Research-China.Org

What We Have, and Why You Need It

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 17:37:00 +0000

April 29, 2013 -- Just up on our subscription blog: After eight years of blogging myself, this month I turn the keyboard over to my wife Lan. She recounts her experiences researching, and described how her own life growing up in China informs what she sees and experiences researching orphanages. If you have not yet subscribed to our subscription blog, you will find it very informative. You can join the conversation through Paypal here: http://www.research-china.org/blogs/index.htm _________________________

What Research-China.Org Has & Why You Really Need It

Research-China has been around for over ten years, and in that time we have evolved and broadened our offerings to adoptive families. We thought it might be helpful to present what exactly we have to offer families, and why they should seriously consider contacting us for information about their child.

Finding Ads --Research-China.Org began with the discovery of Guangdong finding ads in 2002. After adopting our daughter Meigon that year, I was refused a copy of her finding ad by the orphanage (as were all adoptive families at that time). We began collecting newspapers, and today have the finding ads for over 100,000 children. Adoptive families are now often provided copies of their child's finding ads at adoption, a response by the Chinese government to our business, but these are often poor-quality xerox copies.

There are several reasons why families should contact us for their child's finding ad, even if they already have a copy. First, it allows us to see if we have other information about your child besides the finding ad itself. In the decade of researching, we have located many foster families, finders, birth families, etc., of many children for whom we don't have contact information. There is no cost or obligation to requesting your child's finding ad, and you may be surprised at what other opportunities we have for you.

Second, the finding ad given to families is sometimes a second or even a third "edition," with previous ads being published with different photos, etc. We have all of these ads, so you may be surprised to learn that another finding ad was published for your child that was not provided you, with an earlier photo of your child that you didn't know existed.

Your child's finding ad is the earliest documentation that exists for your child, and aside from the photo is an important artifact of your child's personal history.

Foster Family Contact Information -- Since 2006 we have been collecting contact information of foster families all across China. These women are anxious to keep informed on how their foster children are doing, share early photos and anecdotes with the adoptive families, etc. If your child is on our list, or you know someone whose child is on the list, please contact us for the direct mailing address of the family. Orphanages habitually work to prevent adoptive families from getting in contact with foster families, so this opportunity is of immense importance to adoptive families.

Birth Parent Search (BPSA)/Orphanage Reliability Analysis (ORA) -- These two reports are an in-depth look at your child's orphanage, its adoption history, and its demographic make-up. We believe that by comparing your child's finding circumstances with those of all the other children adopted from the same orphanage, very important conclusions can be drawn that have serious implications for how your child will understand their history. Both reports provide an important summary of important data trends and characteristics, and both draw on data from Baidu searches of area blogs and media sources, contacts in many areas, finding ad data, and our own research experiences. These reports concisely present all that is known about your child's orphanage, and how your child may have come into the orphanage.

Our BPSA is for those adoptive families who are considering a search for their child's birth family, and includes membership in our birth parent search group, the largest group of its kind. On this group are families ranging from "just learning" to those in contact with their child's birth family. The depth of experience of our member families is unparallelled anywhere. Participants in our birth parent search projects are drawn from families that have ordered this report.

The ORA is for families not interested in searching, but wanting more information about their child's orphanage. This report contains a bit more analysis of finding patterns, etc., but is largely the same as our BPSA. A family need only order one of the reports to gain all the information about their child and their orphanage.

Orphanage Data Books -- Forming the foundation of our personalized Birth Parent Search Analysis or Orphanage Reliability Analysis, the orphanage data books contain all of the finding data for the children submitted from the orphanage since 1999 or when the orphanage joined the international adoption program. Arranged chronologically by finding date in table form, the data allows a family to see if other children were found the same day as their child, how many children were found at a child's finding location, how many total children have been adopted, and many other pieces of information. The data is introduced by an informative introduction that provides keys to interpreting the data and drawing conclusions. Nicely bound in hardcover 6x9 format with color illustrations and exhibits, the data book is a very important piece of your child's orphanage history. Most Guangdong orphanages currently available, with Hunan, Jiangxi and Guangxi orphanages coming early 2013.

Subscription Blog -- In 2009 we moved most of our investigative articles to a subscription format to insure that only serious and interested families had access to our experiences and information. Since that time, we have provided over 40 detailed and data-driven articles on adoption patterns in various Provinces, birth family search experiences, parenting strategies for communicating adoption history to children, as well as interviews with orphanage directors, finders, birth families, etc. that provide important "back ground" information to understanding China's adoption program. Our subscription blog is designed to answer questions of active and engaged adoptive families. We try to post monthly, and we offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee that your subscription will be worthwhile. You will learn things you never thought possible.

DVDs/Photos -- Since 2002, Research-China.Org has researched in over 60 orphanages across China. The results of each research project is put to a nice video DVD. Generally, the orphanage itself is profiled, as well as many finding locations and other interesting sites around the city. The DVDs provide a very nice "time capsule" of the area when many of the children lived there, and thus are very important glimpses into our children's pre-adoption lives. A large photo archive is also available, where families can order orphanage, finding location, and other photos of interest.

Maps -- As we have wandered around the various cities and towns of China, we have stopped and collected hundreds of area maps. These are perfect for Life Books, or just to mark with your child's finding location, orphanage, and other important locations. Priced at only $10, they are an exceptional value.

Coffee Table Books -- A recent addition, our orphanage photo books provide a complementary way of presenting your child's history to our DVDs. Beautifully produced, our orphanage books provide gorgeous photos of your child's orphanage area, the orphanage itself, area foster families, and other interesting images. Our books can be customized with your child's finding ad to add that personal touch, making the book "their" book.

Translation Services -- One of the benefits to having a thoroughly experienced native Chinese member on our staff (my wife Lan) is that she is able to provide important translation expertise to our families. If you have something you need accurately translated (foster family letters, adoption documents, police reports, etc.), Lan can help. Lan's expertise is one of the primary reasons an adoptive family should contact us, as she is both extremely knowledgeable about China's orphanages, as well as understanding the cultural view points of both sides of the ocean. She is the heart of the Research-China.Org organization.

__________________

By taking advantage of our research opportunities, an adoptive family will not only learn much regarding their child's pre-adoption history, but also come to thoroughly understand the China program itself. This information will allow an adoptive parent to answer their child's questions with authority, real data and information, allowing the parent to have confidence in their statements to their child. The questions will come; it is up to us as adoptive families to have the information at hand to answer them.

A History of China's International Adoption Program

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Last October, my wife Lan and I were invited to speak to two groups of New York adoptive families, one presentation taking place on Long Island, and the other at NYU in Manhattan. The topic I chose to speak on was "The History of China's International Adoption Program and Its Impact on Birth Parent Searching." This week on the subscription blog is a recital of my presentation in three parts for
ease in viewing.

If you are not a member of our subscription blog, you can join here. The blog is filled with analysis of the different adoption Provinces, interviews with orphanage insiders, recountings from some of our birth parent searching, and other informative and insightful articles. If you wish to fully understand China;s adoption program, the blog will be a great source for you.

The "A-ha" Moment

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 17:40:00 +0000

Last April I wrote about a new form of adoption corruption that involved orphanages approaching rural residents promising their children better educations if they allowed them to attend "orphanage schools." Once in the orphanage, the children are submitted for international adoption as older, "aging out" children, desperately in need of Western adoptive families. While these children's birth families sometimes are deceived into relinquishing custody of their children to the orphanage, we are now learning that some orphanages are charging birth families to have their children participate in this program, with everyone well aware of what is going on -- everyone except the adoptive families.

Since April, I have been approached by other families who have recounted their own stories, including learning that some of the children being adopted by unknowing families were the children of the orphanage directors themselves, all under the guise of the "special focus" programs promoted by WACAP, CCAI and other agencies.

A few of the impacted families have started speaking up, fighting to bring awareness and change to their agencies and the Chinese government, including the CCCWA itself. Below is a recounting of one such attempt made by two adoptive mothers last month. Their story illustrates the complexity of this situation, and how adoptive families are left to deal with the issues that follow. If you are a family impacted by this problem, please feel free to contact me if you would like to tell your story (anonymously or otherwise), or if you would like to be put into contact with other families dealing with these issues.

What follows was sent to me by an adoptive mother of one of China's "aging out children."
______________________

I have been trying to wrap my brain around all that has happened in the past few weeks. How to write it all out, what to say. How to say it.

The moment when it all became clear. The words were said: "Do not spend time looking to your past, but only look to the future and the opportunity you have in America."

These were the words of the deputy director general of the CCCWA, the highest government official in China adoption. She was touring the U.S., along with several other high officials in China adoption as well as the CEO of the National Council for Adoption in the U.S. One particular official traveling with her was the new director of the Luoyang orphanage.

They would make several stops on their tour, greeting agencies and families. A tour that would land them in a meeting on the West Coast with a large adoption agency within driving distance of my town.

I would never, ever have another opportunity to have these officials all in one room. I knew I had to go, in hopes of my chance to confront them and ask for answers surrounding issues in the adoptions of healthy older children and speak out for truth.

The meeting consisted of a small panel of Chinese adoptees who came home at different ages and were now in their teens-adulthood. They talked of their experiences here. Several of them spoke of their desire to know more about their history, to know more about their birth family and/or medical history. The highest official in adoption listened to them. But instead of validating their feelings of wanting to know their histories, she told them they shouldn't worry about that, but only look toward their future and their opportunities in America, all the while remembering their motherland.

My friend and I looked at each other and said "it all makes sense now." Not only are we not on the same page with the Chinese adoption officials about adoption, we are not even reading the same book.   For Americans adoption is often, if not always, a desire for relationship -- a parent/child relationship forever, based on truth and love. Attachment. Hugs and kisses. Sharing the journey. However, all the way across the ocean is a group of officials who are not promoting adoption out of a desire for children to have a family, they are promoting adoption for opportunity and are completely clueless to the damage it can do to deny the past of a child. Sure, a family is part of the deal, but it is not seen in the same way as we see it. For me, family is about relationship regardless of opportunity. A poor family is still a family. If our house burns down and all we have left is each other, that will be enough because we are a family.

(I know, of course, that I'm not speaking for ALL adoptive families. I am aware that some families may be completely fine with adopting a kid solely to give them a better opportunity and perfectly content with it being all about that. I'm just speaking on my general observations. And of course, we all desire opportunity for our kids. You know what I mean, I hope.)

Children who were adopted at a younger age become more westernized having grown up in a relational society here. Their history mostly exists here in America, with only a small piece missing--their birth family. They have a healthy desire to have the puzzle all put together. Their life story, each step of the way. We see this in our younger kids who want all the answers, who like hearing about when they were a baby or the funny things they said when they were young.

Teen adoption from China is a different story. And now it all makes sense. "Don't look back." "Look only toward the future." Opportunity. Those teens who looked into the camera during the "Journey of Hope" Luoyang program and said "I just want a mom and dad, I want a family," were saying what they had been coached to say. Told to hide the past. To never tell the truth. This would provide them opportunity. One more step in where they wanted to go, where the director wanted them to go.

Some children will do just fine in this situation. They will even discover how much they actually DO desire relationships and soak it up. They will embrace their new life---and never look back. However, I don't think they can do this forever. If they open up with the truth, I believe they can do very well providing they have embraced relationships here AND told the truth about their history--which when adopted as a teen "I don't remember" is not a real answer. Trust me, they remember.

However, there is one problem with this, regardless of how the child is doing. The adoption took place under fraud. Lies were told, children were threatened, birth families were given empty promises. Sure, the poverty may have been great in some cases, and it would seem the children would be better off here. However when it is all hidden, and no one wants to talk about it; when children are told to never ever tell and the old director is still communicating with children and telling them to be quiet, the problem remains. It's all a scam! "Like a cult," is the best description I've heard. Social welfare directors might seem gracious and cooperative at face value, but this in no way means that he or she is not involved in corruption.

It's all WRONG.

And so it went. After the delegation finished their talking, we (my friend flew half way across the country to also speak to this group about her case) approached the officials. We presented them with documents from a few families who wanted to stand up for the truth. My very sweet friend translated for us. We told them our stories. We asked for an investigation. We spoke to the current director of the Luoyang orphanage, the deputy general of the CCCWA and the CEO of National Council for Adoption.   They all listened with compassion and concern.

Now before anyone panics, please know that NONE of us desire to see the end of adoption. We all love adoption. We love our children. However, we cannot hide the truth out of fear. Not for one second did any of us feel like what we were doing would cause harm. As a matter of fact, for the first time we felt like the truth would be heard and positive change might be made. The top official of the CCCWA looked me in the eye, shook my hand and said, "I'm sorry".  They promised to look into things. In the letters that were presented to the officials there were several requests made, all were similar from all families. I'll include a small portion of my letter here:

"We ask for a formal apology from all who participated in the deception and threatening of our children and those who participated in aiding them to do so.

"We ask for assurance that our children and their families in China as well as the U.S. will be held harmless as a result of the confessions of their true history and that our children will be given the opportunity and welcomed to return to China for a visit with their families if they so desire.

"Our family believes in adoption and is grateful to have our children from China. However, the circumstances surrounding our two Luoyang adoptions have been heartbreaking and painful to our entire family. Our desire is that no other family or child should suffer because of an adoption under false paperwork, and that the integrity of the program would be held to the highest standards to ensure truthfulness and transparency in the children's history before adoption. We would like to see changes within the China program to allow children to stay with their biological families and get the education and training needed to stay with their relatives. We would be fully supportive in implementing programs like these. We would also support the adoption age changing to age 18 so children are not forced to lie about their age."

As a believer in Jesus, I can tell you that not for a second did we doubt that we were in the right place. We felt God's leading every.single.step of the way. No fear. Only peace.

Perhaps changes will be made to ensure the China program is run ethically and clean. A program that is transparent. This would be ideal. Perhaps nothing will be done. One thing I am sure of is that I have done what I could and after a very long time of questioning, it gives me peace that we are exactly where we should be.

I'm not sure what the next step is in this journey, but one thing I do strongly believe is that Christians need to take a stand for truth. No one wants to talk about the corruption out of fear that it may damage the program. I truly believe this is wrong.   Children should not be used in adoption, orphans should not be created to fill up numbers in a program. Birth families should have a voice and not be condemned because they don't meet financial social standards. A poor family is still a family. Sometimes we are so focused on "caring for the orphan," we don't realize we are actually contributing to the corruption.

But when I look around, I see it still happening. Take this example:

When he was just six years old, Connor's father died and his mother left him with his aunt. Later he was sent to the orphanage when his aunt could no longer care for him.  Connor's Asian name means “he grows up like the hardy white poplar which grows in the north”.

Now 13, Connor is a handsome, healthy boy. When he was younger his caretakers described him as “big eyes bright--he is sunshine, beautiful, and cute boy”. He studies at the local school where he is an excellent student who loves learning.  Connor is popular with his caregivers, teachers and classmates. He has a reputation for being helpful to others with chores and caring for younger children. His report says he’s polite and does everything carefully including making his bed, cleaning his room, and making sure he looks nice. He likes playing basketball, drawing and reading books.

Yet, no one says "by the way, it's possible none of this is true and it will be more of an exchange student situation!" It's possible this kid is being used and told to lie forever, enter a new life here and never look back---all the while keeping his connection to home through internet while unsuspecting parents think it's so cute that they have so many friends back in China.

The problem--we don't know. Maybe it IS true that they are orphaned, maybe it really is exactly as it says on paper.

However, knowing what I do now.....seeing orphanage directors send their own kids here, foster families that turn out to be birth parents, family photos (of child and birth family) taken just one week before an adoptive family arrives to get their "orphaned" child, having Civil Affairs Officers willing to take money to enter teens into the "boarding school," children promised educations at Harvard, shall I go on?

Knowing all of this, I cannot advocate for the adoption of these children. I don't think agencies should either. Unless they have thoroughly investigated. But even then, it's impossible to know. There has to be some sort of crackdown as a result of the numerous false adoptions that already took place.

Agencies need to take a stand and stop promoting adoption of children whose paperwork is questionable. They need to hold officials accountable. They should be held accountable. When they see red flags, they need to investigate and put things on hold---and we (those of us in the process) need to step back and not be so emotionally attached to a photo that we are willing to look the other way in order to fill our own need.

This is a complicated matter as there are so many aspects to it. Who defines an orphan? When kids come here that technically don't "need" to--it means other children are left behind. What about them? Who defines the "need" in the first place? Was someone robbed of their chance at a family because someone else took advantage of the opportunity? Have officials now taken the last bit of hope from the true orphan and created a program of opportunity for the elite underprivileged, as well as the already well off? How do you reconcile all this in your mind?   That is the question. And it's all complicated.

Here are some red-flags that you should be aware of if you are considering adopting an older child, or have already adopted one:

* If you adopted an older, healthy child, especially a boy from an orphanage that has participated in international adoptions for a long time

* If your child is wanting to be on QQ all the time and has numerous contacts on there. They may be talking to family

* If your child (adopted at an older age, say 10 and up) has been in the orphanage system only a short time

* If you adopted a teen child and s/he is not growing in height---this is a big indicator that they are older. Teen boys---age 13,14...GROW! 16,17,18....not so much.

* If you know other children from the orphanage with the same sort of story: parents died, relatives old and ailing. Especially if those kids are adopted in clusters.

What to do if this is your story:

* TALK to your child. Tell them you have heard about other kids who were adopted and they were actually older and/or their parents weren't really dead and you'd like to know their REAL story. Assure them they don't have to be afraid and you want to help them. Tell them it's ok if they are talking to their family on QQ, you just want to know the truth.

* If you suspect your adopted teen is older, ask them their "sign". Chinese kids know their "sign", this will tell you their birth year.

* Always reassure them that you understand and love them no matter what. If your child sticks to the story on the paperwork, revisit it several months down the road so your child always knows you are open and willing to listen to the truth at any time.   While it might be easier, never assume the paperwork is really true.

Truth. Stand for the truth. If you have experienced something similar---speak out about it. Encourage your kids to speak the truth. Do not hide out of fear. The truth will bring about change. Please join the cause.

These problems are not limited to Luoyang; it's happening all over China. Orphanage director's are sending their own children and relatives here under the disguise of an orphan. If you brought home a teen--particularly a teen with no special needs--ask them more questions. Tell them they don't have to be afraid.

Take a stand for ALL the children.

Take a stand for ALL the families.

Take a stand for TRUTH!

_________________

After I posted this essay yesterday, another family with Luoyang children e-mailed me the following recounting of their story.

We are victims of the "Journey of Hope" child laundering scam. After almost two years of being in our family, our two Luoyang "boys" told us they are much older (almost 20 instead of 15, and almost 19 instead of 17). They were too old to leave China as orphans and they were too old to enter the USA as adopted children. Worse, they confessed that they are not orphans.

They claim that their families are not even poor. They would have been "okay" in China. We asked why they helped to deceive us. "I just wanted to come to the U.S. I know I don't belong here. The paperwork is all lies." The other "son" is running away from a challenging situation at home. We have shared everything with our agency. They claim to care, but two days before the Chinese delegation visited the agency, I asked the agency to put our letter detailing our situation into the hands of the Chinese officials. I also told the agency that our Luoyang young men were ready to tell the agency how the fraud and deception were carried out against the agency and against adoptive parents. Didn't our agency want this information BEFORE the delegation arrived, so that the agency would know more before discussing the Luoyang "inconsistencies" and "discrepancies" with the Chinese delegation?

There was no response from the agency. So, the courageous women who put letters into the hands of the Chinese adoption officials also delivered our letter.

My husband and I refuse to live a lie. This is a clear case of child laundering, and we are going to do our best to report it, expose it, and fight it. I imagine there are some Chinese families that now regret making the decision to give their children to the "Journey of Hope" scheme. We hope "adoptees" can be reunited with their families. Our one "son" recently pulled out pictures of his "real" family, pictures he has kept hidden since coming home with us in 2010. It was a strange moment to hear about his "real family." This is the boy who looked into the agency camera, as he was being videotaped for the "Journey of Hope" program, and said he just wanted "a family of his own." It was a performance that made my husband almost cry. It made my husband decide we should pursue the "Journey of Hope" adoption. Now we know our "poor, traumatized, disadvantaged orphan boy" HAS a family of his own. All his aunts and his uncle came to say good-bye the week before we arrived in China to "adopt" him.

Now I know why he has yet to learn how to spell his new mother's name -- my name. I am not his mother. Never will be. His real mother is alive and living outside Luoyang. I am just the stupid overweight American female who is feeding, educating, doctoring, clothing, entertaining, etc. him. The facts about the second "son" is just as depressing. Neither "son" is afraid of former Director Pei. Neither is afraid that something will happen to his family if the truth is told.

Well, as far as we are concerned the game is over. Our agency tries to convince us that the "boys" are better off with us. It was suggested twice that we contact another Christian family that is in our same position (2 older non-orphan boys), a family that has decided to keep the truth hidden, because they think their "sons" are better off with them! I don't think that is a judgment call any deceived family has a right to make. Laws were broken. Visa fraud was committed. I don't want to talk to a Christian family that has decided to sweep the truth under the rug. My Bible tells me we need to be "above reproach."

The second agency strategy to deter us from pursuing the truth: Aren't we concerned about, gasp, deportation? Aren't we concerned about, gasp, retribution against the birth families? No. We are concerned about the other three TRUE children in our family who have been cheated and hurt by this wretched deception. Our children are watching to see what we do with this terrible crime. We are concerned about the other honest, loving American families about to buy the lie. The fear tactics don't work here.

Well, third strategy -- Don't we understand that there is no foster care system in China? "Boys" like ours are "at risk," even if they are not orphans. Both of our Luoyang young men were attending school, living with family, eating well, growing up fine. The assumption that the "Journey of Hope" "kids" are needy needs to be seriously questioned. In our case, both "kids" and their families were driven by GREED, not need. The tens of thousands of dollars we spent for the pleasure of being manipulated and deceived could have gone a LONG, LONG way to helping scores of "at risk" kids, really at risk kids. Besides the shock and grief of finding out we have been completely defrauded, we mourn the fact that two REAL orphans did not get adopted by our family.

But we know God is in control. He did not cause this, but he permitted it to happen to our family. SO THAT WE COULD FIGHT THIS ABUSE of children, Chinese families, and American families.

We refuse to live the lie. We will not perjure ourselves and we will not encourage these young men in our care to perjure themselves. This is a hideous mockery of adoption. We are pursuing the truth. I wish the families that have decided to accept the lie would change their minds.

How & Why an Orphanage Joins the IA Program

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:05:00 +0000

It is a rare opportunity to interview an officer of an orphanage just joining China's international adoption program, to get to talk with them before they have become jaded, cautious, and "corporate." This month on our subscription blog we talked with an officer of a "fresh face" on China's IA scene. Having just joined the international adoption program, we asked him what was required to join, why the orphanage waited, and what he feels about it. Along the way he provides some very interesting answers to our questions. Our subscription blog is a forum to discuss interviews, analysis, and share personal experiences in a private setting. If you are interested in having a "College-level" knowledge of China's international adoption program, our subscription blog provides the most in-depth detail and data available. We positively guarantee you will enjoy your subscription.

The Ultimate Resource: Orphanage Data Books

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 12:28:00 +0000

I didn't realize when I began collecting finding ad newspapers in 2002 just how much valuable information they would provide. At that time, orphanages didn’t provide the finding ads to adoptive families; the ads were simply an “internal” procedural artifact required by the Chinese government in order for a child to be internationally adopted. As our collection of finding ad newspapers grew, I began to realize that the information contained in the ads could provide a picture of a different nature, a demographic picture, of an orphanage’s adoption program. By compiling the finding ages, genders, health data, finding location, and even, in some cases, the Chinese names themselves, I was able to draw important conclusions about the children's finding circumstances, such as whether the location was frequently cited by the orphanage, how common a child’s finding age was, and whether there were patterns that displayed non-random findings. With all of the data from a particular orphanage, I found I could compare a single finding—the proverbial “tree”—against the backdrop of the entire “forest” of findings from that orphanage.

Although we are able to synthesize the data from the finding ads into a very informative Birth Parent Search Analysis or Orphanage Reliability Analysis for adoptive families, in those reports we are only able to touch the surface of an orphanage's finding data. We are excited to now be able to offer adoptive families the opportunity to obtain the finding ad data for their child's orphanage as early as 1999, compiled and organized into a beautiful, 6"x9" hardbound book.

Our data books tabulate the information contained in the finding ads for every child submitted for international adoption from that orphanage from either 1999 when the finding ads started, or from when the orphanage joined the international adoption program.

We are currently releasing the books for Guangdong Province, but will have Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangxi, Anhui and other Provinces available in 2013. The Orphanage Data Books come complete with beautiful illustrations, a helpful introduction, and a summary of orphanage information that will allow adoptive families to identify other children found at the same finding location or on the same day, detect patterns not covered in our analysis reports, or just possess all of the primary data for their child's orphanage.

Not only will the publication of the records in the Orphanage Data Books be of interest and use to adoptees and their families, the finding ads represent a historical record of the tens of thousands of children adopted internationally from China, much like the immigration records of Ellis Island tell a story of the 12 million people who migrated to the United States between 1892 and 1954. Although of limited importance at the time they were created, the Ellis Island records are now actively mined for individual and collective information by direct descendants of the immigrants.

We are very confident that adoptive families will treasure this record of their child's orphanage for years to come.

New Offerings from Research-China.Org

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 19:44:00 +0000

Two years ago we recognized that many adoptive families were growing interested in searching for their child's birth family in China, either at the behest of the child them-self, or in order to have information down the road. As a response to this demand, we introduced our "Birth Parent Search Analysis" (BPSA). This report contains two primary sections of data and information -- information on the overall demographics of the orphanage itself, including specific information on the child's finding location; and information how patterns and other characteristics of the orphanage and the child's finding impact a birth parent search. The report draws on the hundreds and often thousands of children submitted by each orphanage for international adoption. The report has been very popular, as has been the Birth Parent Search Group that was created to allow informed adoptive families a place to share ideas and experiences relating with China's adoption program and their individual search experience. Research-China.Org's Birth Parent Search Group is the largest and most informative China Birth Parent Search Group in existence.

But many adoptive families are not interested in conducting a birth parent search, but are curious to know more about their child's orphanage program. How many boys have been adopted, where are most of the children found, can the finding information given be trusted, or is there evidence that findings are "non-random". To present "just the facts" we have created a new report, our "Orphanage Reliability Analysis" (ORA). This report focuses more intensely on the qualities, exploring more deeply the patterns and characteristics of an orphanage, and providing more detail concerning your child's finding, as well as a general look. This report provides a deeper analysis as to the integrity of the orphanage information.

If you are contemplating a search for your child's birth family, and want to associate with similarly-minded adoptive families, our BPSA is the single most important step you can take on that journey.

If you currently have no plans to conduct a search, but have an interest in understanding your child's history in more detail, our ORA will be of tremendous benefit.

Research-China.Org is very confident that either of these reports, based on more than a decade of data from each orphanage, will provide answers to adoptive parent's questions and concerns, and allow them to honestly and factually answer the questions of their adoptive children.

New Adoptee Birth Parent Search Group

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 18:11:00 +0000

Over the years, we have noticed an increasing interest among the "pioneers" of China's international adoption program, as near adult and adult adoptees have contacted us for assistance in searching for birth parents. In response to this increased interest, we have formed a sister Birth Parent Search Group just for adoptees. This group is set up, and will be run by a Chinese adoptee. Experienced searchers are part of the group to assist with questions of procedure and methods, but by and large this group is to allow adoptees to assist each other in a safe and understanding environment of like-minded and supportive fellow adoptees.

If you are an adoptee from China, older than 16, and would like to join our trail-blazing project, simply sent a membership request to the group moderator at Adoptee-Search-Group-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Our group moderator will be in touch to confirm your membership.

We hope this group will provide older adoptees the tools, resources, and experience to conduct a successful search.

Brian

Time to Change the Usual "Story"

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Recent announcements by the Chinese government made the following essay from our subscription blog timely.
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I can't even remember what prompted the conversation, but it involved the topic of our work, and a story we were working on. As we were eating dinner in our backyard a week or so ago, my youngest daughter Meilan asked how she had come into the orphanage. When we first adopted her, she displayed some mild anger issues, and one day soon after coming home she explained that she never understood why we had brought her to the orphanage. We gently explained that we had not brought her to the orphanage, but that we had adopted her from the orphanage. "We have videos we can show you of your adoption sweetie. We would never have brought you to the orphanage." Later we found out the reason for her confusion -- her birth family had brought her to the orphanage, relinquishing her under the guise that she would be educated "in the city" and then returned to them.

So, here we were, eight years later, discussing some aspect of our research, and our youngest asked "Was I brought into the orphanage?" Before my wife or I even had a chance to answer, our oldest, Meikina, turned to her youngest sister and, with contempt on her lips, flatly stated. "Meilan, we were left on the side of the road by our birth mothers."

The contempt was not for her sister, but for the thought. Meikina viewed the idea that her birth mother had abandoned her on the side of the road with pure contempt. Meilan, confused by Meikina's answer, turned to me and asked, "Is that true?"

I used to think so. I entered the China adoption program in 1996, a result of the controversy surrounding the "Dying Rooms" and publicity over China's "orphan problem". I, like thousands of other families then and now, assumed that the children in China's orphanages had ended up there through anonymous abandonments at places like the Civil Affairs Bureau, an area school, or the local hospital. The abandonment stories of my daughters became almost holy, with reverential visits to the finding locations, emotional interviews with finders, and sacred "Lifebooks" with photos, maps, and drawings.

In 2000, I returned to China and interviewed one of Meikina's two finders. She recounted how she had been walking to work with her coworker one morning, had heard a baby's cry over the noise of the crowd, had investigated and found a cardboard box containing a small, two-day old baby girl. As she described it, the baby was dressed in "countryside clothes", had an empty bottle lying next to her, and two hundred yuan in cash with a red birth note. The finder's words became a sacred text for me, and I would journey to the Civil Affairs Bureau whenever I was in Dianbai, to sit and watch the location, imagining over and over Meikina's finding as described by her finder. For me, it was clear that Meikina had been abandoned on the side of the road by her birth mother.

The Hunan scandal of 2005 was the first crack in the veneer of authenticity for me and our adoptions, and those of many others. Here was an event that seemed to contradict everything we knew about China's orphan problem. Testimony given in that trial showed that rather than having more babies than they could handle, as had been commonly assumed by Westerners, that in reality by 1996 orphanages in Hunan, Guangdong, Chongqing and Sichuan were beginning to feel pressure to go out into the countrysides surrounding their orphanages and look for kids. Employees began to be pressured to find kids or lose their jobs; rewards began to be offered for each child brought to the orphanage. In the Duan case alone, over 1,000 children were moved from near and remote distances to the Hengyang County, Qidong, Hengshan, and other Hunan scandal facilities, and stories fabricated for each child: "Found abandoned at the bus station," "found abandoned at the Xinhua Book Store," "Found abandoned at the Hengyang Meat Processing plant." The Hunan scandal records show that over 95% of the children adopted from these orphanages had not been abandoned, but had been transported from other areas, where "finders" had received the children from birth parents. Rather than being abandoned, these thousands of children had been "relinquished", a term that more accurately conveys the chain of custody that occurred.

The Hunan scandal served as the "paradigm shifter" that allowed future research and media investigations to reveal that issues of baby-buying, Family Planning confiscations, and other extra-legal methods of obtaining children were frequently and pervasively used by orphanages to procure children for adoption. First-hand accounts of birth families, foster families, Civil Affairs officials, and finders reveal that nearly every orphanage in Chongqing, Jiangxi, Hunan, and the other large supplying Provinces employs some manner of "incentive program" to recruit children into their facilities. Some pay money, others work with Family Planning, others make false assurances to birth families of education and other opportunities in order to have those birth families relinquish their children.

Thus, for the vast majority of children adopted from China, the official story of how they came to be in the orphanage is a falsehood, created by orphanage directors in order to be able to submit a child for international adoption. The description of their being found at the gate of some facility by some unnamed or named individual is almost always a lie. In the lion's share of cases, the children submitted for international adoption were "relinquished" -- given by their birth families to someone, who in turn brought the children to the orphanage. Only a small percentage of children were truly simply found abandoned.

Why does any of this matter? Because I believe that for a child to be told their birth family "abandoned" her when that is not the case creates a feeling of contempt and anger for a birth parent where none is deserved. My wife Lan returned to re-interview Meikina's finder last year, over ten years after my visit. This time there was no orphanage director sitting "disinterested" nearby as she was asked the questions. This time the interviewer (my wife) knew the right questions to ask, when to accept and when to question further. This time the truth was recounted -- that the story of Meikina's finding was a fiction, that her finders had no idea where Meikina came from. This time the orphanage director confessed, in the face of this contradictory evidence, to having built a fairy tale in order to get Meikina adopted. Do I know she wasn't found abandoned in 1997? No, but I now know enough about her orphanage to seriously question whether children were found abandoned, rather than being "relinquished" by the birth family directly or indirectly.

So, at that dinner last month I told my daughters that. I told them that we had always been told that children had been abandoned by their birth families, left at various locations to be found by others. But I told them that our research had caused us to question whether that was true. I told them that in our experience, almost all of the children for whom we had done research showed that they had not been abandoned, but that rather they had been given by birth parents to people who arranged for them to come into the orphanage. We explained that the reasons were complicated, but that it was very unlikely that their birth families had really abandoned them on the road as Meikina had stated.

As I thought back over that conversation, I wondered at the tone of Meikina's statement. There was some real pain in her comment, and I wondered if it was real, or just my imagination. So, as we are wont to do in our house, we conducted a poll. I asked all three of my girls to rate, from 1 (highly negative feelings) to 10 (very positive feelings), how the following descriptions made them feel:

1) I was abandoned by my birth family at the gate of a school
2) I was relinquished by my birth family and brought to the orphanage

I chose "relinquish" (which I had to interpret for my girls) because it is as neutral a term as I could come up with. The word itself carries no connotation of impropriety or corruption; rather it simply implies that a child was transferred from one person to another until they reached the orphanage. Thus, the comparison is really between being left "alone" (abandonment) or being constantly supervised (relinquishment).

The results were interesting, but not unexpected. In answer to the first scenario (being abandoned) the girls assigned an average score of 2.6. This score hides one completely neutral score of 5, because, as Meigon explained, she did not find the scenario overly emotive. The other two assigned a 1 or 2 to the scenario (highly sad).

The average score rose substantially for the second question, using "relinquished", with the average score rising to 6.6, with individual scores falling between 6 and 7.5. Meilan explained her increase, going from 1 to 6, with these words: "In the second case I was protected, and in the first case people might not reach you in time."

I think, given the overall realities of China's adoption program -- the abundant evidence of ongoing ethical breaches, the documented instances of widespread baby-buying, and the stories of Family Planning campaigns and abuses -- that adoptive families would do well to "re-invent" the traditional story of how their child came to be in the orphanage. Rather than promoting an "abandonment"-centered history, with the customary photos, visits to the finding location on heritage trips, etc., more accurate and more emotionally satisfying to our children would be a "relinquishment"-centered story-line. This would involve the blunt admission that we simply don't know how our kids came into the orphanage most of the time, but that the evidence in most instances suggests that our children were transferred, person to person, to the orphanage. Not only is this scenario likely to be most accurate in the majority of cases, but it will be emotionally healthier for our children.

Adopting "Children in Plight"

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 13:07:00 +0000

Today's announcement that China will now begin officially adopting children with living relatives to foreign families may seem like a new policy for many outside the adoption community, but this program has been quietly taking place for years. Families of older children from Luoyang, Henan, one of the "trial" provinces, have known about such a program there over a decade. What can be hoped is that with this official acknowledgement an accurate awareness on the part of birth families and adoptive families will be possible. In the past this has not been the case.

Abandonment patterns suggest such programs have been going on for years in orphanages scattered across China. Children adopted from these orphanages seem, in nearly every case that has been investigated, to have been relinquished by birth parents or other birth relatives to the orphanage under the guise that their child would simply be educated in the orphanage school and returned to the family at the end of their schooling. This "education program" is pitched by orphanage officials as a way to have the expenses of raising the child subsidized by the government, and having the child receive a good education, usually in the "big city". For parents struggling to provide these opportunities, such an offer is hard to resist.

Only after the child has had its papers submitted by the orphanage for international adoption and is about to be internationally adopted are the birth families made aware that their child will be leaving China. The orphanage officials then pressure the child's guardian (parent, grandparent, etc.) to sign over guardianship to the orphanage. "You want your child to have a good life, right?" and other such manipulators are used to coerce the family into giving up their child.

In the past, all of this was done behind the scenes. Adoptive families were not told their children had been relinquished to the orphanage by their birth families; rather, they were given adoption paperwork stating the child had been found "abandoned" in a park, railway station, or found wandering the street. Birth families were deceptively told that their child was going to the U.S. for an education, and would return after graduating to get a good job and take care of the family. All of the players in the adoption were deceived into believing the adoption was something it was not.

Perhaps that will change now that the Chinese government is officially embracing the adoption of "Children in Plight". Perhaps birth families will be told when they relinquish their children that they will probably never see them again. Perhaps adoptive families will be told that the child they are adopting had not been abandoned, but had been relinquished by its birth family with the expectation that the child will return to China one day to reunite with their birth family. Perhaps all the parties involved will be truthfully told the true nature of the adoption they are undertaking.

And perhaps a tiger truly can change its stripes.

Hengshan Orphanage Logs

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:12:00 +0000

Research-China.Org has obtained all of the Hengshan County orphanage records submitted to the Qidong Court as part of the Hunan scandal trials of February 2006. These records contain information for most of the children that entered the Hengshan orphanage in 2005.

If your child was brought to the Hengshan County orphanage in 2005, there is a very good chance we have records relating to her. Please contact us for more information.

Bringing the Hunan Scandal Into Focus

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Tue, 29 May 2012 12:04:00 +0000

Just up on our Subscription Blog:

Imagine being able to sit down with the Duan family as an adoptive parent of a child from Hunan Province. What questions would you ask? What answers would you seek?

Last month we sat down with the Duan parents and the recently released from prison daughter, and asked them pointed questions about how they came to be involved in trafficking, where the more than 1,000 kids came from, which orphanages outside the original six were involved, how they moved the kids, and many other questions. The answers bring much more clarity to the scandal, and show how widespread that event was, involving orphanages in Chongqing, Sichuan, Guangxi, Guangdong and other areas in Hunan Province. By the end of the interview, both the interviewee and the interviewer were in tears as the personal cost of the events were relived.

Subscribing is quick and easy, and the information is guaranteed to enlighten!

http://www.research-china.org/blogs/index.htm

The Dark Side of China's "Aging Out Orphan" Program

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:01:00 +0000

4/24/12 Update: The past three weeks have apparently seen a lot of activity at WACAP, with several key staff members rumored to have left the agency. Additionally, families have come forward reporting similar experiences with other orphanages, including one assistant orphanage director of a large Jiangxi orphanage who allegedly laundered his own daughter for international adoption. The U.S. State Department is rumored to be looking into the allegations presented in this article, although I have no first-hand confirmation of that.

4/4/12 Update: One of the families profiled in this article has decided to lend her own voice to the story. "Debbie" writes an immensely popular blog here, and posted about her story this morning.

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I didn't want to post this article publicly. I have been pretty much in a "zen" place, posting the in-depth articles about China's international adoption program to my subscription blog. I have known about the issues discussed in this article for a while, but felt that families wanting to know more could subscribe to our blog. This kept the "blow back" from waiting families and others at a minimum, since subscription blog readers are composed of families who have deep experience in China's program, and could accept the stories and discoveries without too much emotional anxiety.

After it was posted to our subscription blog, other families stepped forward, and the gravity of the situation became obvious, and too important to remain "hidden" from other adoptive families. So, after much consideration, I felt that waiting families and those who have already brought home one of these children needed to know the potential problems that exist in their adoptions.

The sad reality is that as the number of healthy, young children coming into China's orphanages has declined, waiting families have often migrated to China's Special Needs and Special Focus program. Orphanages have responded to this increased interest by inventing creative means for obtaining children to satisfy this new demand. The following article focuses on one well-known orphanage, but evidence shows that this program is wide-spread (see related links at the conclusion of this article).

I contacted WACAP for their input, and they responded with a lengthy response, insisting that I correct my "misunderstandings". I informed them that while I appreciated their perspective, the information in the following article originated from first-hand accounts of adoptive families and others. I did tell WACAP that I would be happy to post their comment at the end of the article, but they declined my offer. I personally have no ax to grind with WACAP, and appreciate the difficult position they find themselves in when dealing with China. They are used in this article merely as the unfortunate example to illustrate an extensive and deep-rooted problem; certainly other agencies are equally involved.

I have long ago given up on the hope that China's program will change, its abuses end. Therefore, this article is simply a "red flag" to prospective adoptive families to learn from the sad experience of these families, and a host of others, to be aware of potential deceptions and abuses. For families that have already adopted an "aging out" child (Although this article focuses on adoptees older than ten years old, the problem encompasses children of all ages), be alert to red flags in your own relationships and conversations with your adopted child. This article will hopefully shed a bright light on these deceptions, and protect future birth parents, adoptees, and adoptive families from entering agreements blindly.

If you have a similar story to those recounted below, please feel free to leave a comment, or contact me at BrianStuy@Research-China.Org. Your privacy will be completely protected.

Brian H. Stuy

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Luoyang City Orphanage, Henan Province

The Dark Side of China's "Aging Out" Program

In the Fall of 2008, WACAP adoption agency began to send e-mails out to many adoption groups pleading for a new group of older orphans who needed families. "They are all listed as healthy," the broadcast e-mail read, "They are in danger of turning 14 and 'ageing (sic) out.' This means they may have no support or resources and have to live on their own in China - if they are not adopted before they turn 14." This particular group would become known as the first "Journey of Hope" program through WACAP, one of the largest China adoption programs in the U.S. Emails went out and word spread through the Yahoo groups discussing WACAPs new program, which included the Luoyang orphanage adoption group, where adoptive families were advocating for children "soon to be aging out" of that orphanage, which comprised the majority of the children on WACAP's list. One Luoyang adoptive parent wrote of "a program that was to get older kids adopted. Perhaps there is a new effort to get the older kids paperwork ready and have files in at CCAA. Maybe, they are being added to CCAA's new 'shared' list. Thirty or so agencies are now being 'tested' with the new 'shared' list of older or sn kids."

Observers of China's international adoption program have observed that the program has "morphed" over the years, with particularly sharp changes occurring after the Hunan scandal of 2005. Not only did the number of children coming into China's orphanages experience a sharp decline following December 2005, but the composition of those foundlings also changed. Whereas historically more than 95% of foundlings had been extremely young healthy females, following the scandal the percentage of male and SN foundlings began to sharply climb. Today, around a third of all Chinese adoptions are male, and over half are Special Needs. To take an illustrative example, between 2000 and 2011, Guangdong Province submitted 2,343 boys for adoption out of a total of 23,032 children, or roughly 10% boys. However, that average masks a substantial shift that occurred after 2005. In the six years between 2000 and 2005, Guangdong Province orphanages submitted 14,266 children for adoption, of which 488 were boys (3.4%). In the six years between 2006 and 2011, Guangdong orphanages submitted 8,766 files for adoption, of which 1,855 were for boys (21%). The situation is similar when it comes to special needs submissions: Between 2000 and 2005, 218 SN children were submitted by the Guangdong orphanages, representing 1.5% of all adoptions from that Province. That number increased to 822 between 2006 and 2011, raising the average to 9.4%. A majority (78%) of these children were found after 2005.

This kind of demographic shift is typical, if not more pronounced, in the other Provinces as well.

With that shift has come an increase in awareness of "Special focus" children, including those in danger of "aging out". Attentive observers rightfully wonder where these children came from, and why the sudden apparent shift in cultural norms that have resulted in such a dramatic increase in male children being made available for adoption.

There was an overwhelming response from the adoption community to WACAP's publicity of their "Journey of Hope" children, and the majority of the children were soon matched, but not all. More than a year passed and there were still children waiting from the program. Some of the children had been moved to the shared list and other Luoyang children were beginning to show up on individual lists. Some children had already been home for a year. The children left behind were communicating with those who had already found families, questioning when they too might have a family. The pleas of one particular child, "Jonathan", pulled on the heartstrings of "Sue" (not her real name) as he continued to wait. Jonathan was telling his friends who were already in America that if he did not have a family soon, the orphanage would kick him out. "Someone help me get adopted," he pleaded to his friends. Word spread and Sue wondered what would happen to him, so she called WACAP and inquired if she could actually bring him home.

In 2010, Sue and her family would travel to Luoyang and formally adopted Jonathan into their family.

The next few months went well, and although there were language barriers and other communication issues, Sue felt that things were progressing as well as expected. But one thing bothered Sue: Her thirteen year-old son had a developed physique, and was sprouting a mustache.

Sue began to ask her son if he was really thirteen, and he assured her that he was. "Are you sure you are thirteen?" she pushed. As he had an upcoming birthday, she wanted to make sure that the celebration was purposeful. But Jonathan exhibited no excitement about the celebration, and in fact acted like the whole episode embarrassed him. Sue found this puzzling. "Perhaps he has never had a birthday celebration," she wondered, "the poor boy." Again she asked him about his age. "Can you at least give me what Chinese sign you were born under?" she pleaded. One afternoon, after pushing him yet again to give her some clue as to when he was actually born, he responded, "China told me never to tell. China said I could never tell my real birthday."

Sue was stunned. "You are our child now, they can't do anything to you." Her son understood, but was still terrified to say anything. "No, I can't tell, I can't tell, China said to never tell." No matter how hard Sue pushed, Jonathan would not relent.

A few weeks later, Jonathan initiated the conversation. "Can China get me in trouble?" he asked. No, was Sue's answer, you are safe from China. "OK," Jonathan replied, "then I am 17, not 13."

Sue did not know what to think. She had gone to China to adopt a boy that was ostensibly a young teen, and now she realized that she had adopted a near-adult. Who had known this? Her agency? The orphanage? Jonathan continued: "You know, I am not alone. There are lots and lots of my friends that have the same story." Indeed, witnesses in the orphanage remember Director Pei, when he heard in 2008 that WACAP was coming to start up the "Journey of Hope" program, going out with the orphanage van and coming back a short time later with two teenage kids to put in the program.

Sue went to retrieve Jonathan's paperwork received at his adoption. The paperwork says your birth mother is dead. No, she is alive. It said your grand-father was old and ailing. No, he is not. He is alive and well. And then Sue recalled a conversation at the school conference a few months earlier. Jonathan's teacher mentioned how neat it was that he could still talk to his brother in China. Sue assumed the teacher was confused, as she had no knowledge of a relationship with family members, especially a brother. Surely the teacher misunderstood. Sue was wrong.

It was in that moment that Jonathan decided to open up and tell his story. "My birth family visited me while I was in the orphanage. I have a photo we took as a family a week before you came to adopt me." Jonathan retrieved the secret photo and showed it to Sue. She observed how fit and happy the family looked, not at all like the "old and ailing" grandparents she had read about in Jonathan's pre-adoption descriptions. Jonathan explained that his birth family was against the idea of Jonathan going to the U.S., out of fear they would never see him again. Jonathan, however, was excited. This was his chance to become rich and famous.

But if Jonathan's birth family was against him being adopted, how did he end up in the orphanage?

This question was posed to Jonathan's birth grandfather, who was the individual that had relinquished Jonathan to the orphanage. When asked why he had turned his grandson to the orphanage, he recounted how one day he and his wife were approached by Luoning County Civil Affairs officials. They started the conversation by observing that if he and his wife were having any troubles raising their grandson, that the officials could help arrange for their grandson to be taken to the orphanage, and the orphanage would help raise him. "If your grandson goes into the orphanage," they were promised, "he will get a good education and get a good job." Jonathan would later tell us that it wasn't until 2009, just before he was adopted to the United States, that his grandparents learned that he would be leaving Luoyang. At no point during the "pitch" did the Civil Affairs officials notify him or his grandparents that he would be leaving China, and when his birth family learned of that fact two years later, they were extremely worried and upset.

"Do you believe he really will come back one day and take care of you?" we asked the sixty-five year old spry and energetic grandfather. "Yes," was his reply.

Jonathan's story is consistent with others from Luoyang. "Kate" adopted her daughter from Luoyang in 2010, along with a deaf child from the Beijing orphanage. Kate's Luoyang daughter also opened up and revealed that her birth family had also been approached by officials who discussed relinquishing her. Two days before Kate finalized the adoption, and when Kate was already in the Province to finalize her adoption, the Luoyang orphanage still did not have the relinquishment paperwork signed by the birth family. To increase the pressure on the grandmother to sign the required paperwork, the orphanage took Kate's daughter on a two-hour drive to her grandmother's house. The orphanage needed the grandmother to sign papers relinquishing her grand-daughter so that the adoption could be finalized. With Kate in the area, time was running out.

This trip re-traumatized Kate's daughter, forcing her to experience the pain of losing her birth family all over again. Kate's daughter was fairly sure her Grandmother did not want her to be adopted and taken away.

As Kate's Luoyang daughter told her the story, Kate felt a familiar sense of outrage, for her Beijing daughter had also told her that she had been brought to that orphanage as a six-year old under similar pretenses. Kate's Beijing daughter was sent to a Beijing school for the deaf, which she attended during the week. Since there were no classes held on the weekend, Kate's daughter stayed in the Beijing #2 orphanage on the weekend. Kate's daughter recounted how her parents would frequently visit her, bringing her treats as she went to school in the Beijing school. She would return home for Chinese New Years, but otherwise remained at the orphanage for most of the year. She had lived two hours outside Beijing, in a rural farming community. One day, without any warning or preparation, Kate's Beijing daughter was adopted by Kate, leaving her family to wonder what ever happened to their daughter. The Beijing #2 orphanage apparently also raised Kate's daughter's age from eleven to nearly fourteen in order to take advantage of the speed with which "aging out" children are adopted by Western families.

WACAP has frequently told adoptive families concerned with hearing such stories from their children that kids often fantasize about their birth families, supposedly unable to understand why they were "abandoned". But Luoyang's recruitment program was witnessed first-hand by Michael Melsi, a twenty-something American who started volunteering in the Luoyang orphanage in 2006 as an English language instructor. Michael spent most of his time in the Luoyang orphanage on the fourth and six floors of the orphanage, among the teenagers in Luoyang's "Special Focus" program. There, he befriended most of the children waiting to be adopted from the waiting child lists of WACAP, CCAI, and other agencies.

At the beginning of his time in Luoyang, Michael observed that “it was pretty apparent that the kids had some kind of distant relatives that were involved in their lives to some degree, never in a million years at that time would I have thought that they actually had parents or close relatives. But it was clear that even though they were in an orphanage, they were from a community where they still had ties.”

That point was driven home during Spring Festival 2009. Michael assumed this would be a sad time for the kids in the orphanage, so he arranged to bring the kids some treats and activities to help celebrate the Chinese “Christmas”. When he arrived at the orphanage, he found that very few of the older kids (older than 6) were there. Michael wondered where they all had gone, and asked the orphanage staff where the kids had disappeared to. At first he was told the children had been sent to spend the festival with area families, who had volunteered to help give the kids a bit of “normal lives”. That did not sound right to Michael, so he pushed further, and was eventually told that the kids had gone home to their extended birth families (aunts, uncles, grandparents) to spend the holidays with them.

When WACAP formed the “Journey of Hope” program in 2008, Michael noticed that some of the older kids were being sent out of the orphanage and disappearing. When he asked the orphanage staff and other children about this, he was told that those kids had “selfish relatives” who were refusing to allow the adoption of their kids who they were unwilling to care for. Thus, the kids were being forced to leave the orphanage. Michael researched where some of his “kids” had ended up, and found that they had returned to their birth families. It soon became apparent in several cases that women who were initially said to be "aunts" were actually the children's birth mothers. When Michael asked the birth families why their kids had ended up in the Luoyang orphanage, they reluctantly told him that they had understood that the orphanage would provide for the expenses of raising their children. Furthermore, the birth parents felt it would offer their children the opportunity to get a better education and live in the city, which they believed would provide the children with a better life in the future. When the orphanage began to pressure them to sign documents relinquishing parental rights to their own children, they had refused.

Michael became increasingly concerned with what he was seeing in the Luoyang orphanage, and contacted several adoptive families to inform them of the situation. He also decided to contact WACAP directly, and outlined many of his findings and concerns. Within two days, Michael was contacted by the orphanage and informed that he would not be permitted to return to the orphanage, with officials citing concerns that he was a carrier of swine flu.

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Director Pei, the Luoyang orphanage director, presented WACAP with a plan that he was formulating. Although no longer the orphanage director (the orphanage saw a change of directors in 2010), nevertheless in late 2011 Pei contacted WACAP and informed them that he was interested in guiding a group of relatives of children adopted through WACAP's "Journey of Hope" program to the United States.

WACAP has had a long history with the Luoyang orphanage, going back to the early 1990s when the agencies head, Janice Neilson, formed a mutually beneficial relationship with the orphanage director, Pei Zhong Hai. Over the course of the next seventeen years, WACAP arranged funding for the Luoyang orphanage, and Pei provided children for adoption.

So it was that WACAP contacted "Debbie", the adoptive mother of one of the "Journey of Hope" girls, and asked if they would be agreeable to a visit by their daughter's biological Uncle in their home. Of course this came as a huge shock to Debbie and her husband, who could not understand how the people described in their daughter's adoption paperwork as being too poor to care for their daughter were now suddenly able to afford to fly to the U.S. and tour around with their daughter's orphanage director. They were angry, confused and very frustrated as the realization came to them that they had been deceived by the orphanage to begin with. They informed WACAP that they felt very uncomfortable with the situation, and WACAP informed Director Pei that Debbie and the other families were not welcoming of his proposal.

Debbie realizes now that she should have noticed the red-flags surrounding the "aging out" kids earlier, but chose to ignore what she described as disquieting clues. "All the them had the same stories," she remembers. And indeed, a perusal of WACAP's 2009 "Journey of Hope" listing bears this out: "WCL, Contest winner and artist. Healthy 12 year old boy. . . .He has been at the orphanage for over three years. He remembers nothing about his birth parents or where he lived before the orphanage." "XL. Violinist. Healthy 12 year old girl. . . . She has no memory of her birth family." "HL. Athlete. Healthy 12 year-old boy. . . When asked about his memories before he arrived at the orphanage he said he has no memories before that time." "GBL, Basketball player and jogger. Healthy 12 year old girl. . . . She has no memory of her birth family. "YHL, Performer, Healthy 12 year-old girl. . . . When asked about her birth parents, she said she does not remember anything."

When asked about these children, Jonathan admits that he is aware of several who know full well who their birth families are, and some of them were among the kids admonishing him to remain quiet. He recounts how in March 2007, the orphanage sent the van to pick him and the other children recruited by the Luoning County Civil Affairs Bureau up. On the day of the "pick up", all of the families were notified to bring their kids to the county Civil Affairs Bureau, where the the orphanage van waited. On the morning Jonathan was picked up, he was accompanied by ten or eleven other children, ranging in ages from a few months to over seventeen years old, mostly boys. All were allowed to say goodbye to their birth families before being loaded into the orphanage van and taken away to what most, if not all, felt was an orphanage education school.

In January 2011, the CCAA commended the Luoyang orphanage, describing them as a "Model Welfare Institute for International adoption in 2010", the year that Jonathan and his friends were adopted abroad. The Luoyang orphanage director boasted that "There is no trifling with international adoptions. The leaders of the Civil Affairs Bureau and the officers of our orphanage have attached great importance to the working of international adoption, from the preparation of the finding ads to the adoption paper work, to when the kids are sent into the arms of adoptive families, including the adoptive families returning back to visit the orphanage. All of these works were overseen by the director, with very carefully attention, and well done by following the rules step by step. This ensures that there was no mistake of any of those kids sent for international adoption. It also brought a new world for the growth of those kids."

Sue and the other families would disagree. While some of the families have been informed by their adoptive children of the truth behind their adoptions, many of the other children still urge Jonathan to remain quiet. "Don't tell! We were told we can never tell." Thus, there is little doubt that many families of Luoyang's "orphans" don't realize that their child, along with their birth family, really expect that this is simply a "study abroad" program. Already, stories of adoption disruptions and turmoil are being recounted as the children grow frustrated that they are not being given the material gifts that they had been promised. Unfortunately, Luoyang's program is in no way unique, as many orphanages across China have seen similar spikes in "aging out" children needing to be adopted.

The issues go beyond simply raising a child under false pretenses. Once an adoption, even one performed under false premises, is completed, the child becomes a legal beneficiary of the adoptive parents estate, for example. Then there are the issues surrounding the true nature of the relationship between these children and their adoptive families. As Sue recounted, she could see the stress of lying on her son's face as he repeatedly covered up the truth from her probing questions. One day, he just got tired of lying.

Sue articulates a cautionary note to families assuming that these "aging out" and other tales of woe are accurate:

“People who adopt these aging out kids need to go into this knowing full well that it is very possible that this child is significantly older, already aged out, it is very possible that their birth dates were changed, it is very possible that they have birth family still there and that there is more to the story. It is not just the cut-and-dry ‘this orphan needs a home.’ You need to be sensitive to the question of whether an industry is being created by these aging out kids that you are feeding into when really they don’t need to be coming here.”

Related articles:"Promises, Promises!"
"China's New 'Orphan Program'" (Subscription blog article)

Review of Jim Garrow's "The Pink Pagoda"

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 15:28:00 +0000

I first became aware of Jim Garrow's story in March 2008, after an article was published in a Canadian magazine giving the basic elements of his story. In June 2008, I decided to speak to the man personally and called him at his home in Ontario and asked him to go into the details of his work in more depth. My intent was to publish the interviews in June 2008, but I was asked to hold off, because there was a Canadian investigation into Garrow's claims of infant smuggling, and did not wish him to become cautious. I finally decided to post the interviews to my blog after the GuelphMercury article was published in August 2010 confirming the investigation. One can listen to our Garrow interviews here.

One is struck upon opening Jim Garrow's new book, "The Pink Pagoda", by the statements of support found in the first section of the book, entitled "Endorsements". These written statements of support for Jim and his work come from such people as "Dr. Parry, Assistant to the CEO for the International Internet Alliance", a person and organization on whom I could find no information; Ross McKitrick, an outspoken critic of Global Warming; Robin W. Pifer, a Pastor of the Cedar Alliance Church; Walter Baker, executive director of the Fairhaven Bible Conference; William D. Gairdner, a former Olympic athlete and author of such books as "The Trouble with Canada," and "The War Against the Family"; a mysterious and unidentifiable "Dr. A.B.", allegedly of the Unesco-World Health Organization; Dr. Jim Garlow, a pastor and adoptive parent; and Jerome Corsi, author of "Where's the Birth Certificate?", about . . . well you know what that is about.

All of Garrow's "Endorsement" authors are qualified by Garrow as "best-selling", "world-renowned", etc. I will let the reader use Google to determine the accuracy of Garrow's claims about these individuals. Garrow's book is published by WND Books, described by an editorial in the UK's Guardian as ""a niche producer of rightwing conspiracy theories, religious books and 'family values' tracts." WND Books describes itself as “'fiercely independent', telling the stories that other publishers won’t." The point is that the reader should get an idea of the religious and political circles Jim Garrow associates with -- the birds of a feather thing -- which may prove useful as one begins reading his book.

Jim introduces us to his story by describing his great success in all things financial, and how this success brought him to China. The book, he writes, is the story of how he came to save over 40,000 babies between 2000 and 2012. When I interviewed him in 2008, Garrow claimed to have saved 24,000. By 2009 it had apparently risen to 31,000 (p. 149), 2010 the number had climbed to 34,000 and now, in 2012, it stands at 40,000 (Pink Pagoda "Introduction"). In his introduction he also admits that many might call him a "human trafficker", an accusation he freely and enthusiastically embraces.

Thus begins the exciting story of Jim Garrow's start and work in baby trafficking inside China. In the first chapter, he describes saving the baby niece of his Chinese employee, "Xinyi", whose husband wanted to "put aside" the child because she was a girl. Jim sets the stage for the conflict that will run through the entire book -- the family was forced to take these actions because of Chinese laws -- evil laws -- which practically forced a family to have a boy. "As Chinese law dictates, only a male heir can inherit family property and also provide for the parents' elder years." One is left to question why the upper-middle class birth family of this child would worry about these issues, given their employment at a large U.S. firm and their patently upscale urban lifestyle. It would also belabor the point to discuss whether this assessment of Chinese law is even accurate, but Jim uses this statement to set the stage for why China had "become a nation awash in grief over having to make such unthinkable choices." Jim contrasts this evil with the work that he feels called to do, which he explains using Bible scripture uttered by Jesus himself.

Jim goes on to recount how he met with the father of the unwanted baby, who had a plan to bring the baby to the area Buddhist monks who were willing to dispatch the child for him. They were willing to do this, it was explained to the incredulous Garrow, because the monks believed in reincarnation and thus believed the child would have a better life in the next cycle.

The only solution the father would accept was for the child to find a new home outside China, a promise Jim made without knowing how he would fulfill it. As I read this event that set Garrow on his mission, I found myself wondering if any stereotype of Chinese society had not been employed: the powerful husband and the submissive wife; the low societal and religious value placed on a girl's life; the smells and noises in the couple's apartment, the endless fear that neighbors would hear the conversation and report them to the authorities. I of course can't say that what Jim describes is impossible, but I can just say that my experience in observing my wife's urban family and thousands of couples through my own travels in China gives me the feeling that I am watching a "predictable" movie. Having located and interviewed many birth families of unregistered children, I have found the neighbors aware and accepting of the situation, even protective. I have found wives of urban couples to be assertive and active participants in matters of family business. I read Jim's account, and while possibly true, I find the lens through which he sees the event as Western, simplified, and largely unfamiliar.

I got the same feeling while reading Jim's account of how he found a home for the unwanted baby. He met an American expat living in China whose wife lived in the United States. The man explained that they wanted to adopt, but that it seemed to take a long time to do the paperwork, etc. Jim told him he could adopt right away. Now, I'm sure that most readers familiar with the adoption might at this point be wondering how in the world this adoption could be completed. I will let Jim describe the process:

At this point, there were no documents to accompany the baby and her new parents back to the United States. Those I would discover in one of the best libraries in the world for doing such research—the local beer house, where expats hang out. It was in one of those pubs that I met my “librarians,” who even went so far as to share copies of the documents from their own Chinese adoption process. Paperwork aside, I also learned valuable information about the entire process and what pitfalls to hopefully avoid. I had moved at God’s bidding into the adoption business, and I planned to run that business as efficiently as I did my schools. God bless the fool with a big heart. (pp. 11-12)

No mention of the need for an I-600 (Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative); no consulate interview; it seems that all Jim had to do was produce some forged adoption documents and the U.S. government would issue the infant a visa. The reader can decide how authentic Jim's account feels.

Jim also spends a lot of time reminding his readers of his stature, both financial and otherwise, in China. He writes about his fancy car, his lush apartment, his ability to lavish financial gifts on those around him. Two examples will serve to illustrate, but such examples could be multiplied many, many times. In chapter 5 ("Walkabout") Jim recounts how he left his protective hotel to take a walk in the "other China". He abandoned his "car and driver" to walk around Chongqing's poorer neighborhoods. He gets lost, asks some kids where the nearest McDonalds was, and was escorted by fifteen street children there. Jim then describes his arrival at the eatery:

The white-gloved gatekeeper greeted us at the door, and as she stared suspiciously at the boisterous group of children surrounding me, she asked in perfect English,
“How can I help you?”
I responded with the universal language: money. In China the currency is called renminbi. The slang expression is kwai. Think dollars and bucks. I handed her the equivalent of $140.00 to cover the cost of whatever the children wanted to eat. That $140.00 was equivalent to one month’s salary for the manager, and she knew that she could expect a very large tip for putting up with this ragtag group.

Another example of Jim's larges is recounted in chapter 7 ("The Pink Pagoda is Born"), where Jim describes what allowed him to be successful (and protected) inside China:

Back in China, I cut a major figure with my posh penthouse, Mercedes sedan, chauffeur, and money that I could spend as I chose. That ability to spend and transfer money was tied to my special red-and-gold foreign experts license, a document rarely accorded someone who wasn’t Chinese. Not only does that gold-embossed “passport” allow one to move money about without restrictions; it also protects the bearer from any kind of harassment at airports and the like. That document was always tucked into one of the pockets in my signature Tilley vest; that is still true here in Canada. I never leave home without it. One might be curious how I managed to get such a document. Think back to 2000, and that special student in my class at Shaw College in Canada. That special student is the one who invited me to come to China the first time, and who introduced me to the inner circles of connected, powerful people, including her uncle, Hu Jintao. No more needs to be said. (p.37)

Jim also recounts in nearly every chapter how much respect and reverence he experienced from the Chinese people themselves. When a stranger mysteriously shows up in a Chongqing coffee house, he inexplicably says that Jim would make Dr. Bethune proud. Jim continues:

Yoda’s reference to Dr. Bethune was not the first time I had heard that comparison. Since my first trip to China, people had told me outright that they believed I was the reincarnation of the revered doctor who revolutionized medical procedures during the Second Sino-Japanese War. For Americans who might not recognize his name, the term MASH is certainly a famous acronym, and it was Dr. Bethune, a Canadian by birth, who developed the mobile medical units that were precursors of the MASH (mobile army surgical hospital) units instituted in 1945, after his death. Bethune’s mobile units, along with the MASH units that followed, were responsible for saving so many lives during the wars of his century, worldwide. The Bethune Institute was and is a paean to his legacy, which in some nearly inexplicable way, I have inherited. Using his name wasn’t so much a strategic move on my part as it was a dynamic, spiritual one. (p.53)

Earlier, Jim recounts this statement by one of his employees: “I personally believe that Dr. Jim is the reincarnation of a saint, maybe Dr. Bethune, and I’m not alone in that belief. The Chinese people who come in contact with him believe that too. Even people who haven’t met him but who have heard about him speak his name with genuine reverence.” (p. 29) It should be noted that Jim Garrow is not a "Dr." in any real sense, but the recipient of an honorary degree from a religious college. He received that degree in 2008, long after the events recounted here, so this statement by his employee contains an anachronistic problem.

This idea constitutes the second over-arching motif one sees in the the book: First, that Jim makes, and always has made, large amounts of money, and dispenses it like water. Second, that he is comparable to the spiritual giants -- New Testament passages can be applied to him, others recognize his spiritual greatness as he walks down the street. The couple that adopted Jim's first rescue, for example, observed: "But clearly, and I saw that for myself in China, everybody seemed to know who you were. Even walking down the street, Chinese people, even monks, just looked at you, and tried not to crowd you. I don’t know exactly what that was all about, but you definitely had presence and respect."

By chapter 13 ("The Great Wailing Wall") the feeling that I was reading a work of fiction became overpowering. The accumulation of the bravado, the implausible episodes of meeting "Yoda", who would literally appear and disappear at will, and who was supposed to be a member of China's "KGB", left me believing that Jim was weaving a fantasy tale that incorporated every Western impression of China and her people. Too much of what I read contradicted what I had myself experienced on my trips to China. But, I kept thinking, "Perhaps I don't walk in the same circles as Jim. Perhaps what he describes could have happened." That possibility was shattered in chapter 13 of Jim's book, "The Great Wailing Wall".

Jim starts this chapter with "Yoda", his secret Chinese army intelligence benefactor, telling Jim he had arranged a trip for him to learn an important lesson. "Dr. Garrow," explained Yoda's two associates, "we are going to show you something which may shock you, but it will give you an understanding of what we Chinese think and where we come from.” Jim goes on to matter-of-factually state that "We headed for Yunnan province, about two hours from the city of Kunming." Jim presents this as a "day trip", which struck me as odd given that Kunming is over a thousand kilometers from Chongqing. Distance aside, Jim recounts how he was brought to a Buddhist temple outside Kunming, and given over to two monks who escorted Jim on a walk.

More stairs, but this time leading down toward a small valley. These stairs were made of wood, and not nearly so wide as their marble counterparts.

More stairs to the right, then to the left; then we reached a steep, rough terrain, which we proceeded to climb. At the top, I was looking across a valley about five hundred yards wide. It wasn’t a deep valley, and I could see across to a meandering wall that looked something like a miniature version of the Great Wall.

I felt sure that this part of the temple grounds was not part of the usual tour, and I could not imagine why I was being brought here.

At this point, the monks motioned me to move ahead on my own, so I walked toward the wall. From a distance, I thought I was looking at bundles of wood stacked neatly up to the point of a narrow pagoda-style roof, presumably to keep the wood safe from rain. Overall, I took the wall to be about one hundred feet long and about five feet high. As I got closer still, it looked as though the bundles had been wrapped in very elaborately embroidered brocade, mostly red backgrounds with brightly colored embellishments. The bundles at the top were still vividly colored, but as my eyes moved toward the bottom of the wall, the bundles were more faded and tattered.

I was now directly in front of the wall, and close enough to touch the packages if I wanted to. I didn’t; I couldn’t.

My arms hung limply at my sides, and it felt as if all the air in my lungs had been sucked out of me. I don’t remember for certain if I said anything. If I did, it would have been, “Oh, my God.”

Jim discloses that he was looking at a wall comprised of hundreds upon hundreds of infant bodies, all wrapped in Buddhist ceremonial fabrics, stacked one upon another. Again, Garrow provides no clues with which to test the veracity of this statement, and its purpose seems designed to re-enforce the Western view that the Chinese kill their unwanted daughter's wholesale, against all verifiable evidence to the contrary. (For a short overview of different "Blood Libel" accusations in history, read "Fetus Food: Another Urban Legend Busted", eSkeptic, March 21, 2012).

Adoptive families from China will no doubt be interested in knowing what his book says about his work to bring unwanted babies into China's orphanages in order for them to be adopted internationally. While he is quite outspoken in private conversations and correspondence about the destination of most of the children he has supposedly rescued, the book is almost completely silent about his interactions with China's orphanages. He does recount one story involving Yoda, his protective intelligence officer, and an orphanage in Chongqing Municipality. Yoda learned that this unnamed orphanage had been accepting infant girls, only to turn around and sell them to sex traders, who would apparently raise the children for 15 years before using them in the sex trade. One can of course question the financial and logistical logic behind such scheme, but what is interesting to read in Jim's book is how Yoda handled it (remembering that Yoda is all powerful):

"Of course, I heard about it later; and once again, I did not ask for particulars. In one day, the entire orphanage was closed, and all of its people gone. When I say gone, I mean they permanently disappeared. An angry Yoda was like the sword of the Lord, smiting all who were sinners. These people were the worst of sinners, and no one, including me, ever asked what happened to them. The babies and children were saved. That was the only justice to focus on." (p. 82)

Another episode ends similarly, when one of Garrow's infants is kidnapped (I am not making this up) by Chinese gangs. Three days later, Yoda, using his extensive network of the Chinese underworld, retrieves the child.

"First, [Yoda] brought in the proverbial big guns to squelch any grumblings in the town. Along with the big guns came lots of cash to everyone who might pose a problem, including the parents, both adoptive and birth. Then Yoda put out the word through everyone who at any level had any dealings with our operation. “If you ever do such a thing again, if you steal one of our children or cause the death of anyone in our organization, you will be dead. Not just you, but everyone in your family and everyone you know.” Those were not idle words. And to our staff: “If they use a knife on you, use a gun on them. If they use a gun . . .” And the escalation would have no limits. Nor did Yoda’s controlled and focused rage have any limits. Various newspapers picked up the story, and certainly helped to spread Yoda’s “good word.” (p. 110-111)

As I stated, Garrow mentions no particulars about this orphanage, or any of his other stories. But being familiar with all of the orphanages in Chongqing, I can attest that none of them have "disappeared". Orphanages have closed, but we are still in contact with the directors and other employees.

Garrow does recount a few adoptions into the U.S. (but not Canada), but even these experiences lack the "ring of truth" for those who have personally walked through the paperwork and logistical maze of U.S. Immigration procedures. As I pointed out above, Garrow seems to maintain that all one needs to do to obtain a Chinese infant is to procure some forged adoption documents and show up at the U.S. border with child in hand. He seems ignorant of, or completely ignores, the pre-adoption approvals required (I-600, CCAA approvals, etc.) to obtain an entry visa for the child to enter the U.S.

What struck me as odd, however, was the nearly complete absence of any mention of Jim working with any of China's orphanages. In fact, a reader of "The Pink Pagoda" would finish with the impression that nearly all of the unwanted children had been adopted inside China. This impression runs completely contrary to what Jim told me and others in his interviews, in which he proudly boasted of working with four internationally adopting orphanages in Chongqing, from which he claimed that 80% of the children adopted came as a result of his work, and with hundreds of other such orphanages across China. His website continues to encourage U.S. adoptive families to "ascertain if we have been part of the process of saving your babies in China." Although in his book he claims that his first "save" was in 2000 (which he also confirmed in other interviews, including mine), he recently responded to a family with children adopted in the late 1990s from Anhui and Jiangxi Provinces thusly: "To be quite frank our work encompassed so many of the children rescued in the late 90's and up until recent days that there is a real possibility that your daughters were handled by our folks." He continued to contradict previous interviews and his own book by stating: "We never placed any children in orphanages after 2000. All the babies from then on with only a few exceptions were adopted internally by barren Chinese couples." It seems that Jim's story constantly changes depending on whom he is addressing.

The overall issue with Jim's book is that he provides no specific names, places, or events with which to confirm his story, from the "Xinyi" episode at the start, to his nomination for a Noble Peace Prize in 2009 at the end. In that episode an anonymous Chinese official asks Jim for permission to nominate him for the Peace Prize. There is no name of this official to research. Garrow goes on to say he was beaten for the Prize by President Obama, a man Garrow openly despises, and goes so far as to publish his letter of congratulations to the President. Readers familiar with the nomination process will realize that thousands of members are on the nomination committee, and the winner is nominated by literally thousands of those members. Nominees are not made known for 50 years, so we can't even determine if his nomination occurred. However, one can see that even if Garrow's nomination by the nameless Chinese official were actual, Garrow would not have received anywhere near the votes to present any competition for President Obama or the other top contenders. Thus, chapter 30 of his book, "The Nobel Peace Prize Scandal", in which he writes President Obama and states "We may have lost the Nobel Peace Prize to you, President Obama, but I believe that there is a higher purpose to every event in our lives" (p.149) is without doubt one of the most brazen and unprovable assertions in the book. And that is saying a lot.

In the end Garrow's story will be like those of other religious "prophets" to whom God has supposedly spoken: Outsiders will be able to point out inconsistencies, attack the veracity of the details, and question the validity of the events recounted. But believers in Jim's story will discount such problems, and insist that since such issues can't be totally disproved, they could be true. Thus, Garrow's story will be viewed as "a story told from a dream" by those who see it skeptically, but as the work of God by those who share Garrow's faith in "saving" children from China.

Research-China.Org's Birth Parent Search Group

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:24:00 +0000

I have received a lot of inquiries over the past week about membership in our recently launched Chinese Birth Parent Search Group. Since most of the e-mails ask the same questions, I thought I would take an opportunity to address some of the most common questions and concerns.

First, the group was started because it was recognized that most of the other birth parent search groups in existence suffered from some serious handicaps. These include an unwarranted fear of legal action should members on a group speak negatively of an adoption agency, researcher, or other entity, resulting in members's inability to openly discuss project results, tactics, and success rates of searchers. This, in my opinion, seriously undermined the value of these groups.

Second, because many adoptive families lack an overall perspective of their child's orphanage program, to say nothing of the China program in general, valuable time is often wasted discussing options for searching that in practice are highly ineffective, and often counter-productive to a successful search. For example, a common "search" technique employed by adoptive families is the placement of posters and other notices around an area. While this idea may sound promising in theory, in practice it often damages the chances for a successful search.

As a result of these problems in other groups, Research-China.Org decided to form an "invitation-only" group of committed adoptive families with the goal of forming an open, non-restricted and informed group of families willing to share successful ideas, and to discuss issues and problems with searching in orphanages across China.

Because we feel this group is for "non-beginners", a requirement to gaining membership in our group is the purchase of our Birth Parent Search Analysis. We instigated this requirement to insure that each member was as educated about the obstacles and opportunities related to their specific child as possible. How can an adoptive family know, for example, if putting up posters would help or hurt their chances of a successful search if they are not fully aware of the situation found in their child's orphanage? To take a well-known example, an adoptive family could commit significant financial resources to searching for a birth family in the Changning, Hengshan or Qidong orphanages in Hunan Province, unaware that over 90% of the children adopted from those orphanages originated in Guangdong Province. Thus, a requirement to join the group is the purchase of our "Birth Parent Search Analysis", in order to insure that every member is "up to speed" on their child's orphanage. This insures that the conversations on the search group are educated and informed.

There are plenty of generic search groups available for adoptive families, and we did not feel the world needed another one. But we felt that a serious search group, comprised of informed and knowledgeable families, would be an asset to the adoption community. Our search group, combined with the information contained in our "Birth Parent Search Analysis", is a powerful tool to educate families on the viability of a successful search, and what steps should be taken to maximize the chances of a successful search.

DNA Technology Improving for Sibling Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:58:00 +0000

Everyone knows the stories of two families searching their child's orphanage adoption group and finding another family's child that bears an uncanny resemblance to their own child. At times, such matches seem possible, with the two children sharing common characteristics such as birth dates and finding locations. Sometimes it borders on the absurd, such as the adoptive mother who thought the child on the Fisher Price Little People Sonya Lee box looked just like her own daughter.

A few years ago I wrote an article on what I felt were significant weaknesses in then-current sibling DNA testing technology, cautioning adoptive families not to put to much faith in their accuracy. The reason was simple: Using only 27 genetic markers, the tests were possibly susceptible to "genetic drift", a problem with small, inbred populations, which many Chinese towns and villages are. Additionally, these tests were often (usually) conducted against databases with few actual native Chinese DNA in them. Rather, they consisted of diaspora Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and other Asian samples. Obtaining a 95% "probability" result simply meant that the two children were more closely matched in DNA than 95% of the database. With a database of millions of DNA samples, 5% of the DNA database's samples would produce a higher "probability". Usually, that margin of error allowed for thousands, or even tens of thousands, of possible matches ("False positives").

I remain of the opinion that many of the most well-known stories of reunited siblings in the Chinese adoption community are more than likely not really siblings at all.

Technology has improved significantly in the intervening six years, and today many DNA labs don't test only 27 markers, or even 1,000 markers, but currently a million markers or more are compared when a DNA test is done. With so many genetic comparisons being done, previous problems of genetic drift and general uncertainty of a sibling match are eliminated. With modern testing, the need for parental DNA to perform sibling matches is no longer needed. When two people's DNA are compared with one million markers, the result is either a positive or negative. The ambiguity is gone.

This is, of course, of significant importance to the adoption community, where parental DNA is usually lacking. With current technology, one can now achieve the level of confidence one could only obtain with parental DNA five years ago. Combined with falling testing costs, and it is now possible for every child from an orphanage to submit DNA and for sibling matches to be made across a wide number of submissions.

One lab that employs this new technology is 23andMe.com, located in Mountain View, CA. For $99 (plus $9 per month for 12 months) 23andMe.com will analyze over one million genetic "genomic variations" on a person's DNA. Of interest to adoptive families, the lab will then cross-analyze the submitted DNA against the DNA from every other person in the company's database, and alert you of any sibling, half-sibling, first cousin or parental matches. They also allow you to be alerted if a match is made in the future. Thus, two DNA samples can be independently submitted by interested adoptive families, and 23andMe will provide information (if both parties agree) that allow matched individuals to share information.

But 23andMe's test goes way beyond DNA matching. As a result of their huge database of DNA samples and the results of studies done on specific genetic markers, 23andMe can provide you with ancestral information on where your child's ancestors originated -- did her ancestors originate in northern China or Southern? Did an ancestor migrate into China from another country? With female children, this information is only available for the maternal lines, but it is nevertheless fascinating reading. Meikina's DNA indicates that some of her ancestors originated outside China, most likely in Vietnam. Meigon's ancestors were the same people that migrated over the land-bridge and settled North America.

Additionally, and perhaps the most important practical information, 23andMe's report will detail possible medical risks that may be found in one's DNA. For example, my daughter Meigon's test indicates she has a lower than average risk of Parkinson's and type 2 diabetes, but a higher risk of high blood pressure. Meilan's DNA suggests she may be at significantly higher risk for breast cancer. These assessments may have important ramifications for Meigon and Meilan's futures.

Families would be well advised to utilize the current technology in the future for any sibling testing, or to confirm previous tests conducted with the old technology. Not only will you be given a definitive answer to your sibling suspicions, but you will be given an amazing array of useful information about your child, some of which may have important implications to their lives.
________________________

After I posted the above article, I contacted 23andMe.com to have them provide a more detailed explanation of their sibling testing. They provided me with the following answer:

We can determine a relationship between two siblings by comparing the amount of DNA that they share. We look for segments of DNA between two people that are identical-by-descent (IBD); the more IBD segments two individuals share, and the longer those segments are, the closer their relationship. Siblings, half-siblings, cousins, parents/children all share a certain range of IBD segments. We can assign a relationship based on the segments.

In plainer English: When the DNA strands of the birth mother and father are separated to produce the eggs and sperm, it does not occur like a zipper, with one gene going on way, and the next one going the other. The egg or sperm contains strands (complete sections) of original DNA. These "gene clusters" are highly unique, and if a gene cluster appears in two individuals, it is strong evidence that the two people are related. If two individuals possess many such gene strands in common, it is definitive proof that they are siblings.

With modern genetic testing such as 23andMe's, population drift and other genetic anomalies are no longer a consideration. This was the main weakness of the 27 allele tests. But current technology is based ONLY on the two DNA samples, and are not compared to DNA databases in order to confirm a relationship.

Why Birth Parent Searches are Often Simple

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:35:00 +0000

Among the many e-groups devoted to China adoption are the newsgroups dedicated to families wanting to search for their child's birth family in China. These groups, whose members number in the hundreds, share ideas and anecdotes about how a successful search should be conducted.

Additionally, there are hundreds of families informally searching. These families don't belong to any formal groups, but seek information from other adoptive parents, agencies, and other respected sources of adoption information. They all share a common goal -- to locate their child's birth family in China.

Unfortunately, for most of them a successful birth parent search will remain an unfulfilled dream.

It is not that birth parent searching is difficult; it is not. In fact, locating birth families is not overly complicated. In our recent research projects in Jiangxi Province, for example, we have located scores of birth families, many without even trying. An adoptive family dedicated to truly learning the truth about their child's origins in China can do so, yet emotional barriers prevent most from really trying.

What are these barriers? For one, there is a common idea among adoptive parents that a birth parent search isn't in their job description, that it is something that is best left to the adopted child. This misguided notion assumes (incorrectly in almost every case) that the information will "keep" -- that success is just as likely in 20 years as it is today. Unfortunately, in China next year is a long time. Ignoring the fact that such basic sources of information such as finders, foster families, orphanage caregivers and directors will almost certainly no longer be available in twenty years (either from moving, dying, or loss of clear memories), waiting such a long time also diminishes the chances of finding hospital and police records, and probably the birth family themselves. It goes without saying that I believe adoptive families are foolish to wait in seeking their child's birth family, since doing so almost always insures that the search will fail down the road (I am focusing on searching; whether to reveal information to an adopted child is a completely different subject, which I addressed in an essay entitled "What to Tell -- And When".

But there is another reason adoptive families don't look -- fear. Last year we announced to the adoptive family groups for the Hunan scandal orphanages that we had obtained the receiving logs for many of the children adopted from those orphanages. The numbers of children listed were in the thousands, yet only a dozen families inquired about their child's record -- most apparently decided that having that information was not important to their child's future. There is no doubt that many adoptive families experience feelings of ambivalence regarding such information -- possessing it requires them to alter the "family story", to acknowledge the impact of trafficking and money on their adoption. Many choose to ignore offerings of such information. I understand that impulse, we are dealing with it in our own family. But our first priority as adoptive parents should be to obtain every shred of information we can about our children. We ignore such information at our own peril.

Searching families ostensibly want to locate their child's birth family, yet most again act in ways that will ultimately prevent them from ever having success in their search. Why? Because even after all of the stories and evidence that has come out of China regarding incentive programs, Family Planning confiscations, etc., many adoptive families still cling to the idea that the information provided by the orphanage is largely true, that the director, finders and others will honestly respond to questions, and that having someone simply ask the "basics" is all that is needed to search. In most cases, such a strategy will doom a search to failure.

To begin a successful search, families must accept and understand that there are two ways that almost all children end up in orphanages: found abandoned and reported, or pulled in through incentive programs (including Family Planning confiscations). An adoptive family must assume that either of those situations played a role in their child's history. Most adoptive families will fail because they don't want to consider that their child ended up in the orphanage through Family Planning activity or due to baby-buying or other incentive programs. Unless you enter the search with your mind receptive to any possibility, you will miss key pieces of information that will lead you to the proverbial dead-end.

A successful search begins by looking at the orphanage's overall adoption patterns. Do findings appear random? Have any significant shifts in patterns occurred? Does the orphanage fit the patterns for other orphanages in the area, or does it exhibit characteristics that set it apart from the other area orphanages (such as a dearth of male findings, or an abundance of infant findings). Our Birth Parent Analysis was specifically designed to provide that information, but another source is fellow adoptive families (who, unfortunately, are almost always uncooperative). Armed with detailed data about the "lay of the land" in a specific orphanage area, a family is ready to formulate a birth parent search strategy.

Most families begin by approaching the orphanage director, asking for information such as a police report, birth notes, etc. Unfortunately, this is usually the last thing a family should do. By alerting the orphanage that you are looking into your child's history, the potential exists that the orphanage will contact key people in your child's history and coach them on how to respond to your questions. Finders will be told to stick to a "boiler plate" storyline: "I was on my way to work, and heard a baby crying, etc., etc." Once the orphanage contacts these key people, your chances of a successful search fade to nothing without your even realizing it. Few will contradict the direct orders of a government official and tell you a story that contradicts what you have been told.

Let me cite a recent example. In researching a child's birth parents recently, we investigated the finding of a child found by a "Ms. Wei" (name changed), who worked for the orphanage. The police report for the child indicated that Ms. Wei reported that she was on her way to the market on the morning the child was found. As she passed the market gate, she heard some crying and glanced over and saw a baby in a box. "What kind of parents would do such an evil thing?" Ms. Wei stated in her police report. She went into great detail about calling the police, and the police confirmed by signature her story. The adoptive family had little reason to doubt the veracity of the events as described by Ms. Wei.

We met Ms. Wei away from the orphanage (something we learned long ago was necessary to getting good information) and asked her about the finding. She recounted in pretty good detail the story as told in the police report, except for one difference: In our interview she said she had been on her way to work, and was passing the market. When pressed, she finally admitted that she had not really found the child, but had been sent to pick her up from an area hospital. Her story (and the police report) had been fabricated out of whole cloth.

A family unaware of the background at this orphanage would have accepted Ms. Wei's story, assumed that a market finding meant that locating the birth family was impossible, and never realized that the birth family was in reality a family friend.

There is little question that if an adoptive family had approached the director and asked to talk to Ms. Wei, that he would have quietly contacted her and told her to stick to the official storyline. An adoptive family, unaware of the finding patterns in their child's orphanage, would have then conducted an interview and received the "corporate line" about the finding. They would have left the city never realizing how close they came to finding the truth.

But performing a successful search required this family to acknowledge and accept the realities of their child's orphanage -- the peculiar gender ratios, the finding location clustering, the improbable finding stories. Our research family was willing to do that; many others aren't. Rather, they will conduct no preliminary research into their child's orphanage, naively ask their child's orphanage director for assistance in locating and interviewing the finder, and innocently go through the steps most birth family search groups advocate. These families will almost always meet with failure.

When we perform our searches, we make one basic assumption that has served us very well -- assume that everyone we speak to has something to hide. In court parlance, we treat everyone as a "hostile witness". This doesn't mean, of course, that we act rude or aggressive with finders, etc. Rather, we probe, repeat questions, and most importantly we ask the "tough questions." I read an account of an adoptive mother a while ago who had interviewed her daughter's finder. She asked about the circumstances of her daughter's finding, and received the common explanation: "I was on my way to work when . . ." She says she studied his face to see if he was being truthful, but felt it rude to probe his story deeper. She left with confirmation of what the orphanage had told her. But her interview probably would have yielded more information if she had been aware that over ten children had been found at the same location, and that the orphanage displayed characteristics consistent with incentive programs. The bottom line is to ask the difficult questions -- "Did you really find this child? Do you have an idea who the birth parents might be? Did you receive money for reporting my child to the orphanage?" Those are the type of questions that bring forth the truth.

There are other important points to consider, including whether to have an area resident do the asking and interviewing, or whether to do so yourself? How does one approach police and hospital officials to get information and records? There are many possible avenues of information, but all must be treated in just the right way to obtain that information. And even doing everything right does not guarantee success.

In our own research, we have discovered that a common tactic used to prevent both birth parents and adoptive families from discovering each other is to alter or switch finding information. For example, the Qichun, Hubei orphanage director admitted to one adoptive parent that “they deliberately fudged the estimated birthdate. This was routinely done, he said, specifically so that a birth family would never be able to corroborate a child's birth date should they comeback in later/months years trying to reclaim a child.” Obviously this tactic cuts both ways -- while preventing a birth family from correctly identifying a relinquished child, it also prevents an adoptive family from having vital information for a birth parent search.

We saw another tactic used in a recent birth parent project in Jiangxi. While we were successful in locating numerous birth parents, many of them were birth parents for children not in our project. This was because the orphanage had switched the police reports and finding data of our project child with another child found around the same time. This shuffling of finding information would create obvious problems for a search.

Not all of the hurdles of a successful search are a result of orphanage action; some involve the finders themselves. While I have found most finders to be cooperative, often they will specifically inform us that they are unwilling to put us in touch with the birth family because of the deception that occurred in obtaining the child. In our recent research in Jiangxi, for example, a quiet dinner with an employee of the orphanage, who was the finder of one of our research subjects, admitted that she lied to the birth family when she promised them that their daughter would be adopted by a local Chinese family and not sent to the orphanage. She stated that this was necessary, because many people believe that internationally adopted children are used for organ donations, and thus don't survive. Thus, even though she knew the birth family, she would not allow us to contact them since they would then know that she had deceived them. A birth father that we located in became ferociously angry when we tracked him down and he learned that his daughter had gone into the orphanage and had not been adopted by a local family as he had been promised. While incentive programs often increase the chances of a successful birth family search, if the birth family was deceived into relinquishing their child to the orphanage, orphanage workers, foster families and other finders will be unwilling to cooperate for fear of reprisal from the birth family.

Searching for birth parents requires that every assumption you have ever made about your child's finding be discarded. It may be that the finding occurred just as you were told. But it is more likely that your child actually was transferred, person to person, into the orphanage, and therefore a trail of custody exists. Discovering that trail requires detective work and good interviewing skills. Not many families do either, and for that reason will never see a reward for the expenditure of the time and money they invested into their search.

Silencing the Voices of Gaoping's Searching Birth Families

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 20:10:00 +0000

Things have not been going well for the families from Gaoping who have been seeking information about their confiscated children. As we reported here, the story of Family Planning confiscations in the Shaoyang orphanage area was known in the West as a result of our initial highlighting of the story in 2006, and a documentary broadcast by Netwerk TV in the Netherlands. But coverage inside China was non-existent until Caixin Magazine published a series of in-depth articles last month.

Although the reporter from Caixin Magazine has sought to make contact with the adoptive families of these children by having contact information forwarded to adoption newsgroups, so far none have come forward. As a result, frustration and anger has grown among the score of birth families, and they decided to file a lawsuit against the Shaoyang orphanage and the area Civil Affairs to obtain an official apology and information as to the destination of their children.

A story out today details the latest twist in the Gaoping saga. On June 21, Yang Li Bing and Zhou Yinghe, the appointed representatives of the Gaoping family group, filed "a petition regarding the case of the missing children in Shaoyang City." Later that same day they were approached by a man who claimed that his child was also confiscated, and who asked if he could join forces with Yang Li Bing's group in seeking redress. This individual, ostensibly named Li Hongfu, asked the two men to remain in Shaoyang while the other birth families from Gaoping returned home. After a dinner, he invited the two men to go with him to a local massage parlor. Shortly after they arrived, police busted the place and made only two arrests: Yang Li Bing and Zhou Yinghe.

An investigation into Li Hongfu's ID card revealed that the identity was manufactured, and that this person didn't really exist.

Yang Li Bing and Zhou Yinghe are both being held for 15 days, during which time it is clear that they will "pressured" to stop making trouble for the orphanage and Family Planning officials. Already government officials have been busy convincing the other families to stop working with Yang Li Bing. Slowly but surely the inevitable pressures put on these families will force them to stop seeking their children, and to disappear like so many previous families have done.

The "Science" of Orphanage Naming

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:05:00 +0000

Most adoptive families invest a significant amount of emotion into their child's Chinese orphanage name. Many use the name as their child's middle name out of a desire to retain a piece of their child's life history. Orphanage names uniquely identify each child, and of interest in this essay are the methods employed by orphanages to create those unique names.

First, a short primer on the names themselves. While many families notice that names often appear the same in the pinyin version, the Chinese characters underlying those names are different. This is due to the fact that many different characters in Chinese can be "translated" into the same pinyin syllable. For example, "Mei" is represented by forty-one different Chinese characters, six of which (梅, 美, 妹, 媚, 玫, 媄) are common characters in female names. Thus, an orphanage could adopt many children with the name "Dang Mei", but in Chinese all the names would be different, represented by different Chinese characters.

First Character
The first character of a child's name in Chinese is designated as the surname. Unlike in Western tradition, in Chinese the "last" name of the child is represented by the first character. Thus, my name in China would be written surname, or family name, first: Stuy Brian Harry.

Although most children adopted from a specific orphanage are all given the same "surname", this is not always the case. In Kunming, Yunnan, for example, the surname is a designation of what area of Kunming the child was found in. Thus, children from Kunming may be surnamed "An" (安) if they were found in Anning City, "Cheng" (呈) if they originated in Chenggong, "Guan" (官) if they came from the Guandu district of Kunming, etc. Although surnaming based on finding location is fairly uncommon among orphanages, we will see that it is more commonly used when designating the second character of the name.

While Kunming is pretty straight-forward in its surnaming, other orphanages are less transparent. Desheng orphanage, Guangxi has employed surnaming in an almost "secret-code" method to designate where the children originated from. Desheng is fairly unique among orphanages in that it adopts children transferred from other orphanages in Guangxi Province, including Guiping, Yulin, Pingnan, Cangwu and others, most of whom are also participants in international adoption (Nanning's "Mother's Love" orphanage also adopts largely transferred children from other Guangxi orphanages). The first batch of children submitted by Desheng in April 2001 (when Desheng began international adoptions) was comprised of children mostly from the Cenxi, Pingnan and Guiping orphanages. But in this early group, the surname given to a child is the only clue that they came from another orphanage. In April 2001, for example, seven "Cen" (岑) girls were submitted by Desheng. Although the surname originates in "Cenxi", the assigned finding location was in Desheng. In the same batch were seven children with "Gong" (龚) (indicating an origin in Pingnan) and "Jin" (金) (indicating an origin in Guiping) surnames, all with finding locations inside Yizhou City. In a few cases, finding ads from the originating orphanage lists another finding location, which was of course not conveyed to the adoptive family. For example, an ad for "Jin Xiao Ling" (name altered) was published by the Guiping orphanage on January 13, 2001 listing this child's finding date as December 1, 2000, birth date of November 29, 2000, and the finding location as the Muwa hospital in Guiping. A finding ad for "Jin Xiao Lin" (name also altered) was published by the Desheng orphanage in April 2001, listing the birth date as December 1, 2000, birthdate as November 29, 2000, and the finding location as "Desheng Northern Temple".

Another girl's finding ad published in the same newspapers give the Guiping information as "Jin Mei Ling, born December 5, 2000, found December 5, 2000 at the Guiping City roundabout" (name altered). The corresponding Desheng ad lists "Jin Mei Lin, born December 5, 2000, found December 5, 2000 at the Latang Forest Farm in Yizhou City" (name also altered).

A third girl's Guiping finding ad details ""Jin Guo Ling, born November 14, 2000, found December 9, 2000 at the Yu River bridge in Guiping." The corresponding Desheng ad lists "Jin Guo Lin, born November 14, 2000, found December 9, 2000 at the Desheng main roundabout" (names altered).

After these two groups of children, surnames became uniform for almost all children submitted by Desheng between June 2001 and December 2004, with "Sheng" (胜) being listed as the surname. However, now the finding locations betray the origin of the children, with children found in Qinzhou, Hechi, Xingye, and Cangwu apparently having their finding locations retained, but with a "Sheng" surname given. This would change again in 2005, when both the surnames and the finding locations of the children sent to Desheng were apparently retained. Also of interest is that the children arrived in batches, with each originating orphanage sending 3-6 children at the same time to Desheng. With a few isolated exceptions, this process is still followed in Desheng.

The deceptive "reassigning" of finding locations in 2001 is of course of concern to adoptive parents, who often have no idea that their child did not originate in Desheng, but actually was transferred from Guiping, Pingnan, Cenxi or another orphanage. Another potential problem arises if both the name and finding location were changed, which would then prevent easy detection of a transfer. Thus, in the case of children adopted from Desheng, the surname choice reflected, at least in the early submissions, the area of Guangxi Province where the children originated.

Other common surname methodologies include having the orphanage surname be a part of the town, district or city name -- "Bao" (宝) = Bao'An, Guangdong; "Chen" (郴) = Chenzhou, Hunan; "Ning"(宁) = Changning, Hunan; "Gao" (高) = Gao'An, Jiangxi. This is the most common surnaming method. Also common is the practice of making the orphanage surname the same as the orphanage director's surname --"Lin" (林) = DianBai, Guangdong; "He" (何) = Sanshui, Guangdong; "Qiu" (邱) = Yangxi, Guangdong; "Zhao" (赵) = Yuanling, Hunan.

Surnames can also be based on some characteristic of the area, as in Huazhou's use of the surname "Ji" (吉), which originates from the Cantonese "Jihong", a popular medicinal plant in that area. Other examples are Shangrao City, Jiangxi use of "Ling" (灵) for its children, originating in the majestic Ling Mountains south of the city, Jianxin, Jiangxi use of "Gan" (淦) after the Gan River in Jiangxi Province, and Xiangtan, Hunan use of "Peng" (彭), the surname of a famous military leader born there.

The two most common orphanage surnames are "Dang" (党) and "Guo" (国), especially early in China's international adoption program. "Guo" (国) is translated as "State" or "Country", and is used to reflect a child's origins in China's State or overall country. Many orphanages have used this surname at some point in their history, including Zhuzhou, Hunan; Beihai, Guangxi; Beiliu, Guangxi, DianBai, Guangdong; Qingcheng, Guangdong; Zhanjiang, Guangdong; and Guixi, Jiangxi.

Another very common surname is "Dang"(党), which represents the political face of China, being interpreted as "Political Party" or "Government". This surname is used most frequently in Henan Province, with more than half of that Province's orphanages using the "Dang" surname at some point in their histories (some examples are Anyang, Hebi, Kaifeng, Luohe, Luoyang, Nanyang, etc.). Other orphanages that use "Dang" include Zhangzhou, Fujian and Ankang and Jiangzhang orphanages in Shaanxi. Other surnames with similar connotations include "Hua" (China), and "Min" (The People, Citizens).

A final example of a common orphanage surname is "Fu" (福), meaning "Good Fortune." It is the root character for "Fuliyuan", the Chinese word for "orphanage", and thus is used to designate a child from an orphanage. This character is used as a surname by the Fuling, Chongqing; Hengdong, Hunan; Sanshui, Guangdong; and Yizhou, Guangxi orphanages among others.

One last use of an orphanage surname is to designate when a child was found. Thus, many orphanages change the orphanage surname periodically (annually, etc.) to reflect the finding time frame of a child. Thus, the Baoji orphanage in Shaanxi used "Sun" (孙) as the orphanage surname in 2002, "Li" (李) in 2003, "Zhou" (周) in 2004, "Wu" (武) in 2005, etc. Other orphanages that have employed similar chronological naming patterns include Zhongshan, Guangdong; Zhuzhou, Hunan; Changsha, Hunan, etc.

Thus, an orphanage surname can be used to designate that a child was an orphan (Dang, Guo, Fu), a city of origin, or a unique aspect of the child's birth city, or when the child was found. In most cases, the surname is chosen to imbue the child's name with some historical or cultural significance.

Middle Characters
The use of middle characters in orphanage names is much more varied, but follows most of the general use patterns found in surnames. Thus, for example, the Shangrao City, Jiangxi orphanage uses the middle character to designate which county a child was found in -- "Cha" (茶) for Chating, "Qian" (铅) for Qianshan, "Wu" (婺) for Wuyuan, etc. Middle names are also commonly indicative of finding time-frames, which can range from just a few weeks to a year or longer. One interesting character that was used by some orphanages in 2008 was the "Ao" (奥) character (Huazhou, for example, gave this character to every child found in 2008). "Ao" is found in "Ao Yun", the Chinese word for "Olympics" (奥运), which were held in Beijing in August 2008.

One naming method employed for middle names that I have not yet seen in surnames is the assigning of characters based on the gender of a child. Since 2007, for example, the Qingyang orphanage in Gansu Province has assigned the character "Fu" (福) to boys and "Xiao" (晓) to females. Generally, however, the overall tendency among orphanages is the use of finding location or finding date "codes" when assigning middle characters.

Last Character
The last character (for those children assigned three characters to their orphanage name) is usually the most varied character from any given orphanage. I have not seen any use of the last character to indicate timing, location, or any of the other "informational pieces" that we have seen in the surname and middle characters. But the last character often does follow a pattern, and that pattern is usually the order it appears in a character combination dictionary. Characters in Chinese are not organized by themselves, but rather in groupings based on common usage, or "radicals", with other characters. They are generally listed by complexity of the character, meaning how many strokes it takes to write the character. For our purposes it is only needed to know that characters can be found in "conjugation" groups.

Wuwei orphanage in Gansu gives us a good example of an orphanage almost certainly using a Chinese dictionary in naming children. The image below shows the finding ads for Wuwei orphanage for two consecutive submission batches -- March 9, 2004 (left) and April 15, 2004 (right). The two finding ad scans are four consecutive pages from a typical Chinese dictionary. As one can plainly see, the names for the eight children in the March 9, 2004 and the first child in the April 15, 2004 batch all had the last character of their orphanage name taken from the "Baogaitou" radical section of the Chinese dictionary. The rest of the April 15, 2004 batch all had the last character of their name taken from the "Nvzhipang" radical section, located on the next page of the Chinese dictionary. One child (the fifth ad on the right side) is not listed in our version of the Chinese dictionary, but the last character of her name belongs in this same radical group, and almost certainly appeared in the orphanage's Chinese dictionary. It is extremely unlikely that such naming "clusters" occurred randomly, and they point with certainty that a Chinese dictionary was used.

While most adoptive families imbue their child's Chinese name with emotional meanings, in practice the names chosen are usually (but not always) selected based on a set of bureaucratic and practical reasons. An orphanage may factor in the finding location, the finding date, the child's gender, and lastly a Chinese dictionaries to come up with the name that will be used to identify a child for adoption purposes. While adoptive parents may see the orphanage name as a reflection of a child's history, personality, and character, for most orphanage directors assigning a name to a child is simply a formulaic exercise.

A Look at the Provinces V: Guangdong

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Wed, 25 May 2011 16:23:00 +0000

Just up on our subscription blog is an analysis of the Guangdong orphanages. We know from early reports about the Hunan scandal that Guangdong orphanages were involved, but which ones? With recent Family Planning confiscation stories coming out of Hunan and Guizhou Provinces, can one find similar activities in Guangdong Province? And how about all the older healthy children being referred? Where are they coming from? These and other questions are answered in this week's analysis.

http://www.research-china.org/blogs/index.htm

Readers will find it all very interesting!

Dr. Changfu Chang and the Issue of Trafficking

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Wed, 18 May 2011 20:02:00 +0000

宋·释普济《五灯会元》：“僧问：‘化城鉴如何是各尚家风？’曰：‘不欲说。‘曰：‘为甚如此？’曰：‘家丑不外扬。’”

A monk asks a villager: "How is it that Hua Cheng Jian, the Buddha master, is able to tap everyone?" The villager was silent. Again, the monk asked, "How is it that Hua Cheng Jian, the Buddha master, is able to have everyone follow him?" Finally, the villager replies: "One doesn't wash their dirty laundry in public."
_______________

A recent article on Malinda's "ChinaAdoption" blog presents her account of a recent conversation with Dr. Changfu Chang, an ex-journalist from China who is now making his mark by producing and distributing adoption-themed DVDs to adoptive families. It seems that Dr. Chang is touring various FCC gatherings discussing his films, and discussing "life in China" with understandably curious families.

At the end of each session, Dr. Chang opens up the discussion for questioning. With the recent news from Hunan, invariably an audience member will ask him how concerned adoptive families should about corruption in China's adoption program. It seems that his answer is fairly formulaic in each event -- families should not worry about these matters at all; that it was, according to Malinda's account, "extremely rare."

Malinda continues: "He said that some (unidentified) people were claiming that as many as 30% of the children in international adoption were trafficked. However, he could assure us that that was not true and that we simply should "stop worrying about it." Only a miniscule number have been trafficked, he claimed."

Full disclosure -- I have never met Dr. Chang, and have seen none of his videos. But I do know something about his subject in these quotes. As I see it, there are three options -- Dr. Chang is very ignorant of China's international adoption program, he is intentionally lying to adoptive families, or he is not understanding what is being asked.

I will start with the third possibility first. Careful readers of the statements made by various participants in the China scandals, from Hunan to Zhenyuan to Gaoping and the others -- will note that in nearly every case the participants did not feel that they were doing anything wrong. The directors of the Hunan orphanages made their defense that buying babies was not illegal (although selling babies is), and that even if it was illegal, it benefited the children so there was no harm. The same idea is seen in the Zhenyuan case where the Civil Affairs flatly stated :"They're better off with their adoptive parents than their birth parents."

So, for a member of China's upper-class as Dr. Chang is, one must start by asking him the correct question. It is entirely possible that Dr. Chang sees corruption only in terms of children being taken unwillingly from birth families. This would fit comfortably into the mind-set seen in nearly every orphanage area in China -- the orphanages pay money to get babies away from the poor uneducated and ignorant peasants, to be adopted by well-to-do Americans and given a good life. Possibly, Dr. Chang does not see this as corruption. Certainly most orphanage directors don't.

So, adoptive families must be more exact with their questions, since many of them probably would argue that baby-buying is corruption. Instead of asking, "Do you feel there is wide-spread corruption in China's program?" a better question might be "Do you feel that paying substantial amounts of money for children is adoption corruption? And how wide-spread do you feel this baby-buying is?" It may be that he hedges, like the villager in the opening story, out of a reluctance to air China's dirty laundry, for there is one characteristic of the Chinese that I understand very well, having lived with one for seven years: The Chinese do not like to reveal the dirty secrets of their country, even to friends. It is a tradition and understanding that goes back hundreds of years. We might view it as lying, but the Chinese consider it "saving face."

It is of course entirely possible that the third option is not the explanation for Dr. Chang's statements. It might be that he is fully aware of what is being asked of him, and refuses to answer honestly out of fear that he will offend adoptive families, who he feels are good and benevolent people (who also happen to support his projects by buying his DVDs). Or it is possible that the first option is correct -- that he really is ignorant of the true state of affairs in a majority of China's orphanages. Maybe he has never even thought to ask an area foster family or other orphanage employee if they pay "Lucky Money" to people who turn in kids. I am sure if he had visited Shaoyang in 2005 no one would have volunteered where many of that orphanage's kids came from. There are no signs above the orphanages stating "We buy babies for cash." One must look for it. One must ask people questions. It is possible that Dr. Chang has never asked those questions, and thus he would not have been made aware of these programs.

One possibility is not probable -- that the reason he is not aware is because such programs don't exist. As readers of our public and private blog realize, such programs are used by an overwhelming number of orphanages. If you define "corruption" in terms of international law, Dr. Chang's statement that "some (unidentified) people were claiming that as many as 30% of the children in international adoption were trafficked", and that it "was not true and that we simply should 'stop worrying about it'" is either gross ignorance, a misunderstanding of the term, or a lie to save face. There is no other option.

Welcome to Our Blog, and Here's Help in Reading the Good Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Sun, 15 May 2011 22:21:00 +0000

If you are reading this, you are probably an adoptive parent of a child from China, or interested in China's international adoption program. Research-China.Org has been researching China's orphanages for over a decade, and the articles presented on this blog are written with adoptive families in mind. But since we began this blog in August 2005, we have written over a hundred different articles. Many were written in response to incidents of small import, others were in-depth investigative pieces written in response to major events in the history of China's adoption program. Navigating these articles is laborious and time-consuming. So, to make it easier for readers to find the "meat" of the blog, below are the ten most important articles we have published. These ten articles will allow the reader to gain important insight and information on China's adoption program.

1) "My Agenda" -- Adoptive families, like all people, are very emotional when it comes to their children -- the stories they tell them, how they perceive the program, and how their adoption journey is viewed by themselves and others. If you write "rainbows and lady bug" stories supportive of China's program, you are welcomed and quoted. But beware the day you speak out about a disrupted adoption, a bad experience with an orphanage, or point out and discuss articles about corruption: Then you are looked at askance, your motives are questioned, and many begin to think you have an "agenda". In most cases, this is a very simplistic view to take, but many use it to ignore information they are not prepared to learn. This essay was written in response to those who question my "agenda". Why do I work to inform adoptive parents of issues they should know about with respect to China's program in general, and their own child's adoption in particular? Do I really want to end international adoption from China? This essay answers these questions.

2) "The Hague Agreement and China's International Adoption Program" -- Originally written for Adoptive Families Magazine, negative push-back from the China adoption community caused the editor to pull the article. However, to date no more comprehensive essay into the ethical issues of China's international adoption program has been written. The article is based on a comprehensive survey of all the orphanages involved in China's international adoption program in 2006, questions presented by a Chinese native seeking to adopt a child domestically. The findings of this survey, combined with other data references, show that China's international adoption program runs aground of many of the Hague's prescriptions and goals.

3) "The Finances of Baby Trafficking" -- Written just as the Hunan scandal of November 2005 was breaking, this essay is essential reading if one wants to understand why orphanages get involved in baby-buying. The tension between domestic and international adoption is explored, as well as the hurdles orphanages place in the paths of families inside China who seek to adopt.

4) "What Are the Problems in China" -- To understand China's adoption program, it is necessary to take a journey back to its beginnings and trace the changes it has undergone. In this way one can determine if the "China Myth" of millions of unwanted girls being abandoned is true today, or if not, when it was true. An interview with an orphanage employee from Jiangxi Province discusses when their employer began baby-buying, and for what reasons. This essay also discusses characteristics that allow an adoptive family to detect whether trafficking is occurring in their own child's orphanage.

5) The Hunan Scandal Explained -- Discerning adoptive families recognize that the Hunan scandal was a turning point in China's international adoption program. Following the scandal, the number of available children declined sharply, and the wait time for families wanting to adopt a child increased from under a year to the current five years. Was the Hunan scandal an isolated event, or was it simply the tip of the proverbial iceberg? By knowing what happened in the scandal, readers are in a better position to determine that important fact. A three-part article published by Deng Fei in the Shenzhen-based magazine "Fenghuang Weekly" represent the most accurate reporting on the background, causes and prosecution of those involved in the Hunan scandal.
a) Hunan -- One Year After -- Part One
b) Infant Trafficking: One Family's Story
c) Hunan, One Year Later III: Reactions & Reflections

6) "Mirror, Mirror" -- How does a domestic family adopt a child inside China? Do the Chinese submit dossiers to the CCAA? Must they do home studies? How much does it cost? To gain insight into these and other questions we spoke with Jiang Lan, who together with her husband adopted an infant from the Huadu orphanage in Guangdong. The differences between their journey and most adoptive families is fascinating.

7) "Ripples" -- My research for nearly half of the last decade focused on getting police reports, photos, and other orphanage information for families. That changed when I finally located and interviewed my daughter's foster mother in 2005. In the blink of an eye, I came to recognize that the time my daughter spent with this family was transformative, and that this woman held the key to my understanding the orphanage program, as well as events in my own daughter's life.

8) "The Value of Life in China" -- Families in the West are constantly confronted with dichotomies that give us pause. In this essay, I recount an experience that taught me that I cannot look at the life of the Chinese through Western eyes. The lesson I learned in this experience applies not just with the treatment of animals, but also plays a role in other aspects of life in China, including adoption.

9) "Creating 'Paper-Ready Children'"-- The idea that a submission "quota" is in place, and that this quota explains the decline in adoptions, goes against all evidence and data. This article details the steps involved in submitting a child for adoption by the orphanages, and a knowledge of the paperwork process invalidates the theory that the current wait times, rule changes, etc., are results of not enough "paper-ready" children. In fact, every indicator suggests that it is exactly as asserted by the CCAA, an imbalance between the number of families applying to adopt, and the number of healthy children coming into China's orphanages.

10) "What to Tell, and When" -- Although each adoptive family approaches the presentation of information to their child differently (each child is, after all, unique), there does seem to be a tendency among some adoptive families to "overfeed" their children information. This article works from the premise that we should empower our children to make the decisions of what they want to know and when. By doing so, I believe we give them the power to determine their own identities.

If you would like to obtain a more detailed treatment of these topics, you will want to join our "Rest of the Story" subscription blog. On that blog we analyze the adoption patterns of many orphanages in Hunan, Jiangxi, Chongqing, Guangdong, Guangxi and Anhui Provinces. We have also discussed birth parent searching and other topics of immense interest. The subscription fee is only $20 per year, and we guarantee you will find it worth every penny.

We hope you find these articles enlightening. If you have any questions about our other offerings, such as our Birth Parent Search Analysis, Finding Ads, Orphanage DVDs and Photos, or translation services, please let us know.

The Sale of a Child in Shaoyang

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:39:00 +0000

Caixin Magazine has published a second article (more will be forthcoming) detailing the efforts used by the Gaoping Family Planning to hide the origin of Yang Li Bing's daughter, including fabricating police reports, witness testimony, and other documents. Readers of our subscription blog will recognize such patterns, as we last week published an interview with an orphanage director who explained that nearly all "finder testimony" is fabricated by the orphanages. Additionally, as another interview with a "finder" on our subscription blog shows, finders are often coached by the orphanage in how to answer questions from adoptive families, using a "finding template" to answer questions about the finding.

Old News? Not to the People in China

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Wed, 11 May 2011 17:39:00 +0000

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.

Shaoyang, Hunan Birth Parents Seek Contact with Adoptive Families

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Mon, 09 May 2011 14:52:00 +0000

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

Putting the "Quota" Myth To Bed

noreply@blogger.com (Research-China.Org) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:53:00 +0000

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.