‘Adopted’ Kids: China’s Littlest Commodity

To bring further context to child buying in China, we would be remiss if we excluded the fact that Chinese families also purchase children in illegal domestic adoptions due to burdensome processes for legal domestic adoption and as the article states “most orphans are disabled children abandoned by their families.” This story from 2010 gives some insight into the domestic child buying/illegal adoption operations.

“As winter sunshine bathes the village of Linyi, a 3-year-old girl rests in an old woman’s arms in a foul-smelling courtyard, surrounded by piles of empty plastic bottles.

The courtyard owner is 41-year-old Cui Zhi, a rubbish recycler, and the elderly woman is his mother.

But the child is not a blood relative. She is an “adopted” daughter Cui bought as a family heir and hedge against old age through a heart-rending and often illegal adoption system with deep roots in many parts of China.

Cui’s daughter is by no means the only little one in this Shandong Province village sold into adoption by poor families or abducted by gangs, and then purchased by families desperately seeking children to inherit family names, offer a measure of retirement security, or simply to project a positive image in a society where having many children is a sign of prosperity.

Chinese law does not punish families who bought abducted children, although police can arrest a child abuser, and an “adoptive” parent can face legal complications if a child’s natural relatives seek to reclaim him or her after a transaction.

Yet in general, according to Zhang Baoyan, director of a volunteer organization that helps families find and recover abducted children, China’s unofficial adoption channels carry few legal risks.

“You can buy a child without having to worry about consequences, as long as you’re willing to give it up if you’re discovered,” said Zhang, whose group is called Babies Going Home.

According to national statistics, Chinese police have investigated more than 4,420 cases of alleged trafficking-related child abduction since April 2009. So far, nearly 2,200 children and 3,900 women have been rescued. DNA testing was used to confirm the identities of about 300 young victims.

But about 1,900 allegedly abducted children are waiting to be identified and returned to their natural parents.

Control Efforts

Six Chinese government ministries including the Ministry of Civil Affairs recently took steps to clarify private adoption rules, issuing a joint circular in September. That followed local measures implemented earlier in the year, including a nationwide police-sponsored videoconference in April during which experts discussed measures for finding and punishing women involved in child trafficking. Meanwhile, local governments nationwide have started requiring all couples to register adoptions.

Century Weekly learned that the Linyi Civil Affairs Bureau registered 479 adoptions in 2009. But that number apparently tells only part of the story: An accurate count of the community’s adoptions may be impossible because so many children have been illegally obtained.

Working against official efforts to control the trade is a strong buyers’ market for children in Linyi and similar communities. It’s supported by adoption “matchmakers” as well as seedy gangs that abduct children. A complex and profitable underground network quietly connects communities that have and want children. As a result, children taken from one area can be smoothly shipped to another.

The child trade is common in rural villages around Linyi. Sources estimate that in most villages, at least 10 families have purchased trafficked children. In Zhuyuan – a wealthy village by regional standards with 300 households – eight families are raising children they bought.

Reporters were told in Zhuyuan that everyone in town knows when a child is bought because the “adoptive” couple makes a voluntary contribution to the village council or pays a heavy fine.

A study by the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences said child traders exploit loopholes in rural family planning and household registration management mechanisms. In areas studied, most people of childbearing age left to work in big cities, challenging population control agencies that rely on statistics. This has led to a blurring of the line between couples who had children in violation of population control regulations and those who adopted illegally.

Regulatory responsibility can be blurry as well. One local government official said his agency has neither the authority nor ability to compile statistics. “This is the responsibility of the family planning authorities.”

But a family planning official said his office has neither the power nor ability to check the origins of registered children. This task, he said, is left to police.

Parenting Dilemma

Cui decided to buy a child in summer 2008 to expand a family weighed down with health problems. Due to a congenital defect, Cui’s upper body is bent, and he walks with a limp. Relatives had worked hard to help him find a wife, but she is mentally disabled and cannot speak.

Cui’s son was born healthy, but developed epilepsy after a bout with high fever when he was two years old. Cui and his mother have taken him to several local hospitals, spending tens of thousands of yuan for treatments. The boy is now 11.

Cui’s wife miscarried a second pregnancy, and a doctor advised against trying again.

Cui decided he needed a healthy child to care for him and his wife in old age and carry on the family lineage. He discussed his options with relatives, and eventually got in touch with a local contact of the adoption network.

The contact offered a package deal: a boy for 30,000 yuan, or a girl for 20,000. (Since then, local prices have risen to 42,000 yuan for a boy and 38,000 for a girl.) Cui was already heavily in debt, owing tens of thousands of yuan, but was desperate for a second child. So he went for the cheaper option by buying a girl.

Eventually, after a number of unexpected twists, Cui found himself face-to-face with a 2-week-old baby girl. He handed over cash and took the child home.

The girl was never properly registered. A registration would have required health certificates from each parent costing hundreds of yuan. And a child’s birth certificate can cost thousands of yuan.

Today, Cui has great hopes for his daughter, who pass days at the family’s home/recycling station while people sort all kinds of plastic bottles by color, removing caps and labels, and slowly building plastic mountains.

“This is my child,” he said. “I will always make sure she has everything she needs. One day, I’ll send her to university.”

He sighed. “All of us in my family are imperfect – except for her. On her, I rest all my hopes.”

Family Planning

Popular attitudes toward underground adoptions have been shaped in part by China’s official population controls, which limit child-bearing but have not stopped couples from wanting many children.

A couple can have only one son. If the first child is a girl, the family may apply to have a second child. But no couple can have more than two girls.

Fines for violators can be steep. In the town of Linyang, for example, the fine for an unauthorized second child is 34,779 yuan. A couple that dares have an unauthorized third child can be required to cough up 78,000 yuan.

Yet couples who have only one son often seek a daughter as a second child for a “complete set,” while those with a daughter long for a son to carry the family name. Couples forced to follow population control rules often try the underground adoption option to fulfill their wishes.

Many Chinese consider children a status symbol, like houses and cars. Family planning schemes have failed to quash the traditional idea of “more children, more prosperity.”

At times, population control rules have been enforced with a heavy hand. In 1983, for example, the government dispatched surgical contraception teams to the village of Linyi, where the wife of Wang Lize was forcibly sterilized after bearing two daughters.

But Wang, who is now 45, said he and his wife never gave up their quest for more children – especially a son. And it didn’t matter whether the boy was theirs or adopted.

“In the village, if you have two girls in a row, you’ll be looked down upon,” he said. “You have to have a boy.”

In 1994, they got what they wanted when someone with the right connections “gave” them a boy.

Future Investment

An official at a local population planning office said child trading was more common before 1998. Now, people engaging in the practice are more cautious. But they haven’t stopped.

One reason is that many couples think buying a child is buying a social safety net for the future – a means of support for old age.

The director of the Institute of Psychology at the School of Political Science, China University of Politics and Law, Ma Kai, told Century Weekly: “People want to be taken care of when they’re old, and have an especially strong desire for a son. This is the primary reason this trade in children exists.”

Ma said the village social structure encourages the adoption trade. “To be old in a village and unable to work is a big problem,” he said. “It’s less of a worry if you live in a big city. But due to a lack of proper social support in China’s agricultural villages, farmers are forced to raise children as a safety net.”

Over the past 20 years, couples in the eastern provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangsu, Shandong and Anhui have been the biggest buyers of children.

Zhang of the child recovery group said these provinces have experienced relatively rapid development where now-prospering residents cling to traditional values. These include beliefs that males are more important than females, and that a family’s size and status are linked. Under these conditions, child-buying can flourish.

According to Ma’s analysis, rural villages used to be tight-knit communities with links between clans and families and systems for supporting the elderly. Times have changed, however, and now with a stronger focus on individuals, classic support structures have vanished.

China adopted a new, nationwide rural social pension insurance system in September. The system may change attitudes, but not overnight.

Cracks in the System

Actually, couples such as Cui and his wife are eligible to adopt children through legitimate channels.

One local government official told Century Weekly that, under adoption laws and local population control regulations, a couple can adopt a child if their firstborn has an inherited disorder. An application fee would cost 260 yuan, and the process would take no more than 70 days.

But such couples must find families willing to provide children and whose “extenuating economic conditions render them unable to raise a child,” according to government rules.

The only other option for couples such as Cui and his wife would be to adopt an orphan. And in China, most orphans are disabled children abandoned by their families.

For Cui, spending almost 10,000 yuan for a disabled child was not an option. He felt his only choice was to buy a child through unofficial channels.

Zhang said barriers to legal adoption are high, and it’s even more difficult to obtain a healthy child through legitimate means. What’s needed, he said, are changes that discourage child trafficking and promote legitimate adoptions.

“It’s very important that we make adopting children easier, to encourage people to do so in a manner that is legally sanctioned and morally sound.”

1 yuan = 14 U.S. cents.”
‘Adopted’ Kids: China’s Littlest Commodity
[Caixin Weekly 1/29/10 by Lan Fang and Hu Yajun]

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