Article: China babies 'sold for adoption'

The_Conductor

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8130900.stm

Dozens of baby girls in southern China have reportedly been taken from parents who broke family-planning laws, and then sold for adoption overseas.

An investigation by the state-owned Southern Metropolis News found that about 80 girls in one county had been sold for $3,000 (£1,800) to foreigners.

The babies were taken when the parents could not pay the steep fines imposed for having too many children.

Local officials may have forged papers to complete the deals, the report said.

Unpopular policy

Parents in rural areas are allowed two children, unlike urban dwellers who are allowed one.

But if they have more than that, they face a fine of about $3,000 -several times many farmers' annual income.

The policy is deeply unpopular among rural residents, says the BBC's Quentin Somerville in Beijing.

Nearly 80 baby girls in a county in Guizhou province, in the south of the country, were confiscated from their families when their parents could not or would not pay the fine, Southern Metropolis News said.

The girls were taken into orphanages and sold to couples from the United States and a number of European countries.

The adoption fee was split between the orphanages and local officials, the newspaper said.

Child trafficking is widespread. A tightening of adoption rules for foreigners in 2006 has proved ineffective in the face of local corruption.

kathy finn

hi shane,
i don,t know if anybody saw the programme the dying rooms, it was about the baby girls in chinese orphanages i did and i will never forget it, baby girls where left to die in a room called the dying rooms, they could not kill the baby so they left them to starve.
it seems to me that china don,t have to follow the same rules as the rest of the world.....kathy

holly_johnson

That is so sad. I always had misgivings about the way China handled adoption, especially for girls due to the one child rule, but that's shocking that it's happening in 2009.

The_Conductor

kathy finn wrote: »

hi shane,
i don,t know if anybody saw the programme the dying rooms, it was about the baby girls in chinese orphanages i did and i will never forget it, baby girls where left to die in a room called the dying rooms, they could not kill the baby so they left them to starve.
it seems to me that china don,t have to follow the same rules as the rest of the world.....kathy

Hi Kathy-

Yes, I saw it (Channel 4 about a year ago). Both Cathy and myself were in tears over it- and had to turn it off.

Link to it here

It was based on the older Lauderdale documentary that Brian Woods did for the BBC filmed in 1993-1994.

I have no doubt that these happenings do exist- and I have no idea how it will ever be remedied. There are a combination of factors at play- China's one child policy (in urban, 2 in rural), the manner in which girls are not valued equally to boys, collapsing societal values- its a massive country with so much that needs fixing.

Its very easy to either be totally shocked, horrified and despondent that poor children could be neglected in this manner- other people (mainly Chinese local authorities) see foreign adoption of Chinese girls as a solution to a problem- which more often than not is symptomatic of baby girls simply being abondoned- and not forcibly removed from families due to the family size policies- westerners look at the strictures of the policy and see the policy itself as the root cause of the problem.

Ideally- Chinese people should be educated to appreciate their children of both sexes equally. This is a fundamental core problem. It is also a societal issue- which is simply exacerbated by the strict family size policies (where totally aside from children being removed when families cannot afford to pay the fines- its equally as plausible that female children are actively being abandoned by parents who favor male children.

When you look at what the alternates are (and the horrifying footage particularly in the Lauderdale documentary), its not surprising that many western people feel they are genuinely doing massive good by paying the $3000-$5000 for a baby girl to adopt. Perhaps that baby girl may have died otherwise- its entirely possible. However- their payment is also perpetuating a system where poor baby girls are seen as disposable or saleable commodities by Chinese officials.

There is so much evil in the world- inevitably good deeds become associated with the evil ones- it hurts to think of the consequences of one person's good deed for one person.

Mia belle

As long as paps are paying huge (in local terms) of cash, there will always be corruption. I saw corruption first hand when I adopted my dd from Vietnam in 2005. We were told the majority of our fees went to the orphanage, ha, our daughter was living in filth and half starved. I would put my hand on my heart and swear not a cent of the adoption fees went to the orphanages.
A resonable fee is expected for translations etc, but that should amount to no more than a thousand, and thats being generous.