aAmericans Lauren and Harrison Smith met in China as students and discussed adopting a child from China early in their relationship. As soon as they reached the minimum age of 30, the couple packed up their application and requested a tour of the home they shared with their 2-year-old daughter in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in southwest China.
“In September 2019 we saw photographs of our son for the first time and were able to submit our letters of intent to adopt,” Lauren told The Guardian.
The baby, whom the couple named Benaiah, was relinquished by his parents after suffering a head injury at 15 months old. Lauren said her parents loved their son during his first year of life but assumed they couldn't afford to raise him. The couple received all approvals except permission to pick up Benaiah. But before the Smiths could continue with the adoption process, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing them to return to the United States. Months of delays turned into years.
“Through the years of waiting, we created a family tradition for our son… He calls us Mommy and Daddy and his sisters Jeje and Mei Mei,“It's a very special moment for me,” Lauren said, referring to the Chinese word for “older sister.”
Then, on September 4, Lauren got the call that changed everything. “The phone started ringing. I looked and saw it was a caseworker from the adoption agency calling. My heart started pounding. I thought, 'This is it!' But as soon as I heard her voice, I knew this wasn't a call with good news.”
During the conference call, a Chinese government spokesman answered reporters' questions and reportedly confirmed that after 35 years, international adoption of Chinese children will be ended. Only applicants who are approved to travel to collect a child will be finalized.
Spokesman Mao Ning did not explain the decision other than to say it was in line with the spirit of relevant international treaties. “We express our gratitude to the goodwill of foreign governments and families who want to adopt Chinese children, and the love and kindness they have shown,” he added.
The news confirmed what some have predicted for years, seeing a decline in the number of babies being adopted and a China that appears to be becoming more closed off as it tries to halt a falling birth rate.
For the couple, who are in the middle of the adoption process, the announcement came as a shock.
“Colin met all six of our children. [through video calls]”We saw her home and the room we had prepared for her and experienced the excitement the children felt in preparation for her arrival,” said Ann and John Contant of the special needs girl they matched with in 2019.
“Our daughter will be 9 years old next month. She was supposed to come home almost five years ago. We are now as committed to bringing Corinne home as we were when we met her in the fall of 2019. Our family is devastated by China's announcement.”
“Various emotions”
In the 35 years since adoption of Chinese children was allowed, an estimated 160,000 Chinese children have been adopted by foreign parents, more than half of them to the United States.
China's adoption program, driven largely by the one-child policy, imposed severe restrictions on Chinese parents for decades. Pregnant women were forced to have abortions, children born in violation of the restrictions were involuntarily separated from their parents, and in a society that favored boys, girls were disproportionately abandoned by their spouses. Many Chinese parents were unaware that their children had been adopted by overseas families. In other horrific cases, children were abducted and forced to live with their parents. Sold to a welfare facility Organizing overseas adoptions has become a profitable industry.
Cindy Tu Huygen, a Dutch journalist who posed the key questions to Mao at the press conference and was adopted by Dutch parents in 1993, said she felt “cathartic” after hearing his answers.
“But my sense of relief is tempered by the knowledge that the Chinese government is unlikely to fully acknowledge its abuses of the system.” She wrote in The New York Times.
Xavier Huang, a Chinese adoptee and development manager for the Nanchang project, told the Guardian that the announcement had sparked a “real mix of emotions” among Chinese adoptees.
“The reality for many is that no matter how loving and happy an adopted child may have been raised in, there is a huge set of trauma that we all experience,” they said. “The feeling of being treated as an other and being treated as a stranger. We feel deep pain and sadness at having to reject that part of ourselves.”
Huang said she feels great joy and hope “knowing that children in need of housing have the prospect of living in the community with peers of other races,” but also feels even lonelier, knowing there will never be anyone like them again.
“My first reaction was, 'Thank goodness, my children won't have to go through what I went through,' because being taken away from your country, your culture, your traditions and your people is such a cruel and unusual life sentence. But then the anxiety started to hit.” Written This is the testimony of one adopted child published by the Nanchang Project, a US-based organization that helps adoptees connect with their birth families.
“It just feels weird. I know the one-child policy is over but it makes me sad to think that other potential adopters don't have that chance. Adoption was one of the best things that ever happened to me.” Written The other is Molly Brown.
“I hope and pray that he knows he is loved.”
A major concern for observers is what will happen to children with disabilities or special needs, who make up the largest proportion of international adoptions in recent years: Of more than 12,000 adoptions by international couples between 2014 and 2018, 95% were children with special needs.
“There's no interest in adopting these children in China,” said Yanzhong Fan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. That makes international adoption one of the few avenues for children with disabilities to have real families, he said.
In 2019, Chinese officials said that while it had previously been difficult to persuade Chinese couples to adopt older or disabled children, that was starting to change. “More and more families are adopting children with mild disabilities or orphans who have recovered from illness,” Wang Jinhua, minister of social affairs at the time, said.
But Huang said not enough was being done to make it easier for local families to adopt the 98 percent of children in welfare institutions who need more help.
“At stake is the future of over 50,000 children currently residing in the state's orphanages… and [ban on] In international adoption cases, children are kept in these facilities until they turn 18, and after that, it's unclear what happens to them.”
Few details have been released about when the decision to halt was made and what will happen next for children and prospective parents still in the system. Stories from those affected are early signs of a bureaucratic slowdown in international adoption. The temporary halt was blamed on the pandemic, but several couples told the Guardian about other measures that could not be explained by anti-Covid restrictions.
Some said they were gradually restricted and eventually banned from video chatting with their matched children, and were unable to send gifts or supplies to their children or the care homes for more than a year.
The Contants said all contact with Corinne's orphanage was lost more than a year ago.
The Smiths say their six-monthly video calls with Benia were replaced by photos from the orphanage, then the photos and updates stopped coming, and eventually they stopped sending her supplies and gifts.
“Since the three photos were sent in March 2022, we have not received any photos or information about him,” Lauren said.
Observers say several governments, including Spain's, are lobbying Beijing on behalf of couples displaced by the announcement. It's unclear what Chinese authorities plan to do with the children who have been reunited with their families and become acquainted with them.
The self-imposed list of U.S. couples who were in the process of adopting before the announcement included dozens of children between the ages of 6 and 17, most of whom already knew the potential adoptive parents, according to the filing. Most of the couples on the list said they received acceptance letters in 2019 or 2020, and all said they would like to continue with the adoption if possible.
The Smiths say they have yet to be able to speak to their eight-year-old son, Beniah, but are hopeful he hasn't abandoned them.
“We don't know what we can tell our son about the adoption,” Lauren said. “We want him to know that he is now loved and adored by three precious sisters, and that they will never forget him. It's heartbreaking for us that we will never be able to hold him or even see his beautiful face.”
