China Ends International Adoption Program

Adopted children learning about their own customs through play at the celebrations on the 30th International Adoption Day on July 5, 2015. Linda Huang/Epoch Times

China has abruptly ended its three-decade-long international adoption program, resulting in orphanages in the country losing their primary source of income.

At a daily briefing on Sept. 5, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the only exception would be cases in which the child is adopted by a blood relative or step-parent. She also noted that the adoption applications currently in process would be discontinued unless they qualify for exceptions.

Over the years, Chinese orphanages have become the typical destination for abandoned babies, usually girls or those with birth defects, a result of the draconian one-child policy in effect from 1979 to 2015.

According to Chinese media reports, foreign adoption fees and their associated mandatory donations have been the primary source of income for orphanages, called “welfare institutions” in China. These reports further revealed that some of these institutions were involved in baby trafficking and received compensation for such.

China officially opened its doors to international adoption in 1992 to alleviate the society of its large number of abandoned babies.

Since then, China has been a top source of international adoptions, with more than 160,000 Chinese children adopted by families around the world to date. According to statistics from the U.S. State Department, about half of these children relocated to the United States.

The large number of foreign adoptions has become a means of income for China’s orphanages and the China Adoption Center, which was established in 1996 and specializes in overseas adoption services.

As early as 2009, an investigative report by Chinese state media Southern Metropolis Daily revealed that it was common for China’s orphanages to rely on the income from international adoptions to support their day-to-day operations.

“Some people say that we run the orphanage by ’selling children,' but the truth is local financial support for the orphanage is very limited,” a staff member at an orphanage in a rural area in southern Fujian Province told Southern Metropolis Daily.

“Without the income from international adoptions, it was even impossible to provide sufficient funds to pay the salaries of the orphanage staff or to improve the conditions for raising orphaned babies.”

The cost for a foreigner to adopt a child in China in the 2010s was reported to be about $5,000, with $3,000 paid directly to the orphanage. In addition, Chinese adoption centers also charged administrative fees totaling $1,365, according to a 2011 Chinese state-run media report. Therefore, China’s 64,000 foreign adoptions between 1999 and 2010 would amount to about $407 million in income for orphanages and adoption centers.

According to Considering Adoption, which provides an updated cost of adopting a child from China, an adoptive family should budget between $25,000 and $40,000 for the entire process, including a $5,000–$6,000 mandatory orphanage donation.

The state-owned report also revealed that most of the profits from overseas adoptions go to orphanages, creating financial incentives that have fueled cases of baby trafficking.

In November 2005, local Chinese media uncovered a baby trafficking ring in Hunan Province, an agricultural area in the heart of southern China, in which several orphanages were complicit.

These institutions allegedly colluded with traffickers to purchase infants, falsely labeling them as “abandoned children” to funnel them through overseas adoption channels for profit. Orphanages paid traffickers up to 3,000 yuan (approx. $400) per baby while earning up to $5,000 for each child sent abroad for adoption.

At the Sept. 5 briefing, Mao did not provide further explanation beyond saying that the changed policy aligned with international covenants.

Xin Ning contributed to this report.