DNA Technology Improving for Sibling Testing

Everyone knows the stories of two families searching their child's orphanage adoption group and finding another family's child that bears an uncanny resemblance to their own child.  At times, such matches seem possible, with the two children sharing common characteristics such as birth dates and finding locations.  Sometimes it borders on the absurd, such as the adoptive mother who thought the child on the Fisher Price Little People Sonya Lee box looked just like her own daughter.

A few years ago I wrote an article on what I felt were significant weaknesses in then-current sibling DNA testing technology, cautioning adoptive families not to put to much faith in their accuracy.  The reason was simple:  Using only 27 genetic markers, the tests were possibly susceptible to "genetic drift", a problem with small, inbred populations, which many Chinese towns and villages are.  Additionally, these tests were often (usually) conducted against databases with few actual native Chinese DNA in them.  Rather, they consisted of diaspora Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and other Asian samples.  Obtaining a 95% "probability" result simply meant that the two children were more closely matched in DNA than 95% of the database.  With a database of millions of DNA samples, 5% of the DNA database's samples would produce a higher "probability". Usually, that margin of error allowed for thousands, or even tens of thousands, of possible matches ("False positives").

I remain of the opinion that many of the most well-known stories of reunited siblings in the Chinese adoption community are more than likely not really siblings at all.

Technology has improved significantly in the intervening six years, and today many DNA labs don't test only  27 markers, or even 1,000 markers, but currently a million markers or more are compared when a DNA test is done.  With so many genetic comparisons being done, previous problems of genetic drift and general uncertainty of a sibling match are eliminated.  With modern testing, the need for parental DNA to perform sibling matches is no longer needed.  When two people's DNA are compared with one million markers, the result is either a positive or negative.  The ambiguity is gone.

This is, of course, of significant importance to the adoption community, where parental DNA is usually lacking.  With current technology, one can now achieve the level of confidence one could only obtain with parental DNA five years ago.  Combined with falling testing costs, and it is now possible for every child from an orphanage to submit DNA and for sibling matches to be made across a wide number of submissions. 

One lab that employs this new technology is 23andMe.com, located in Mountain View, CA.  For $99 (plus $9 per month for 12 months) 23andMe.com will analyze over one million genetic "genomic variations" on a person's DNA.   Of interest to adoptive families, the lab will then cross-analyze the submitted DNA against the DNA from every other person in the company's database, and alert you of any sibling, half-sibling, first cousin or parental matches.  They also allow you to be alerted if a match is made in the future.  Thus, two DNA samples can be independently submitted by interested adoptive families, and 23andMe will provide information (if both parties agree) that allow matched individuals to share information. 

But 23andMe's test goes way beyond DNA matching.  As a result of their huge database of DNA samples and the results of studies done on specific genetic markers, 23andMe can provide you with ancestral information on where your child's ancestors originated -- did her ancestors originate in northern China or Southern?  Did an ancestor migrate into China from another country?  With female children, this information is only available for the maternal lines, but it is nevertheless fascinating reading.  Meikina's DNA indicates that some of her ancestors originated outside China, most likely in Vietnam.  Meigon's ancestors were the same people that migrated over the land-bridge and settled North America. 

Additionally, and perhaps the most important practical information, 23andMe's report will detail possible medical risks that may be found in one's DNA.  For example, my daughter Meigon's test indicates she has a lower than average risk of Parkinson's and type 2 diabetes, but a higher risk of high blood pressure.  Meilan's DNA suggests she may be at significantly higher risk for breast cancer.  These assessments may have important ramifications for Meigon and Meilan's futures. 

Families would be well advised to utilize the current technology in the future for any sibling testing, or to confirm previous tests conducted with the old technology.  Not only will you be given a definitive answer to your sibling suspicions, but you will be given an amazing array of useful information about your child, some of which may have important implications to their lives.
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After I posted the above article, I contacted 23andMe.com to have them provide a more detailed explanation of their sibling testing.  They provided me with the following answer:

We can determine a relationship between two siblings by comparing the amount of DNA that they share. We look for segments of DNA between two people that are identical-by-descent (IBD); the more IBD segments two individuals share, and the longer those segments are, the closer their relationship. Siblings, half-siblings, cousins, parents/children all share a certain range of IBD segments. We can assign a relationship based on the segments. 

In plainer English:  When the DNA strands of the birth mother and father are separated to produce the eggs and sperm, it does not occur like a zipper, with one gene going on way, and the next one going the other.  The egg or sperm contains strands (complete sections) of original DNA.  These "gene clusters" are highly unique, and if a gene cluster appears in two individuals, it is strong evidence that the two people are related.  If two individuals possess many such gene strands in common, it is definitive proof that they are siblings.  

With modern genetic testing such as 23andMe's, population drift and other genetic anomalies are no longer a consideration.  This was the main weakness of the 27 allele tests.  But current technology is based ONLY on the two DNA samples, and are not compared to DNA databases in order to confirm a relationship. 

Why Birth Parent Searches are Often Simple

Among the many e-groups devoted to China adoption are the newsgroups dedicated to families wanting to search for their child's birth family in China.  These groups, whose members number in the hundreds, share ideas and anecdotes about how a successful search should be conducted. 

Additionally, there are hundreds of families informally searching.  These families don't belong to any formal groups, but seek information from other adoptive parents, agencies, and other respected sources of adoption information.  They all share a common goal -- to locate their child's birth family in China. 

Unfortunately, for most of them a successful birth parent search will remain an unfulfilled dream.

It is not that birth parent searching is difficult; it is not.  In fact, locating birth families is not overly complicated.  In our recent research projects in Jiangxi Province, for example, we have located scores of birth families, many without even trying.  An adoptive family dedicated to truly learning the truth about their child's origins in China can do so, yet emotional barriers prevent most from really trying.

What are these barriers?  For one, there is a common idea among adoptive parents that a birth parent search isn't in their job description, that it is something that is best left to the adopted child.  This misguided notion assumes (incorrectly in almost every case) that the information will "keep" -- that success is just as likely in 20 years as it is today.  Unfortunately, in China next year is a long time.  Ignoring the fact that such basic sources of information such as finders, foster families, orphanage caregivers and directors will almost certainly no longer be available in twenty years (either from moving, dying, or loss of clear memories), waiting such a long time also diminishes the chances of finding hospital and police records, and probably the birth family themselves.  It goes without saying that I believe adoptive families are foolish to wait in seeking their child's birth family, since doing so almost always insures that the search will fail down the road (I am focusing on searching; whether to reveal information to an adopted child is a completely different subject, which I addressed in an essay entitled "What to Tell -- And When". 

But there is another reason adoptive families don't look -- fear.  Last year we announced to the adoptive family groups for the Hunan scandal orphanages that we had obtained the receiving logs for many of the children adopted from those orphanages.  The numbers of children listed were in the thousands, yet only a dozen families inquired about their child's record -- most apparently decided that having that information was not important to their child's future.  There is no doubt that many adoptive families experience feelings of ambivalence regarding such information -- possessing it requires them to alter the "family story", to acknowledge the impact of trafficking and money on their adoption.  Many choose to ignore offerings of such information.  I understand that impulse, we are dealing with it in our own family.  But our first priority as adoptive parents should be to obtain every shred of information we can about our children.  We ignore such information at our own peril.

Searching families ostensibly want to locate their child's birth family, yet most again act in ways that will ultimately prevent them from ever having success in their search.  Why?  Because even after all of the stories and evidence that has come out of China regarding incentive programs, Family Planning confiscations, etc., many adoptive families still cling to the idea that the information provided by the orphanage is largely true, that the director, finders and others will honestly respond to questions, and that having someone simply ask the "basics" is all that is needed to search.  In most cases, such a strategy will doom a search to failure.

To begin a successful search, families must accept and understand that there are two ways that almost all children end up in orphanages: found abandoned and reported, or pulled in through incentive programs (including Family Planning confiscations).  An adoptive family must assume that either of those situations played a role in their child's history.  Most adoptive families will fail because they don't want to consider that their child ended up in the orphanage through Family Planning activity or due to baby-buying or other incentive programs.  Unless you enter the search with your mind receptive to any possibility, you will miss key pieces of information that will lead you to the proverbial dead-end.

A successful search begins by looking at the orphanage's overall adoption patterns.  Do findings appear random?  Have any significant shifts in patterns occurred?  Does the orphanage fit the patterns for other orphanages in the area, or does it exhibit characteristics that set it apart from the other area orphanages (such as a dearth of male findings, or an abundance of infant findings).  Our Birth Parent Analysis was specifically designed to provide that information, but another source is fellow adoptive families (who, unfortunately, are almost always uncooperative).  Armed with detailed data about the "lay of the land" in a specific orphanage area, a family is ready to formulate a birth parent search strategy.

Most families begin by approaching the orphanage director, asking for information such as a police report, birth notes, etc.  Unfortunately, this is usually the last thing a family should do.  By alerting the orphanage that you are looking into your child's history, the potential exists that the orphanage will contact key people in your child's history and coach them on how to respond to your questions.  Finders will be told to stick to a "boiler plate" storyline:  "I was on my way to work, and heard a baby crying, etc., etc."  Once the orphanage contacts these key people, your chances of a successful search fade to nothing without your even realizing it.  Few will contradict the direct orders of a government official and tell you a story that contradicts what you have been told. 

Let me cite a recent example.  In researching a child's birth parents recently, we investigated the finding of a child found by a "Ms. Wei" (name changed), who worked for the orphanage.  The police report for the child indicated that Ms. Wei reported that she was on her way to the market on the morning the child was found.  As she passed the market gate, she heard some crying and glanced over and saw a baby in a box.  "What kind of parents would do such an evil thing?" Ms. Wei stated in her police report.  She went into great detail about calling the police, and the police confirmed by signature her story. The adoptive family had little reason to doubt the veracity of the events as described by Ms. Wei.

We met Ms. Wei away from the orphanage (something we learned long ago was necessary to getting good information) and asked her about the finding.  She recounted in pretty good detail the story as told in the police report, except for one difference: In our interview she said she had been on her way to work, and was passing the market.  When pressed, she finally admitted that she had not really found the child, but had been sent to pick her up from an area hospital. Her story (and the police report) had been fabricated out of whole cloth. 

A family unaware of the background at this orphanage would have accepted Ms. Wei's story, assumed that a market finding meant that locating the birth family was impossible, and never realized that the birth family was in reality a family friend. 

There is little question that if an adoptive family had approached the director and asked to talk to Ms. Wei, that he would have quietly contacted her and told her to stick to the official storyline.  An adoptive family, unaware of the finding patterns in their child's orphanage, would have then conducted an interview and received the "corporate line" about the finding.  They would have left the city never realizing how close they came to finding the truth. 

But performing a successful search required this family to acknowledge and accept the  realities of their child's orphanage -- the peculiar gender ratios, the finding location clustering, the improbable finding stories.  Our research family was willing to do that; many others aren't.  Rather, they will conduct no preliminary research into their child's orphanage, naively ask their child's orphanage director for assistance in locating and interviewing the finder, and innocently go through the steps most birth family search groups advocate.  These families will almost always meet with failure.

When we perform our searches, we make one basic assumption that has served us very well -- assume that everyone we speak to has something to hide.  In court parlance, we treat everyone as a "hostile witness".  This doesn't mean, of course, that we act rude or aggressive with finders, etc.  Rather, we probe, repeat questions, and most importantly we ask the "tough questions."  I read an account of an adoptive mother a while ago who had interviewed her daughter's finder.  She asked about the circumstances of her daughter's finding, and received the common explanation:  "I was on my way to work when . . ."  She says she studied his face to see if he was being truthful, but felt it rude to probe his story deeper.  She left with confirmation of what the orphanage had told her.  But her interview probably would have yielded more information if she had been aware that over ten children had been found at the same location, and that the orphanage displayed characteristics consistent with incentive programs.  The bottom line is to ask the difficult questions -- "Did you really find this child? Do you have an idea who the birth parents might be?  Did you receive money for reporting my child to the orphanage?"  Those are the type of questions that bring forth the truth.

There are other important points to consider, including whether to have an area resident do the asking and interviewing, or whether to do so yourself?  How does one approach police and hospital officials to get information and records?  There are many possible avenues of information, but all must be treated in just the right way to obtain that information.  And even doing everything right does not guarantee success. 

In our own research, we have discovered that a common tactic used to prevent both birth parents and adoptive families from discovering each other is to alter or switch finding information. For example, the Qichun, Hubei orphanage director admitted to one adoptive parent that “they deliberately fudged the estimated birthdate. This was routinely done, he said, specifically so that a birth family would never be able to corroborate a child's birth date should they comeback in later/months years trying to reclaim a child.”  Obviously this tactic cuts both ways -- while preventing a birth family from correctly identifying a relinquished child, it also prevents an adoptive family from having vital information for a birth parent search. 

We saw another tactic used in a recent birth parent project in Jiangxi.  While we were successful in locating numerous birth parents, many of them were birth parents for children not in our project.  This was because the orphanage had switched the police reports and finding data of our project child with another child found around the same time.  This shuffling of finding information would create obvious problems for a search.  

Not all of the hurdles of a successful search are a result of orphanage action; some involve the finders themselves.  While I have found most finders to be cooperative, often they will specifically inform us that they are unwilling to put us in touch with the birth family because of the deception that occurred in obtaining the child.  In our recent research in Jiangxi, for example, a quiet dinner with an employee of the orphanage, who was the finder of one of our research subjects, admitted that she lied to the birth family when she promised them that their daughter would be adopted by a local Chinese family and not sent to the orphanage.  She stated that this was necessary, because many people believe that internationally adopted children are used for organ donations, and thus don't survive.  Thus, even though she knew the birth family, she would not allow us to contact them since they would then know that she had deceived them.  A birth father that we located in  became ferociously angry when we tracked him down and he learned that his daughter had gone into the orphanage and had not been adopted by a local family as he had been promised.  While incentive programs often increase the chances of a successful birth family search, if the birth family was deceived into relinquishing their child to the orphanage, orphanage workers, foster families and other finders will be unwilling to cooperate for fear of reprisal from the birth family. 

Searching for birth parents requires that every assumption you have ever made about your child's finding be discarded.  It may be that the finding occurred just as you were told.  But it is more likely that your child actually was transferred, person to person, into the orphanage, and therefore a trail of custody exists.  Discovering that trail requires detective work and good interviewing skills.  Not many families do either, and for that reason will never see a reward for the expenditure of the time and money they invested into their search.

Silencing the Voices of Gaoping's Searching Birth Families

Things have not been going well for the families from Gaoping who have been seeking information about their confiscated children.  As we reported here, the story of Family Planning confiscations in the Shaoyang orphanage area was known in the West as a result of our initial highlighting of the story in 2006, and a documentary broadcast by Netwerk TV in the Netherlands.  But coverage inside China was non-existent until Caixin Magazine published a series of in-depth articles last month.

Although the reporter from Caixin Magazine has sought to make contact with the adoptive families of these children by having contact information forwarded to adoption newsgroups, so far none have come forward.  As a result, frustration and anger has grown among the score of birth families, and they decided to file a lawsuit against the Shaoyang orphanage and the area Civil Affairs to obtain an official apology and information as to the destination of their children.

A story out today details the latest twist in the Gaoping saga. On June 21, Yang Li Bing and Zhou Yinghe, the appointed representatives of the Gaoping family group, filed "a petition regarding the case of the missing children in Shaoyang City."  Later that same day they were approached by a man who claimed that his child was also confiscated, and who asked if he could join forces with Yang Li Bing's group in seeking redress.  This individual, ostensibly named Li Hongfu, asked the two men to remain in Shaoyang while the other birth families from Gaoping returned home.  After a dinner, he invited the two men to go with him to a local massage parlor.  Shortly after they arrived, police busted the place and made only two arrests: Yang Li Bing and Zhou Yinghe.

An investigation into Li Hongfu's ID card revealed that the identity was manufactured, and that this person didn't really exist.

Yang Li Bing and Zhou Yinghe are both being held for 15 days, during which time it is clear that they will "pressured" to stop making trouble for the orphanage and Family Planning officials.  Already government officials have been busy convincing the other families to stop working with Yang Li Bing.  Slowly but surely the inevitable pressures put on these families will force them to stop seeking their children, and to disappear like so many previous families have done.

The "Science" of Orphanage Naming

Most adoptive families invest a significant amount of emotion into their child's Chinese orphanage name.  Many use the name as their child's middle name out of a desire to retain a piece of their child's life history.  Orphanage names uniquely identify each child, and of interest in this essay are the methods employed by orphanages to create those unique names.

First, a short primer on the names themselves.  While many families notice that names often appear the same in the pinyin version, the Chinese characters underlying those names are different.  This is due to the fact that many different characters in Chinese can be "translated" into the same pinyin syllable.  For example, "Mei" is represented by forty-one different Chinese characters, six of which (梅, 美, 妹, 媚, 玫, 媄) are common characters in female names.  Thus, an orphanage could adopt many children with the name "Dang Mei", but in Chinese all the names would be different, represented by different Chinese characters.

First Character
The first character of a child's name in Chinese is designated as the surname.  Unlike in Western tradition, in Chinese the "last" name of the child is represented by the first character.  Thus, my name in China would be written surname, or family name, first: Stuy Brian Harry.

Although most children adopted from a specific orphanage are all given the same "surname", this is not always the case.  In Kunming, Yunnan, for example, the surname is a designation of what area of Kunming the child was found in.  Thus, children from Kunming may be surnamed "An" (安) if they were found in Anning City, "Cheng" (呈) if they originated in Chenggong, "Guan" (官) if they came from the Guandu district of Kunming, etc.  Although surnaming based on finding location is fairly uncommon among orphanages, we will see that it is more commonly used when designating the second character of the name.

While Kunming is pretty straight-forward in its surnaming, other orphanages are less transparent.  Desheng orphanage, Guangxi has employed surnaming in an almost "secret-code" method to designate where the children originated from.  Desheng is fairly unique among orphanages in that it adopts children transferred from other orphanages in Guangxi Province, including Guiping, Yulin, Pingnan, Cangwu and others, most of whom are also participants in international adoption (Nanning's "Mother's Love" orphanage also adopts largely transferred children from other Guangxi orphanages).  The first batch of children submitted by Desheng in April 2001 (when Desheng began international adoptions) was comprised of children mostly from the Cenxi, Pingnan and Guiping orphanages.  But in this early group, the surname given to a child is the only clue that they came from another orphanage. In April 2001, for example, seven "Cen" (岑) girls were submitted by Desheng. Although the surname originates in "Cenxi", the assigned finding location was in Desheng. In the same batch were seven children with "Gong" (龚) (indicating an origin in Pingnan) and "Jin" (金) (indicating an origin in Guiping) surnames, all with finding locations inside Yizhou City.  In a few cases, finding ads from the originating orphanage lists another finding location, which was of course not conveyed to the adoptive family.  For example, an ad for "Jin Xiao Ling" (name altered) was published by the Guiping orphanage on January 13, 2001 listing this child's finding date as December 1, 2000, birth date of November 29, 2000, and the finding location as the Muwa hospital in Guiping.  A finding ad for "Jin Xiao Lin" (name also altered) was published by the Desheng orphanage in April 2001, listing the birth date as December 1, 2000, birthdate as November 29, 2000, and the finding location as "Desheng Northern Temple".

Another girl's finding ad published in the same newspapers give the Guiping information as "Jin Mei Ling, born December 5, 2000, found December 5, 2000 at the Guiping City roundabout" (name altered).  The corresponding Desheng ad lists "Jin Mei Lin, born December 5, 2000, found December 5, 2000 at the Latang Forest Farm in Yizhou City" (name also altered).

A third girl's Guiping finding ad details ""Jin Guo Ling, born November 14, 2000, found December 9, 2000 at the Yu River bridge in Guiping."  The corresponding Desheng ad lists "Jin Guo Lin, born November 14, 2000, found December 9, 2000 at the Desheng main roundabout" (names altered). 

After these two groups of children, surnames became uniform for almost all children submitted by Desheng between June 2001 and December 2004, with "Sheng" (胜) being listed as the surname. However, now the finding locations betray the origin of the children, with children found in Qinzhou, Hechi, Xingye, and Cangwu apparently having their finding locations retained, but with a "Sheng" surname given. This would change again in 2005, when both the surnames and the finding locations of the children sent to Desheng were apparently retained. Also of interest is that the children arrived in batches, with each originating orphanage sending 3-6 children at the same time to Desheng. With a few isolated exceptions, this process is still followed in Desheng.

The deceptive "reassigning" of finding locations in 2001 is of course of concern to adoptive parents, who often have no idea that their child did not originate in Desheng, but actually was transferred from Guiping, Pingnan, Cenxi or another orphanage. Another potential problem arises if both the name and finding location were changed, which would then prevent easy detection of a transfer.  Thus, in the case of children adopted from Desheng, the surname choice reflected, at least in the early submissions, the area of Guangxi Province where the children originated. 

Other common surname methodologies include having the orphanage surname be a part of the town, district or city name -- "Bao" (宝) = Bao'An, Guangdong; "Chen" (郴) = Chenzhou, Hunan; "Ning"(宁) = Changning, Hunan; "Gao" (高) = Gao'An, Jiangxi.  This is the most common surnaming method.  Also common is the practice of making the orphanage surname the same as the orphanage director's surname --"Lin" (林) = DianBai, Guangdong; "He" (何) = Sanshui, Guangdong; "Qiu" (邱) = Yangxi, Guangdong; "Zhao" (赵) = Yuanling, Hunan.

Surnames can also be based on some characteristic of the area, as in Huazhou's use of the surname "Ji" (吉), which originates from the Cantonese "Jihong", a popular medicinal plant in that area.  Other examples are Shangrao City, Jiangxi use of "Ling" (灵) for its children, originating in the majestic Ling Mountains south of the city, Jianxin, Jiangxi use of "Gan" (淦) after the Gan River in Jiangxi Province, and Xiangtan, Hunan use of "Peng" (彭), the surname of a famous military leader born there.

The two most common orphanage surnames are "Dang" (党) and "Guo" (国), especially early in China's international adoption program.  "Guo" (国) is translated as "State" or "Country", and is used to reflect a child's origins in China's State or overall country.  Many orphanages have used this surname at some point in their history, including Zhuzhou, Hunan; Beihai, Guangxi; Beiliu, Guangxi, DianBai, Guangdong; Qingcheng, Guangdong; Zhanjiang, Guangdong; and Guixi, Jiangxi. 

Another very common surname is "Dang"(党), which represents the political face of China, being interpreted as "Political Party" or "Government".  This surname is used most frequently in Henan Province, with more than half of that Province's orphanages using the "Dang" surname at some point in their histories (some examples are Anyang, Hebi, Kaifeng, Luohe, Luoyang, Nanyang, etc.).  Other orphanages that use "Dang" include Zhangzhou, Fujian and Ankang and Jiangzhang orphanages in Shaanxi.  Other surnames with similar connotations include "Hua" (China), and "Min" (The People, Citizens). 

A final example of a common orphanage surname is "Fu" (福), meaning "Good Fortune."  It is the root character for "Fuliyuan", the Chinese word for "orphanage", and thus is used to designate a child from an orphanage.  This character is used as a surname by the Fuling, Chongqing; Hengdong, Hunan; Sanshui, Guangdong; and  Yizhou, Guangxi orphanages among others.

One last use of an orphanage surname is to designate when a child was found.  Thus, many orphanages change the orphanage surname periodically (annually, etc.) to reflect the finding time frame of a child.  Thus, the Baoji orphanage in Shaanxi used "Sun" (孙) as the orphanage surname in 2002, "Li" (李) in 2003, "Zhou" (周) in 2004, "Wu" (武) in 2005, etc.  Other orphanages that have employed similar chronological naming patterns include Zhongshan, Guangdong; Zhuzhou, Hunan; Changsha, Hunan, etc.

Thus, an orphanage surname can be used to designate that a child was an orphan (Dang, Guo, Fu), a city of origin, or a unique aspect of the child's birth city, or when the child was found. In most cases, the surname is chosen to imbue the child's name with some historical or cultural significance.

Middle Characters
The use of middle characters in orphanage names is much more varied, but follows most of the general use patterns found in surnames.  Thus, for example, the Shangrao City, Jiangxi orphanage uses the middle character to designate which county a child was found in -- "Cha" (茶) for Chating, "Qian" (铅) for Qianshan, "Wu" (婺) for Wuyuan, etc.  Middle names are also commonly indicative of finding time-frames, which can range from just a few weeks to a year or longer.  One interesting character that was used by some orphanages in 2008 was the "Ao" (奥) character (Huazhou, for example, gave this character to every child found in 2008).  "Ao" is found in "Ao Yun", the Chinese word for "Olympics" (奥运), which were held in Beijing in August 2008. 

One naming method employed for middle names that I have not yet seen in surnames is the assigning of characters based on the gender of a child.  Since 2007, for example, the Qingyang orphanage in Gansu Province has assigned the character "Fu" (福) to boys and "Xiao" (晓) to females.  Generally, however, the overall tendency among orphanages is the use of finding location or finding date "codes" when assigning middle characters.


Last Character
The last character (for those children assigned three characters to their orphanage name) is usually the most varied character from any given orphanage.  I have not seen any use of the last character to indicate timing, location, or any of the other "informational pieces" that we have seen in the surname and middle characters.  But the last character often does follow a pattern, and that pattern is usually the order it appears in a character combination dictionary.  Characters in Chinese are not organized by themselves, but rather in groupings based on common usage, or "radicals", with other characters.  They are generally listed by complexity of the character, meaning how many strokes it takes to write the character.  For our purposes it is only needed to know that characters can be found in "conjugation" groups.

Wuwei orphanage in Gansu gives us a good example of an orphanage almost certainly using a Chinese dictionary in naming children.  The image below shows the finding ads for Wuwei orphanage for two consecutive submission batches -- March 9, 2004 (left) and April 15, 2004 (right).  The two finding ad scans are four consecutive pages from a typical Chinese dictionary.  As one can plainly see, the names for the eight children in the March 9, 2004 and the first child in the April 15, 2004 batch all had the last character of their orphanage name taken from the "Baogaitou" radical section of the Chinese dictionary.  The rest of the April 15, 2004 batch all had the last character of their name taken from the "Nvzhipang" radical section, located on the next page of the Chinese dictionary.  One child (the fifth ad on the right side) is not listed in our version of the Chinese dictionary, but the last character of her name belongs in this same radical group, and almost certainly appeared in the orphanage's Chinese dictionary. It is extremely unlikely that such naming "clusters" occurred randomly, and they point with certainty that a Chinese dictionary was used.

While most adoptive families imbue their child's Chinese name with emotional meanings, in practice the names chosen are usually (but not always) selected based on a set of bureaucratic and practical reasons.  An orphanage may factor in the finding location, the finding date, the child's gender, and lastly a Chinese dictionaries to come up with the name that will be used to identify a child for adoption purposes.  While adoptive parents may see the orphanage name as a reflection of a child's history, personality, and character, for most orphanage directors assigning a name to a child is simply a formulaic exercise.

A Look at the Provinces V: Guangdong

Just up on our subscription blog is an analysis of the Guangdong orphanages.  We know from early reports about the Hunan scandal that Guangdong orphanages were involved, but which ones?  With recent Family Planning confiscation stories coming out of Hunan and Guizhou Provinces, can one find similar activities in Guangdong Province?  And how about all the older healthy children being referred?  Where are they coming from?  These and other questions are answered in this week's analysis.

http://www.research-china.org/blogs/index.htm

Readers will find it all very interesting!

Dr. Changfu Chang and the Issue of Trafficking

宋·释普济《五灯会元》：“僧问：‘化城鉴如何是各尚家风？’曰：‘不欲说。‘曰：‘为甚如此？’曰：‘家丑不外扬。’”

A monk asks a villager: "How is it that Hua Cheng Jian, the Buddha master, is able to tap everyone?"  The villager was silent.  Again, the monk asked, "How is it that Hua Cheng Jian, the Buddha master, is able to have everyone follow him?"  Finally, the villager replies:  "One doesn't wash their dirty laundry in public."
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A recent article on Malinda's "ChinaAdoption" blog presents her account of a recent conversation with Dr. Changfu Chang, an ex-journalist from China who is now making his mark by producing and distributing adoption-themed DVDs to adoptive families.  It seems that Dr. Chang is touring various FCC gatherings discussing his films, and discussing "life in China" with understandably curious families.

At the end of each session, Dr. Chang opens up the discussion for questioning.  With the recent news from Hunan, invariably an audience member will ask him how concerned adoptive families should about corruption in China's adoption program.  It seems that his answer is fairly formulaic in each event -- families should not worry about these matters at all; that it was, according to Malinda's account, "extremely rare."

Malinda continues:  "He said that some (unidentified) people were claiming that as many as 30% of the children in international adoption were trafficked.  However, he could assure us that that was not true and that we simply should "stop worrying about it."  Only a miniscule number have been trafficked, he claimed."

Full disclosure -- I have never met Dr. Chang, and have seen none of his videos.  But I do know something about his subject in these quotes.  As I see it, there are three options -- Dr. Chang is very ignorant of China's international adoption program, he is intentionally lying to adoptive families, or he is not understanding what is being asked.

I will start with the third possibility first.  Careful readers of the statements made by various participants in the China scandals, from Hunan to Zhenyuan to Gaoping and the others --  will note that in nearly every case the participants did not feel that they were doing anything wrong.  The directors of the Hunan orphanages made their defense that buying babies was not illegal (although selling babies is), and that even if it was illegal, it benefited the children so there was no harm.  The same idea is seen in the Zhenyuan case where the Civil Affairs flatly stated :"They're better off with their adoptive parents than their birth parents."


So, for a member of China's upper-class as Dr. Chang is, one must start by asking him the correct question.  It is entirely possible that Dr. Chang sees corruption only in terms of children being taken unwillingly from birth families.  This would fit comfortably into the mind-set seen in nearly every orphanage area in China -- the orphanages pay money to get babies away from the poor uneducated and ignorant peasants, to be adopted by well-to-do Americans and given a good life.  Possibly, Dr. Chang does not see this as corruption.  Certainly most orphanage directors don't.

So, adoptive families must be more exact with their questions, since many of them probably would argue that baby-buying is corruption.   Instead of asking, "Do you feel there is wide-spread corruption in China's program?" a better question might be "Do you feel that paying substantial amounts of money for children is adoption corruption?  And how wide-spread do you feel this baby-buying is?"  It may be that he hedges, like the villager in the opening story, out of a reluctance to air China's dirty laundry, for there is one characteristic of the Chinese that I understand very well, having lived with one for seven years:  The Chinese do not like to reveal the dirty secrets of their country, even to friends.  It is a tradition and understanding that goes back hundreds of years.  We might view it as lying, but the Chinese consider it "saving face."

It is of course entirely possible that the third option is not the explanation for Dr. Chang's statements.  It might be that he is fully aware of what is being asked of him, and refuses to answer honestly out of fear that he will offend adoptive families, who he feels are good and benevolent people (who also happen to support his projects by buying his DVDs).  Or it is possible that the first option is correct -- that he really is ignorant of the true state of affairs in a majority of China's orphanages.  Maybe he has never even thought to ask an area foster family or other orphanage employee if they pay "Lucky Money" to people who turn in kids.  I am sure if he had visited Shaoyang in 2005 no one would have volunteered where many of that orphanage's kids came from.  There are no signs above the orphanages stating "We buy babies for cash."  One must look for it.  One must ask people questions.  It is possible that Dr. Chang has never asked those questions, and thus he would not have been made aware of these programs.

One possibility is not probable -- that the reason he is not aware is because such programs don't exist.  As readers of our public and private blog realize, such programs are used by an overwhelming number of orphanages.  If you define "corruption" in terms of international law, Dr. Chang's statement that "some (unidentified) people were claiming that as many as 30% of the children in international adoption were trafficked", and that it "was not true and that we simply should 'stop worrying about it'" is either gross ignorance, a misunderstanding of the term, or a lie to save face.  There is no other option.

The Sale of a Child in Shaoyang

Caixin Magazine has published a second article (more will be forthcoming) detailing the efforts used by the Gaoping Family Planning to hide the origin of Yang Li Bing's daughter, including fabricating police reports, witness testimony, and other documents. Readers of our subscription blog will recognize such patterns, as we last week published an interview with an orphanage director who explained that nearly all "finder testimony" is fabricated by the orphanages. Additionally, as another interview with a "finder" on our subscription blog shows, finders are often coached by the orphanage in how to answer questions from adoptive families, using a "finding template" to answer questions about the finding.

Old News? Not to the People in China

The news this week that Chinese Family Planning officials had raided a small farming community in rural Hunan Province and confiscated nearly twenty young children has citizens in China understandably outraged (a Baidu search this morning shows over 600 independent postings in various newspapers, websites, and other media). While this news is familiar to attentive people in the West (we publicized it in October 2006, and it was later investigated by Dutch Television and the L.A. Times), aside from a small legal notice published in China, the case was unknown.

Family Planning officials are already despised by most Chinese, due to their ability to blatantly and capriciously impose their will on local families. As the New York Times described it, villages and towns are often "private fiefdoms run by local party officials." This story, in which Family Planning officials confiscated children to "sell" to overseas foreign families through the area orphanage, has ignited a firestorm of outrage in China, most of it directed at the Family Planning establishment.

This anger is largely misdirected. Although the Family Planning officials are certainly guilty of a myriad of sins, the majority of the guilt for these events should be directed at the orphanages themselves.

Most would assume that orphanages in China are set up to care for abandoned children found scattered around the countryside. What is usually overlooked is that with the introduction of international adoption in 1992, fees paid by foreign families has become a substantial source of revenue for China's social welfare program, revenue that is used to build lavish and impressive orphanages and Old Folk's Homes, used to "benefit" local and Provincial authorities, and used to pay the salaries of an entire bureaucratic structure dedicated to international adoptions. Everyone involved in China's international adoption program has an incentive to keep the program going. The payoff is obvious -- for every child adopted by a foreign family, the orphanage receives $5,000 (35,000 yuan) in "donations".

The Gaoping Family Planning confiscations have their roots not in the Family Planning restrictions, but in the Shaoyang orphanage. Area residents reveal that before 2000, Family Planning officials would punish a family for having an overquota child by smashing their furniture or destroying their homes. "Since 2000 they haven't smashed homes. They abduct children," one local resident stated. The change occurred when the orphanage began to reward the Family Planning official who confiscated a child with 1,000 yuan cash. Now, instead of having to expend energy smashing a couch or end table, the officials could simply take the child and be paid nearly a month's salary as a reward.

In 2005, six orphanages in Hunan Province were caught buying babies from area traffickers. Although those six orphanages largely ceased participating in the international adoption program after the exposure, many other orphanages inside China have continued to buy babies from traffickers unimpeded. Press stories by ABC News, the L.A. Times, and others show that buying babies is still prevalent, and statistical analysis reveals that a majority of children adopted from China entered the orphanage through Family Planning confiscations, outright purchase, or through other "incentive" programs. Rather than being safe-havens for unwanted and abandoned children, China's orphanages are more accurately described as businesses, seeking to maximize its benefit like any other profit-seeking enterprise.

China's problems are by no means unique, as similar scandals have been seen in Ethiopia, Guatamala, Vietnam, Romania, and nearly every other sending country on earth. These problems will persist until the "profit-making" structure of international adoption is changed. Until an orphanage can no longer receive substantial cash donations from foreign families for a child that they can obtain for relatively little outlay, enterprising orphanage directors will continue to make "deals with the devil", whether those devils be area baby traffickers or the local Family Planning officials.

Shaoyang, Hunan Birth Parents Seek Contact with Adoptive Families

This article has been updated to clarify the information found in my orphanage list below. The list provided by the Shaoyang orphanage provided the finding date and number of children confiscated on that date by the Gaoping Family Planning. A search of the Shaoyang finding ads allowed us to then locate the Chinese names and assigned finding locations for each of those girls. In all but one case, there is only one child that matches the finding date, and in each case the assigned age in the finding ad matches closely the age when each of the children was confiscated. In one instance, two children appear in the finding ads, but both of these children display characteristics of Family Planning. The second child may have come from another village, or was not one of the twelve children detailed in the story.

One child that appears on the list had no finding ad published. This child (#12), a boy, was returned to his family after they appealed to a "powerful" friend in the government.

In March 2008, Netwerk TV in the Netherlands broadcast a documentary concerning the confiscation of children from Gaoping, Hunan by Family Planning. These children were sent to the Shaoyang orphanage and internationally adopted. The documentary focused on the daughter of Yang Li Bing, who was taken at nine months old and later adopted by an American couple. Yang Li Bing's wife eventually left him, believing he had not worked hard enough to get their daughter back.

While initial press coverage of this incident provided only enough information to identify one of the children with any certainty, a press article published today (English translation here, with a sample of Chinese coverage here, and other reports here and here) by the Hong Kong newspaper "Caixin" provides details on another twelve children (an English video report by Aljazeera can be viewed here). Based on a listing provided by the Shaoyang orphanage (see above), the names and finding dates of these children is now known. The birth families of these thirteen children have a strong desire to know the current status of these children, so if you adopted one of these children, or know who may have adopted them, please contact us.

1) Date: 6/4/02 -- one child (girl)
Shao Fu Long, four months old at finding, Tabei Road #1
Shao Fu Quan, two years old, Qiaotou Bamboo Art Factory
2) Date: 7/30/02 -- one child (girl)
Shao Fu Mei, two months old at finding, Second People's Hospital
3) Date: 10/10/02 -- one child (girl)
Shao Fu Cong, one year old at finding, Changxing Street #16
4) Date: 4/17/03 -- one child (girl)
Shao Yang Ling, one year old at finding, Wuyi Road #79
5) Date: 7/2/03 -- one child (girl)
Shao Yang Chu, ten months old at finding, First People's Hospital Clinic
6) Date: 7/4/03 -- one child (girl)
Shao Yang Kang, five months old at finding, Second People's Hospital
7) Date: 7/8/03 -- one child (girl)
Shao Yang Ying, five months old at finding, Chinese Traditional Medicine Hospital
8) Date: 4/3/04 -- one child (girl)
Shao Yang Shun, three months old at finding, Shiyan Clothing Store
9) Date: 9/24/04 -- one child (girl)
Shao Yang Fu, five months old at finding, Paper Factory
10) Date: 5/1/05 -- one child (girl)
Shao Ming Gao, nine months old at finding, Orphanage
11) Date: 8/2/05 -- one child (girl)
Shao Ming Rong, one year old at finding, Orphanage
12) Date: 10/29/05 -- one child (boy) -- Returned to family
13) Date: 12/26/05 -- one child (girl)
Shao Ming Qian, thirty-eight days old at finding, Gaoping Town Government

Putting the "Quota" Myth To Bed

One would think that the history of the China program over the past five years would dispel any notion of the CCAA trying to control the number of adoptions performed each year, but there is still the belief among many adoptive families that the current wait time is more a function of the CCAA preventing the adoption of children rather than there simply being children to adopt. Some adoption boards speak of "Only a small percentage of the orphans in China have paperwork created that makes them eligible for international adoption" or "China is never going to allow all of the babies to be adopted through IA" are commonly seen.

It is easy to understand why agencies and other adoption "advocates" continue to feed this misconception -- if it is recognized that the decline in adoptions is the result of a decline in findings, then it will be largely recognized that the need for international adoption from China has also decreased. Thus, the misinformation concerning any "quota" program is largely driven by financial, emotional, and other self-interest considerations, not by facts.

One would think that the many stories of baby-trafficking (Hunan, Jiangxi, etc.) would cause any attentive inquirer to ask why orphanages would traffic in children if they were unable to process the children that they purchased. Why would stories such as Zhenyuan occur, where Family Planning worked with the area orphanage to confiscate children solely to submit them for adoption.

In reality, the idea of a "quota" system runs contrary to all evidence and logic, yet some adoptive families continue to use a "quota" system as an explanation for why China's program has seen such dramatic declines.

Two months ago I checked in with two trusted orphanage directors with whom I keep tabs on the China's adoption program from inside China. Although I have had many discussions about the declines in adoptions in the past with many, many orphanage directors, I thought I would address the "quota" idea head-on by asking them direct questions as to how they do their jobs, which files they submit, any limitations they have, etc. I interviewed two directors, one in Guangdong Province and the other in Jiangxi Province. I will pose the question, and then give answers given by both directors.

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Q: How long have you worked in the orphanage?
Guangdong: Eleven years.
Jiangxi: I have been the director since we began international adoptions in 1999.

Q: How many kids are in the orphanage now?
Guangdong: Not many. About 20 kids.
Jiangxi: Very few.


Q: Has the CCAA ever had a limit on the number of children the orphanage could submit for adoption in a year?
Guangdong: They don't have the ability to set up a rule like that. However many children we have in the orphanage, that's how many we turn in to the CCAA.
Jiangxi: No, they don’t have any limit. We are free to send as many kids as we can for adoption.

Q: What about submitting a file to the Provincial Civil Affairs or the CCAA. Do you need to pay a fee to send in a child's file for adoption?
Guangdong: No, there is no fee.
Jiangxi: No, I don’t need to pay any fee. When I turn the adoption paperwork into the Provincial Civil Affairs, they need to pay money for postage to send the file to the CCAA. But we don’t have to pay any money. We just need to take some pictures of the child, and bring the pictures and the file to the Provincial Civil Affairs.

Q: Has it always been this way? What about now, is it the same?
Guangdong: I have worked at the orphanage for over ten years. In that time it has always been that way.
Jiangxi: Back to that time (1999), they had a quota of 20 to 30 kids that we could turn in for adoption, but after 2000 there has been no limit anymore. We can turn in as many kids as we can.

Q: OK, it seems that there are fewer and fewer children being sent into the orphanage. Why do you think that is?
Guangdong: That is true. I think it has something to do with our country's Family Planning rules.

Q: Has the CCAA ever told you that you can only submit a certain number of Special Needs children?
Guangdong: No, never happens.
Jiangxi: No, there is no limit either. The kids that have problems with their arms or legs, you can still turn in for adoption. Only the children that are severely mentally disabled are not submitted for adoption. If the child is only slightly mentally disabled, can they still be sent for international adoption.

Q: Are there any local families that adopt from your orphanage?
Guangdong: Very few.

Q: Hey, it seems that fewer and fewer children are coming into your orphanage, which means that there are fewer children being turned into the CCAA. Does the CCAA have a problem with that?
Guangdong: There is nothing we can do about that. If there are no children brought in, there are no files to submit. The number of children is going down across the whole Province.
Jiangxi: No, they just let us know that if we have any kids, we should send the paperwork for IA. If not, that is fine.

Q: Does the CCAA pressure you to turn in more children?
Guangdong: They won't.

Q: But if the orphanage has no children to submit for adoption, that means the CCAA will one day have to close.
Guangdong: That won't happen.

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From the above conversations, it is clear that the CCAA has installed no limit on the number of files an orphanage can submit. In fact, the CCAA seems to be making it easier for orphanages to submit files, especially for SN children.
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Q: It seems that there are so many SN children sent for international adoption now. Is that because the rules have been relaxed?
Jiangxi: Yes, it is not hard like before. Now, any SN child that we have can be put on a website with the CCAA for families outside China to look at. If there is a family interested in adopting that child, the CCAA will contact us and have us start doing the paperwork for IA. Now, for the SN adoptions, it is very relaxed.
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It is clear from these two directors that there is no quota in place. In fact, it is the opposite -- the CCAA encourages them to submit nearly every child they receive into the orphanage. Not only are there no fees to submit a file to the CCAA, but the finding ad publication fees, postage fees, etc. are borne by the Provincial Civil Affairs Bureau, not the orphanage. Thus, there is no reason for an orphanage to not submit a child for international adoption, as some have speculated.

This topic would not be germane if it didn't go to the root of the China adoption program. People who promote a "quota-driven" paradigm in China suggest that the orphanages in China have large numbers of healthy children that are languishing in the orphanages due to the Chinese government's desire to artificially limit the number of adoptions that occur each year. Under such a scenario there would be no incentive for an orphanage to recruit children, since, according to this model, there are already many children in the orphanages. One would also anticipate that the submissions that were turned in would be for older children, since those children are the most costly to house and care for. Thus, under a quota system, one would expect finding ads to be largely for children found many months or even years earlier, as the orphanages seek to promote the adoption of their most costly children.

But that is not what we see. While there are a few exceptions, in almost every case the finding ads for children are being placed within a few weeks after a finding. The children being submitted are largely newborn infants. Repeatedly we read stories of orphanages seeking ways to increase the number of children coming into the international adoption program, either with money (Hunan, Jiangxi), Family Planning coercion (Hunan, Guizhou) or deception (Henan). The people responsible for submitting children, the orphanage directors, deny that there is any limit on the number of children they can submit.

The myth that China is artificially limiting the number of adoption taking place is without any evidence, and prevents adoptive families from having an accurate idea of the true state of affairs in China. The idea defies logic, experience and evidence. Those who promote it are doing the adoption community a grave disservice, and adoptive families would do well to demand specific reasons (not vague generalities) why the agency or blogger continues to push this idea in the face of overwhelming evidence and testimony to the contrary.

Defining Terms When Discussing Corruption

I get frequent requests from adoptive families asking what the probability is that their child was trafficked. In the very next breath some of these families express confusion over what "trafficked" means with a follow-up question regarding their child's birth family searching for their child, and wanting her back. It soon becomes obvious that in many people's minds, trafficking and kidnapping are the same thing.

Global March defines child trafficking as "any act or transaction whereby a child is transferred by any person or group of persons to another for remuneration or any other consideration". The definition continues that "it refers to the process that puts children in a situation of commercial exploitation." When it comes to China's adoption program, this is the definition that is intended.

When a birth family is paid by another family (say in their neighborhood) to arrange the informal adoption of a child, even if money is paid by the adopting family, this does not constitute trafficking since the adopting family is not using the child for commercial gain. Thus, payments of monies by adoptive families to birth families fall outside the traditional definition of trafficking as usually understood by adoption advocates. However, if money is paid to a birth family by a third party, with the intent that the child will then be transferred again for a higher sum of money, then the transaction is commercial in nature, and thus constitutes trafficking.

It does not matter if only one child is transferred, or dozens -- the criteria is the transfer of a child for money or other remuneration with the intent to transfer that child again for commercial gain.

Under this definition, many orphanages in China are involved in trafficking, since they are engaged in paying money to obtain children for adoption. These children are then transferred again to adoptive families for even larger sums of money, resulting in the transaction being for "commercial gain". But it is important to recognize that in a trafficking situation, the child is willingly relinquished.

Trafficking should be considered separate and distinct from "kidnapping", "stealing", etc. Under this situation, one party (usually the birth family) is an unwilling participant. There is no voluntary relinquishment of the child in a kidnapping case. Thus, while a child may be trafficked from the kidnapper to a third party, kidnapping (stealing) a child and then selling them (trafficking) to another party is a subset of the total "trafficking" pie. The terms "kidnapping" and "trafficking" cannot, and should not, be used interchangeably.

When we look at China's international adoption program, both of the scenarios described above can be seen, but in disproportionate numbers. We have seen cases of kidnapped children entering the orphanages. In those cases, the birth families involuntarily lost custody of their child as a result of that child being kidnapped. In a case from the Dianjiang orphanage, the birth family was able to regain custody of their daughter before the international adoption was completed; in a case from a Hunan orphanage, the Chinese Police discovered that a kidnapped girl had been internationally adopted.

Trafficking of children into the orphanages is much more common, forming the foundation of China's international adoption program. In the most common manifestation of this problem, birth families are offered money or other remuneration to willingly relinquish their child. The "finder" then brings the child to the orphanage, where they are paid a larger sum in a "finder's fee", resulting in a case of trafficking under the above definition. The orphanage then adopts the child for an even larger sum of money, again resulting in trafficking under the above definition. In many cases the birth family is deceived into conducting the transaction with false promises of where their child will end up or what their relationship with the child will be in the future.

From the evidence gathered from many, many orphanages involved in the international adoption program, it appears that "kidnapping" of children for sale to orphanage is much less frequent than the "trafficking" of children into the orphanages. The problem is, of course, that in most cases, the kidnapping is a result of the trafficking. In other words, by offering significant sums of money for individuals to "traffic" children to the orphanage, the orphanage also increases instances of "finders" obtaining the child through kidnapping. Without the payment of money for children, there would be little reason for someone to kidnap a child to bring to the orphanage.

It is, of course, extremely difficult to determine how many children that have been internationally adopted had been kidnapped. Intuitively, one would assume that kidnapped children would be older, since a kidnapper would need to find the child alone in order to take her, and newborn infants seldom are found in this situation. Certainly all of the known cases kidnapped children ending up in an orphanage have been older children. But a general lack of transparency inside China prevents all the cases from being discovered.

It is much easier to assess how common trafficking is. "On-the-ground" interviews with finders, orphanage workers, area doctors, etc. provide easy access to trafficking information because these programs are by nature very public and well-known. Additionally, trafficking orphanages display characteristics that betray their programs such as finding location "clusters", unusual demographic characteristics, etc. From this evidence it is clear that a substantial majority of orphanages are involved in child trafficking.

Adoptive families should speak and write clearly when it comes to these issues. The willing relinquishment of a child by her birth parents for money or other remuneration by an individual intending to engage in a commercial transaction with another party for that child constitutes trafficking. The taking of a child from unwilling birth parents constitutes kidnapping. The two terms cannot be used interchangeably.

Using the Web to Find Birth Families

The exciting story of a Chinese father's reunion with his kidnapped son, accomplished through various social media inside China, has adoptive families understandably excited about how they also might be able to leverage internet databases, etc. in their own search for the birth families of their children.

It seems, from a perusal of many birth parent search groups, that most adoptive families are still working under the assumption that the orphanages have been forthright in presenting information, and continue to believe that abandonments are the usual means by which children come into the orphanages. Such an assumption, if in fact untrue, will cause the adoptive families to utilize means of investigation that will almost always lead to failure. For example, if one assumes that a birth family left a child at the gate of the orphanage, one might also expect that the birth family might be curious enough to add their names to a database. This would be a natural assumption to make if one assumes a child was in fact abandoned as we are so often told.

But the growing realization is that such true abandonments are, in fact, very rare. It is important for adoptive families, when they are starting a search, to realize that everything they know about their child may, in fact, be a fiction. This statement will offend some adoptive families, who have invested their adoption story with emotional baggage that in large part makes it difficult for them to search with an open mind. They fiercely seek to cling to the "China myth", the idea that their child was wanted, even loved, and that cruel circumstances prevented the birth family from keeping their child. While this may sometimes be true, adoptive families must realize that the probability is that their child was relinquished for other reasons, including for money, promises, through deception, and a myriad other reasons. It is important for adoptive families to start a search realizing that any of these reasons may play a role in their child's history. To emotionally refuse to accept any one of these possibilities will impose artificial limitations, which will almost always significantly reduce the probabilities of success.

It is probable that between 2000 and the present, in excess of 80% of the healthy infant children adopted came into the orphanages through incentive programs. An adoptive family may scoff at this figure, refuse to accept or believe it, and continue their search assuming that their child was truly found abandoned. That is certainly their right, but they should realize that by such thinking their search will, in most instances, be doomed to fail. They will employ means of searching that are inefficient, will not adequately target the birth family of their child. These families will "go through the hoops" of a search, not realizing, or perhaps in fact hoping, that the search will not be successful.

If one allows for the possibility that a child was trafficked into an orphanage, one can readily see how ineffective certain search methods such as databases, market fliers, and other "top-down, shotgun" approaches would be. One of the peculiar aspects of most stories dealing with trafficked children inside China is that even with substantial and sustained publicity, the birth families for the children retrieved from trafficking rings rarely come forward. Certainly most adoptive families would feel that having their child on TV all across China would be an effective way to locate a birth family, yet time and time again it has been shown to be very ineffective. Why? Because the children captured in trafficking rings were almost always willingly sold by the birth families to traffickers, and they have little interest in coming forward and reclaiming that child.

The idea that instituting a database that can be used to "match" with searching birth families is, from the outset, fatally flawed for this simple reason. Most birth families will not be interested in coming forward. This reluctance will be partially emotional, partially legal, and partially out of ignorance. Many of the birth families that we have located had no idea that their child even ended up in an orphanage, but were told the child was being adopted locally. Thus, even if a birth family had an interest in reuniting, many would not suspect that their child ended up in a foreign family.

If one assumes that a child was truly abandoned, one would expect that the birth and finding information would be as accurate as possible, and that this information would allow a birth family to "search" a database and find their child. But evidence shows that this assumption is often misplaced. One adoptive father of a child from the Qichun orphanage in Hubei recounted a conversation where the orphanage 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.” On a research trip we made to a Jiangxi orphanage, the foster family caring for the child had the hospital birth record giving the birth date of the child as three days earlier than the "official" birth date, even though the orphanage had provided the foster mother with the hospital record. Thus, inaccurate biographical information would prevent, even if the birth family and the adoptive family both accessed the same database, a match from being made.

Adoptive families understandably hope for a simple method to locate birth families -- a DNA or other database that will allow them to put in their child's information, push a button, and out would come the birth family information. Certainly if such a service existed that was open and free to use, there would be little to lose by participating. But in reality, given the "complexities" surrounding most children adopted from China, such a program will result in failure in nearly every case. Technological barriers inside China, birth family participation rates, information accuracy, and many other reasons will prevent successful matches except in rare and very specific instances (kidnapping, Family Planning confiscations, etc.)

Is there a magic panacea for finding a birth family? No. It takes hard work. It takes an open mind willing to follow the trail wherever it goes. It takes sleuthing skills, determination, and an ability to accept information that runs contrary to one's preconception. Adoptive families unwilling to put in that kind of energy will largely fail. Hiring "investigators" unfamiliar with the situation in a given orphanage will meet with failure in most instances if the methods employed do not match the circumstances. Posting fliers in a market belonging to a trafficking orphanage will produce few results. Adding information to a database requires a 1 in a thousand stroke of luck. These avenues can be employed as a last, "hail Mary" attempt at finding birth families, but there are many more targeted approaches that should be employed first. Generally, the most success will come from a "bottoms up" approach -- quiet, discreet, focused attention to an individual child's birth family. Other methods can be used, but they will almost always meet with failure, and represent a poor use of limited funds and energy.

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Families wanting to gain a deeper understanding of their child's orphanage and abandonment circumstances should seriously consider purchasing our "Birth Parent Search Analysis". Available for under $50, this report outlines the patterns in a given orphanage, and how those patterns would impact a search for birth parents. We believe that conducting even a basic search without having as much information as possible can seriously undermine your efforts.

"The Missing Girls of China"

Another academic article by David Smolin has been published, this one focused more narrowly on China and her international adoption program. The entire article is extremely informative, and offers insightful comments and explanations for the slowdown in China's adoption program, refuting some of the most commonly held explanations such as CCAA imposed quotas, etc. On our subscription blog we discuss the article and some of its implications for understanding the current state of China's adoption program.

Police Reports -- Why They Are Important, and Why They Are Not

On our subscription blog we have an essay on what the value of so-called police reports really is, and the answer may surprise you.

As families seek to obtain pre-adoption history for their child, a common piece of documentation that is seemingly important is the so-called "police report". This one-page document is usually created soon after a child is found, and supposedly details the events surrounding a child's finding. It is almost always used by the orphanage as the basis for all future adoption paperwork, including the "certificate of abandonment" required to process the child internationally.

In my research, I have learned that "police reports" vary widely from orphanage to orphanage. Some orphanages have pre-printed forms with data fields for information required by the CCAA for adoption -- Name, gender, birth date, finding date, etc. These pre-printed forms usually have three blanks areas that are filled in by the finder, and then testified as to the truthfulness by the orphanage director and the police official.

Other orphanages simply have the finder write down what happened on a piece of orphanage stationary. While the pre-printed forms are largely machine printed, these forms are largely hand-written.

It is a common assumption among adoptive families that when a finding occurs, that the police are notified and an officer is dispatched to the finding site to do an investigation. This belief is usually supported by the "police report" itself, which often uses words such as "the Emergency police '110' [China's version of the U.S. "911" police] were called, and officer Wang was sent to investigate the finding." Most adoption paperwork contains statements to the effect that "The police searched for two months, and were unable to locate the birth parents of this child." As a result of these and similar statements, many adoptive families assume that the existence of a police report verifies the underlying facts about their child's finding. But such a conclusion is usually not justified.