Why does China not allocate more resources to their international adoption program?

spydermomma

There ARE fewer potential adoptees, and especially fewer potential international adoptees. See this blog posting for a discussion of the numbers of children for which paperwork was submitted for international adoption:
http://research-china.blogspot.com/2008/02/2007-orphanage-submissions.html

There are a lot of reasons for this change:
Poverty is lessening in China, so more families are able to pay the fines to register their "over quota" children. Also, as women have more control over their lives, they choose to have fewer children (not just in China, that happens everywhere).
More Chinese are adopting, and the government has been trying to make it easier for them to adopt (a year or so ago, CCAA, the department in charge of international adoptions, was put in charge of domestic adoption and the Social Welfare Institutes as well)
In many places the rules about how many children you can have are being relaxed. There is even talk about eliminating the One Child Policy altogether. It has worked pretty well. Not saying it was a good thing, by ANY means, because it was brutal, but it did seem to have succeeded both in slowing the population growth rate and also changing attitudes about having lots of children. And as a previous answerer said, it is becoming increasingly clear to the Chinese that the trend of an ever smaller percentage of girls will not be healthy for their society.
There is increasing scandal about orphanages paying people "Finder's Fees" for babies brought for international adoption. There are reports of babies being kidnapped and also villages where some women have babies simply to sell to the orphanages, because their other options for making money without moving to the large coastal cities are limited. Think about the $3000 "donation" that goes to the orphanage for each international adoption--quite an incentive for corruption if you had those tendencies.
See this blog entry on the currently breaking scandal:
http://research-china.blogspot.com/2008/03/dutch-documentary-on-trafficking.html

And scroll down on the main page for posts on the Hunan scandal:
http://research-china.blogspot.com/

China does not want to lose face internationally with further scandals, especially with their rising international profile with the Olympics. And I believe they genuinely care about the children also. If American kids were being sold by their parents or stolen from their parents so that they could be adopted TO China, wouldn't you think we should consider discontinuing the process that fuels that? I believe Chinese officials are thinking that also.

I think those are the main ones, but there are others and of course there is a HUGE amount that I don't know.

Here's another blog entry on wait times and the reasons behind them. It really isn't lack of staff at CCAA; it is because there are fewer children to be adopted:
http://research-china.blogspot.com/2007/10/why-wait-times-will-continue-to.html

And I believe this is a good thing. I hope that there will be increasingly fewer Chinese children available for adoption overseas--because they have stayed with their first families. And for those that are truly orphaned, I hope that adoptive parents are readily available in China. Being adopted by white parents overseas (like me) is about 5th best for these kids, after being raised by their natural parents, by family members, by an adoptive family in China, and by overseas Chinese. It is just easier for children to grow up with people like themselves, and with as few big changes as possible--and being adopted to another country by people of another race is a huge change and a huge challenge.

But I feel for you in your very long wait. I have a lot of friends that are waiting to adopt, and 3 years or more when you were expecting around 1 year is a huge thing to cope with. And it is easy for me to talk, right? Because I already adopted back in 2005. But I truly believe that a slowing and eventual ending of international adoptions from China is what is best for the children. I feel for my daughter every day because of what she has lost.

Best wishes

Gershom

Because not everybody wants americans adopting their children.
Especially when its getting shadier and more corrupt as time goes on.

opedial

While there is no reduction in adoptees, there is exceptional increase in adoptive parents due to "popularity" of adpoting a child from China.

Marie C

Many other posters have given great answers to this question, using the excellent website "Research-China" as a source. I also feel that China is trying to shift the focus of their adoption program over to special needs. There are now many Chinese families who are interested in adopting healthy infants domestically, which was not the case in the past. Consequently, there is not as much need as in previous years for a large international adoption program. But there's a pretty big cultural and social stigma against special needs children in China, even today. The Chinese population does not have "health insurance" as we know it here in the U.S. There are many special needs children in China with conditions such as cleft lip/cleft palate. Their families may not have had the resources to address such conditions over there; but surgical repair of cleft lip and palate is a simple procedure here in the U.S., and it is covered by insurance. So there are many special needs children who would have the opportunities for cure and/or treatments for their conditions here, that would not have these opportunities in China.

Jennifer L

I don't think it's a priority for the Chinese government. With everything else happening with China, the Olympics, Tibet, etc, the government is focusing more on those issues than finding homes for the children abandoned due to their policies.

I also think China is beginning to realize that there will be a significant gender disparity in the numbers, with many Chinese men not being able to find brides.

Jules

A lot was made about the controversy over whether Hunan was closed to adoptions following the baby-trafficking story in November 2005. It is interesting to note that the finding ads in Hunan, the first step made by the Civil Affairs offices in each city to place a child in the international adoption pool, stopped completely in December 2005. The CCAA announced the completion of its investigation into the Hunan episode in March 2006, and finding ads again appeared in mid-April.

Hunan, along with Jiangxi and Guangdong Provinces, contributes a majority of the children adopted internationally. It seems likely that although a small number of Hunan referrals have been received in the past few months (all of which had finding ads published prior to December 2005, and thus "in-process" when the story broke) that we will not see significant numbers of Hunan referrals over the Summer. Given the number of children usually assigned from Hunan, this can be a significant factor in the lengthening wait times.

The CCAA has answered questions concerning the increasing wait times with an explanation of the declining number of children being abandoned in China. This is also certainly true, and also will have an effect on the wait times. In fact, as my next blog essay on the availability of adoptable children in China will show, over the long term the decline in abandonments will have a much more significant impact on China's international adoption program than the increasing wait times we have most recently been experiencing

Santa's Lil' Helper

The powers that be in China are becoming concerned over the exodus of young girls. Why boys are highly favored for cultural reason you still need Chinese females to birth them.

I predict that while China once sought to rid it's country of unwanted girls down the road they will become a commodity to families seeking wives for their sons. China is now offering payments to parents who decide to keep their girl babies.

The CCAA (China Center for Adoption Affairs) only consist of FIVE caseworkers that review adoption requests. That is why there is such a backlog and it has nothing to do with the
requiring better criteria for adoptive parents......I too was shocked to find this out. If you begin your paperwork today to adopt from China it will take 4+ years.

According to a friend who lives in China the orphanages are so overcrowded that some high ranking Chinese families are being allowed to adopt a second child.....these families choose daughters so they will have a future bride for their sons.

I wonder how many of these girls will be forced to marry against their will.

Dana

I read somewhere that they want to phase out international adoptions or something.

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