Critical Analysis: The U.S. Should Suspend Adoptions from China

China, like the U.S., has a website that is dedicated to finding missing and exploited children called, “Baby Come Home.” Unlike the U.S., a large percentage of those children have probably been kidnapped for adoption by unsuspecting American parents. Since China opened its doors to international adoption in 1991, over 83,000 Chinese children have received American parents, the largest number worldwide.[1]

In 2006, the Chinese police uncovered six Hunan orphanages that had paid kidnappers anywhere from $400 to $538 for each child acquired. The operation had been going on for four years, so at least a thousand children had been stolen from their birth families and sent to the orphanages for international adoption. The children were usually taken from another province in China and moved to Hunan to avoid detection. It would be naïve to assume that these problems are all in the past. In June of 2012, the Chinese police arrested 76 suspects for infant abductions acquired for resale in the Yunnan province. The infants went for as high as $1,582.

Parents hold on to hope of finding their missing children. Image Source: AP
Parents hold on to hope of finding their missing children. Image Source: AP

In 2010, parents of missing children protested in Beijing about the lack of investigation by the Chinese police. China claims that only 10,000 of its children are abducted each year; however, the State Department has conceded that the numbers may be as high as 20,000 annually. Every year, approximately 30,000 to 60,000 missing children are reported to Chinese police. A child is usually taken from migrant workers because of the parents’ lack of clout with police.

Once an orphanage decides to put a child up for international adoption, it must publish an ad in the local newspaper to notify potential claimants about the lost child. Since most of the kidnapped children are routed from their homes to other provinces, it is unlikely that the local paper of the orphanage would inform searching parents of their children’s whereabouts. Sixty days after the post, the child is available for adoption to the US.

The media has often portrayed China as a land full of abandoned, healthy baby girls, but the current lack of supply and the subsequent need to refill that supply has been glossed over. In 2007, China admitted that it “lacked available babies to meet the spike in demand.” In 1991, the one-child policy (“policy”) may have contributed to the surplus of female infants in Chinese orphanages but oversupply is no longer a problem. Abortions and other forms of birth control are readily available in China. The policy has been effective at reducing China’s population from 5.81 children per family in 1970 to an average of 2.31 in 1990.[2] At 2.31, the population will no longer grow but simply replace the current generation. Moreover, with China’s increasing economic wealth, families are able to pay the penalties for having more than one child if the province strictly enforces the policy.

In an informal survey conducted by Stuy, 227 out of 259 Chinese orphanages claimed that they did not have any healthy infants available for domestic adoption even though the children were conveniently available for Americans. American parents must pay the orphanage a fee of $3,000 to $5,000 for each child adopted. Assuming the minimum fee of $3,000, almost $252 million has been transferred from the U.S. to China in exchange for children since 1991.

In the U.S., the birth parents’ rights to a child tend to supercede the adoptive parents’, even if the child has been with the adoptive parents for years. However, when it comes to international adoptions, the U.S. does not give the same amount of deference to Chinese parents’ rights to their children. As a ratifying country to the Hague Convention, the U.S. should attempt to uphold the principles of the Convention even if the treaty is not self-executing. The U.S. should suspend adoptions from China because the practice is feeding into the kidnapping of children and corruption within the country. The “best interests of the children” are not being taken into account when encouraging adoptions from China. China is more than capable of absorbing any healthy, abandoned children within the country. U.S. suspension of adoptions from China would force the country to take kidnappings more seriously, especially with the amount of Chinese parents that have lost children.

Helen Lee is a 3L at the University of Denver and a staff editor on the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy



[1] See, Elizabeth Bartholet, Int’l Adoption: Thoughts on the Human Rights Issues, 13 Buff. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 151, app. B (2007). See also, Significant Source Countries of International Adoptions (Totals of IR-3, IR-4, IH-3, and IH-4 Immigrant Visas Issued): Fiscal Years 2003-2012, U.S. Department of State, http://travel.state.gov/visa/statistics/ivstats/ivstats_4581.html

[2] Sharon K. Hom, Female Infanticide in China: The Human Rights Specter & Thoughts Towards (An) Other Vision, 23 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 249, 266 n.59 (1992).

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