption by the orphanages was overwhelmingly female.  Although male children have been increasing in total numbers since 2000 (displaying a trajectory that one would expect from changes in Chinese culture on a macro level), the extremely high number of female submissions resulted in a gender ratio in excess of 90% female through 2005.

After the scandal, the number of female submissions declined substantially across China, while the number of male submissions held steady or increased.  This has resulted in the gender ratio falling, with the current ratio approaching parity.  Since male findings have increased, it is the sharp drop in female submissions that is driving this dramatic change in ratios.

2)  Prior to the scandal, special needs submissions were relatively rare, with over 95% of children adopted classed as "healthy".  With the decline in overall findings, and the push by the CCAA to submit "warehoused" special needs children, the number of special needs adoptions has increased dramatically, both in real numbers and as a percentage of total adoptions.  These increases are a result of orphanages submitting children found in prior years (increasing the average "lag time" between finding and finding ad publication), and an increase of findings overall.  In other words, orphanages are "finding" more special needs children now than before 2006.

There is no doubt that the collapse in adoptions from China after 2005 is a result of the Hunan scandal. Reasons proposed by members of the adoption community, including China's artificially reducing adoptions in anticipation of the 2008 Olympics, China's signing of the Hague Agreement, or the establishment of submissions quotas, lack any evidence.  Additionally, orphanage directors directly refute these notions, plainly stating that there is no limits imposed on orphanages on the number of children that can be submitted to the CCAA for adoption.  Steps taken by the CCAA since 2005 also contradict this idea.  The increase in adoption donation, the change in domestic adoption laws, the recent broadening of "orphan" definitions, are all intended to increase the number of children coming into orphanages for international adoption.  While adoptive families hear that the Chinese government is intent on lowering the number of children adopted, all of the evidence shows the opposite -- that the CCAA is desperately trying to increase the size (and revenue) of the program.

The only question that remains to answer is why the number of children found across China fell so sharply in December 2005 and February 2006.  Was it because orphanage directors realized that many of them were breaking the law, and stopped their incentive programs?  Or was it because the publicity surrounding the scandal actually altered the abandonment frequency across China?

We will save this question for a future essay.







 

Promises, Promises!!

Last night's CBS story on Ethiopia brought me a feeling of deja vu, for such stories are found frequently in China's adoption program as well. The following article is taken from our subscription blog, but has been modified to protect the families involved.

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There is one characteristic of parenting common to all of us. It is so strong, that parents will sometimes give up their child in order to fulfill this desire. In poor areas, this impulse is particularly strong.

It is the desire that a child have a better life than its parents.

While much is spoken about the financial payments involved in many orphanage programs, a lessor-known program involves no money, but a simple promise: That a child will be provided a rich family to raise it, that the child will be given a great education, resulting in a successful life. This promise, often combined with promises of a "returning child", is a very strong incentive for any loving parent, but especially a parent that views such "blessings" as impossible to provide themselves.

We recently did a birth parent search in Luoyang City, Henan Province. Luoyang is the largest adopting orphanage in Henan Province, having submitted over a 100 children for adoption in 2008. My wife and I had visited Luoyang in late 2004 to perform finding location research for a group of families, and one family with a child adopted from Luoyang wanted us to return to search for their daughter's birth family.

The orphanage had told the adoptive family that their daughter had been found as a three-week old infant in a local park. Given the age and finding location, it was assumed that locating the birth family would prove difficult, but the adoptive family wanted to proceed anyway. The adoptive family did have the name of their daughter's foster family, who had taken care of their daughter from the time that she arrived in the orphanage until she was adopted at almost four years old.

We decided to begin our research with the foster family. We arranged a meeting, unknown to the orphanage, and started our interview by asking if they had any information about where "Dang Mei Mei" had been found. The foster father looked confused for a second, and then said something that stunned my wife and me:

"She wasn't abandoned; she is our daughter."

"How is that possible?", we asked. We asked them to tell us their story.

When their daughter was three years old (not a few weeks as the adoptive family had been told), the foster father had been approached by a friend of the family, the local Civil Affairs director. He invited the foster father to lunch, and after getting some small-talk out of the way, informed the father that he (the director) had a connection with an orphanage in another city. This orphanage adopted children to the West, and these children were raised by Western families, were given good educations, and were thus insured a happy and prosperous life. "I wanted to tell you, that I can arrange for your daughter to be adopted to the West. Also, once she is grown, she will return to China to find you, and will then take care of you in your old age."

The father didn't know what to say, so he promised his friend he would get back to him. He returned home and told his wife what he had been told. After lengthy discussions, they concluded (against their daughter's maternal grandmother's wishes) to bring their daughter the six hours to Luoyang.

The birth family was very excited when we found them again. When we asked them why they hadn't told the adoptive family the true nature of their relationship before, the father said simply, "Because we knew they would not have adopted our daughter if we had." They also asked when the adoptive family would be able to bring their daughter back to see them. The conversation gave us to believe that the family felt that the adoption arrangement was temporary, and that in reality the girl still belonged to them. They viewed it as they would a grand-parent arrangement so common in China, engaging in it to provide resources and opportunities the parents couldn't provide themselves.

When we told the family that in the vast majority of cases the children will never be able to find their birth family, and that the orphanage had lied to the adoptive family about their daughter's history to prevent the adoptive family from ever finding the birth family, it dawned on the family that they had been deceived. While they are lucky that they were found, most birth families will wait patiently for a day of reunification that will never come.

It is doubtful that adoptive families are prepared to learn that their child's birth family relinquished their child simply to have them raised in an affluent lifestyle, but with no understanding that the birth families are expecting their child to one day leave the adoptive family to return to China and reunify with the birth family. Thus, Luoyang's program also deceives adoptive families, placing an emotional time-bomb into the adoptive family's relationships that will one day detonate into severe trouble and confusion, especially in the adoptive child.

I can't tell you how livid I was to learn of Luoyang's program, and its potentially devastating impact on both biological and adoptive families. More distressing still is the realization that such programs are common, and used by many orphanages to recruit children for their international adoption programs. Consider this story told by one adoptive mother who adopted from an orphanage that has a program similar to Luoyang's:

While in China on their adoption in Jiangxi Province, the adoptive mother asked her guide if orphanages pay for children: "He said that women (families) are told that if they give the child to the SWI they will send the baby to America where she will grow up in a rich family - and when the girl grows up she will be educated and wealthy and she will come looking for her real family. She will come back to China and take care of them. When orphanage directors get together they ask each other if they have put their own granddaughter up for IA - and then they ask if the granddaughter has come back yet to make them rich. Then they all laugh...that was the punchline. This joke has nothing to do with saving children from being left on the side of the road in a box. . . ."

A few months ago we contacted a Jiangxi director about the change in directors at the CCAA, and in the course of that conversation she told us that last August the CCAA began a new program in "one of the Jiangxi orphanages" whereby it was broadcast to local families that if they were poor, or had only a single parent, etc., they could bring their child to the orphanage and she would then be adopted to a Western family. It appears that the CCAA, and the Chinese government, in a desperate attempt to keep the engine of international adoption running, is now removing the risk of abandonment and emotionally coercing birth families to give up their children.

One can see probable examples of this program in orphanages in Guangdong, Jiangxi, Guangxi, and other Provinces. Many orphanages in these areas have seen huge spikes in older-child referrals over the past year. Guangzhou, for example, has seen submissions for older, healthy children increase over 600% in 2008.

To those familiar with the adoption programs in Vietnam, Cambodia, India, Ethiopia, Romania, and the rest, China's issues fall into a pattern seen virtually in every country that adopts internationally. Whether it is the offering of money for children, or the simple offering of promises of a bright future for a child and the financial support Western-educated "Lucky" children in the birth parent's old age, many orphanages are still seeking ways to bring more children into the IA program.

Domestic Adoption in China's Orphanages

There have been several interesting comments to this post, which in many cases I have responded to. I encourage you to peruse the comments at the end of this essay.
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As adoptive parents of Chinese children, most of us have wondered what would have happened to our children had we not adopted them. Would they have been adopted by a Chinese family? Would they have lived out their childhood in the orphanage? Perhaps some of us adopted from China because we assumed that they would not have been adopted, and would have remained in an institution unless we provided them with a family.

As I wrote in a previous blog essay, the international adoption program has had a profound effect on the dynamics of orphanage adoption in China (“The Finances of Baby Trafficking, 12/3/05). Recent baby trafficking stories such as those in Guangxi and Hunan Provinces have brought many questions to mind, the forefront of which is how can a country that has so many children in orphanages have a significant baby-trafficking problem.

In that blog essay, I recounted the experience of “Xiao Mei,” a friend of mine in Guangzhou. She and her husband had tried unsuccessfully to adopt a child from the Guangzhou orphanage, only to be told that there was a 3-year wait for a healthy child. I had been told the same thing on a visit to the Guangzhou facility. When I asked orphanage personnel how there could be a waiting list for domestic adoptions at the same time there were international adoptions being performed, I was told that the children that were adopted internationally had been “passed over” by Chinese families. I was given to understand that Chinese families sought only the most beautiful, most intelligent children for adoption, and were willing to wait to obtain such a child.

Xiao Mei’s experience cast doubt on this explanation, so I decided to conduct a more scientific survey of orphanages. Using www.random.org, I put together a list of 40 orphanages selected randomly from the 248 orphanages that currently participate in the international adoption program (drawn from the listing of orphanage Yahoogroups listed on Raising China's Childen website). This sample size should give us a clear picture of the impact the international adoptions is having on the orphanages that participate in that program.

The interviewer was a female Chinese resident posing as a married woman, 35 years old, with no children. During the course of the interview she would indicate that she was well off. The following orphanages were surveyed between January 10 and 19, 2006:

Bengbu (Anhui) -- Xiangfan (Hubei)
Chaohu (Anhui) -- Loudi (Hunan)
Ma’Anshan (Anhui) -- Qidong (Hunan)
Quanjiao (Anhui) -- Xiangtan (Hunan)
Liangping (Chongqing) -- Yueyang City (Hunan)
Xiamen (Fujian) -- Zhuzhou (Hunan)
Dongguan (Guangdong) -- Lianyungang (Jiangsu)
Foshan (Guangdong) -- Nantong (Jiangsu)
Guangzhou (Guangdong) -- Ji’An (Jiangxi)
Leizhou (Guangdong) -- Nanchang (Jiangxi)
Qingxin (Guangdong) -- Pingxiang (Jiangxi)
Qingyuan (Guangdong) -- Shicheng (Jiangxi)
Shenzhen (Guangdong) -- Xinyu (Jiangxi)
Zhaoqing (Guangdong) -- Yongfeng (Jiangxi)
Guilin (Guangxi) -- Yongxiu (Jiangxi)
Nanning (Guangxi) -- Hanzhong (Shaanxi)
Tianjin (Hebei) -- Xianyang (Shaanxi)
Daye (Hubei) -- Kunming (Yunnan)
Honghu (Hubei) -- Wenzhou (Zhejiang)
Huangmei (Hubei) -- Yiwu (Zhejiang)

During the course of the survey, the following questions were asked of each orphanage representative:

1) Are there any healthy infants (less than one year old) available for adoption?
2) If not, how long is the wait to adopt?
3) What is the adoption fee to adopt?

A total of 32 orphanages responded to these questions, and results are tabulated as follows. The totals are based on the responding 32 orphanages, and in instances where the totals do not total 32, it is due to some orphanages not responding.

Are there any healthy infants (less than one year old) available for adoption?
Yes: 5 (16%)
No: 26 (81%)
No answer: 1 (3%)

Of the five orphanages that indicated that some healthy babies were available, one indicated an adoption could take place only if a substantial donation (30,000 yuan or $3,700) was made. Otherwise no babies were available. Another orphanage, while acknowledging that healthy babies were available, opined that it would be better for the babies to be adopted internationally.

This confirms comments by orphanage directors with whom I have conversed. Many feel that the children in the orphanages will have better opportunities in foreign families. There seems to be a strong bias among some directors to place children internationally. I sincerely believe this bias does not stem solely from the higher adoption fees foreigners provide the orphanages; rather, I think that many sincerely believe that the children will have happier lives with better educational and financial opportunities outside China. This bias surely plays a factor among the 26 orphanages who indicated that their orphanages had no healthy babies as well, a fact that is easily refuted by analyzing the orphanage’s finding ads.

Several orphanages had restrictions in place that barred a family from outside the city from adopting. Others gave preferential treatment to locals, while not specifically prohibiting non-locals from adopting. One orphanage indicated that although they had no children available officially, a 3 month old girl could be procured from a family friend, who was contemplating giving up a third daughter.

How long must I wait to adopt a healthy baby from your orphanage?
No wait: 6 (19%)
Less than one year: 2 (6%)
One to two years: 8 (25%)
Over two years: 3 (9%)
No answer: 13 (41%)

The large percentage (41%) of orphanages refused to be pinned down on the time required before a healthy child would become available. Of the orphanages that indicated they had healthy children available for adoption, 80% indicated no wait, and the other orphanage indicated a wait of less than a year. Many of the orphanages indicated that if the family was able to donate a substantial amount to the orphanage, exceptions could be made. Therefore, most of the orphanages seemed flexible on this point, depending on the level of interest of the adoptive family, and their financial situation.

What is the fee for a Chinese family to adopt from your orphanage?

This question was answered by over half of the orphanages (65%), with the rest not willing to disclose the adoption fee. A significant percentage (28%) of orphanages indicated that their adoption fees were income-dependent, and were calculated on the adoptive family’s ability to pay (sliding scale). The fees ranged from a low of no fee (Bengbu, Anhui) to 30,000 yuan. Of the others, many charged fees ranging from 5,000 yuan (15%) to 20,000 yuan to adopt domestically (18%). The highest adoption fee quoted was 30,000 yuan by three of the orphanages.

When one contrasts the answers provided in the survey with the finding ads placed in preparation for international adoption, it becomes clear that almost all of the orphanages surveyed placed a preference for international adoptions. For example, the Guangzhou orphanage in Guangdong claims to have a three-year wait for domestic families, yet this orphanage has adopted internationally at the rate of between 80 and 100 children per year for the last five years. Not all of these children, of course, were healthy young infants, but a high percentage were. Foshan and Qingxin, also in Guangdong, each indicated a wait time of over two years for Chinese families, yet each submits over 25 children annually for international adoption. All of the orphanages in this survey continue to place children internationally, despite the fact that most have families willing to adopt domestically, many with those families waiting several years.

This data supports the contention that the international adoption program is draining adoptable children from the domestic adoption program in China. Some of the bias to international adoptions no doubt springs from the belief that the children will have better quality lives outside China, but there can be little doubt that the financial incentive is also a key player. With most orphanages requiring substantial fees for domestic adoption, or banning them outright, it is easy to understand how baby trafficking problems can develop.

This is not to suggest that these orphanages do no domestic adoptions. Surveys that I have conducted in the course of my researching orphanages (some of whom appeared on this list) indicated that most orphanages do adopt between 15 and 50% of their children domestically. These domestically adopting families no doubt fulfill the qualifications of most of the orphanages we surveyed: local residents with substantial financial wherewithall. But there are no doubt many other families willing to adopt, but not meeting the strict requirements imposed by most orphanages.

Can't these families simply apply at orphanages that don't participate in the international adoption program?

Several orphanages indicated that it is China policy to allow all orphanages to participate in the international adoption program. This will be the subject of our next blog essay.