The Mystery of the Chinese Baby Shortage - New York Times
The New York Times

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January 23, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
The Mystery of the Chinese Baby Shortage
By BETH NONTE RUSSELL

McLean, Va.

ACCORDING to a State Department report released this week, American citizens
adopted 6,493 children from China in 2006, a decline of 18 percent from the
previous year's total of 7,906. And yet, just over a month ago, this
newspaper reported that China had prepared strict new criteria for foreign
adoption
applications because the country claimed it lacked "available" babies to
meet the "spike" in demand.

China has always limited foreign adoptions, and it does not publish reliable
statistics on the number of children in its orphanages. So how is one to
know
whether the decrease in adoptions reflects a lack of supply or a lack of
demand?

In the week following the report on the new guidelines, more than one
bewildered person said to me, "But I thought there were lots of babies in
orphanages
in China!" My response was to helplessly reply, "So did I." My understanding
of this was based not on conjecture, but on having been to China twice to
adopt, having seen orphanages with my own eyes, and on research and other
eyewitness accounts. Many hundreds and perhaps thousands of orphanages
operate
in China, most of them full of girls.

According to a February 2005 report in The Weekend Standard, a Chinese
business newspaper, demographers in China found a ratio of 117 boys per 100
girls
under the age of 5 in the 2000 census. Thanks to China's one-child policy,
put into effect in 1979 in order to curb population growth, and a strong
cultural
preference for male children, this gender gap could result in as many as 60
million "missing" girls from the population by the end of the decade, enough
to alarm even Chinese officials.

And what happened to these girls? According to the International Planned
Parenthood Federation (a term that takes on a whole new meaning when
referring
to China), there are about seven million abortions in China per year, 70
percent of which are estimated to be of females. That adds up to around five
million
per year, or 50 million by the end of the decade; so where are the other 10
million girls? If even 10 percent end up in orphanages... well, you do the
math.

A few months ago, in a conversation with my friend Patrick Mason, executive
director of the International Adoption Center at INOVA Fairfax Hospital in
Virginia,
I confessed a growing fear: that China, the country from which my two
daughters were adopted, would sooner or later shut down its international
adoption
program. Dr. Mason immediately dismissed my concern, saying, "The number of
orphans is just too great."

And yet, I continued to wonder whether, as China increasingly asserts itself
on the world stage and prepares to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, allowing
Westerners to adopt thousands of infants each year would fit the image it
wanted to project. I suspect not, and China's new restrictions lead me to
believe
that national pride is more important than getting these children into
loving homes.

The issue of abandoned and institutionalized children remains a taboo
subject in China, a problem the government does not even acknowledge exists.
The impulse
to hide it seems to stem partly from embarrassment and partly from fear of
revealing the grave human rights abuses the one-child policy has produced;
surely,
watching a parade of well-off foreigners cart off thousands of babies would
make the Chinese authorities understandably uncomfortable.

But the answer is not to stop the foreigners from adopting; it is to put an
end to their reasons for doing so. My fondest hope, and the hope of
thousands
of parents who have adopted from China, is for all the orphanages there to
close because there are no more abandoned children to put in them. This will
be accomplished only when China decides that there is no economic or
political justification for the magnitude of suffering that has resulted
from the
one-child policy. The government must openly acknowledge the problem, in
part by publishing verifiable information about the status of its orphaned
children,
and take real steps to correct it. To do so would go a long way toward
building the international trust and respect China seems to want so badly.

China has announced the lifting of restrictions for foreign journalists in
preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Perhaps this will allow reporters to look
for answers to some basic questions: how many children are there in
institutions in China? If there is nothing to hide, why do visitors need
approval to
visit orphanages? Why are only certain orphanages allowed to participate in
the international adoption program, and what is going on in the ones that
are
not?

The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, to which China and 69 other
countries are signatories, goes a long way toward ensuring against child
abduction
and trafficking; but it does not include provisions that would require
member countries to report such information as the number of children housed
in
institutions or the criteria used for selecting "suitable" children for
adoption.

The treaty states that "for the full and harmonious development of his or
her personality," each child should have the opportunity to grow up in a
"family
environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding." Indeed,
it requires that each signatory take "as a matter of priority, appropriate
measures to enable the child to remain in the care of his or her family of
origin." One could argue that China's one-child policy directly violates the
treaty by ensuring that many children will not remain in the care of the
family but be relinquished to the care of the state.

Under the new Chinese adoption guidelines, the international adoption
celebrity Angelina Jolie could not adopt from China (she's not married, and
alas,
she and Brad have more than two divorces between them, which is a no-no);
nor could the actress Meg Ryan (again, not married). Another person who is
not
eligible is yours truly. My husband is over 50, so I would have to trade him
in, marry again, wait the required five years (another new rule) before
beginning
the adoption process, and by that time I would be sneaking up on 50 myself.

It is comforting to know that Madonna is still eligible, at least until she
turns 50, gets fat (the new regulations call for a body mass index of less
than
40), gets divorced or goes broke (anyone with a net worth of under $80,000
is excluded).

The Chinese have asserted that the demand for adoptions far exceeds the
number of babies it deems "available," based on criteria that have never
been made
public. We can only wonder how many babies will be left behind by Beijing's
new policies - perhaps spending their lives in institutions because of these
arbitrary and artificial limits.

Beth Nonte Russell is the author of the forthcoming "Forever Lily: An
Unexpected Mother's Journey to Adoption in China" and the co-founder of the
Golden
Phoenix Foundation.

Copyright 2007
The New York Times Company