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.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Monday, May 09, 2011
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
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
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.
_____________________
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.
_____________________
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.
_____________________
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.
_____________________
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.
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.
_____________________
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.
_____________________
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.
_____________________
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.
_____________________
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.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
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.
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.
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