Phoebe Zhangin Shenzhen
Published: 6:00am, 16 Feb 2025
Strict rules designed to protect children mean large numbers of would-be adopters are facing a near-impossible task
The decades-long one-child policy in China has not only left the legacy of an ageing population, but also a set of strict adoption laws that have denied large numbers of abandoned children the chance of a family life.
Families looking to adopt have faced a series of bureaucratic hurdles, in some cases leaving them with no legal way of proceeding with a planned adoption even if the child’s mother is happy for it to go ahead.
One such woman, Sichuan resident He Hua, was offered the chance to adopt a baby in 2021.
She had a medical condition that left her unable to give birth but she had always wanted a child of her own, and her elder sister told her that she knew an unmarried woman who was pregnant and would be unable to look after the child.
“My sister told her that I could take the child, and the woman agreed immediately,” He said.
She accompanied the woman to a hospital in Chengdu, the provincial capital, where the baby was born. The biological mother had already told He that she would leave the city after giving birth and wanted nothing more to do with the baby.
But He’s joy soon turned into frustration when she tried to formalise the adoption with the local police and civil affairs bureau and was told she did not meet the requirements to adopt the baby.
They said the birth mother needed to be present during the proceedings, and that she would have to be handicapped or have a serious illness in order to give up the child legally.
There are many others who have faced similar problems when trying to adopt a child through private channels.
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There is a relatively simple process for those adopting through state-run child welfare institutions, but most of the children in these facilities have disabilities and many families are unable or unwilling to care for them.
Most families trying to adopt privately are unable to provide the necessary documents, such as a birth certificate or written statement from the birth parents, to secure the child a hukou – a vitally important household registration and identification document that grants access to social benefits including vaccinations and school.
China’s strict adoption laws were motivated by concerns about child protection, including dangers such as trafficking – a problem that was fuelled by the one-child policy as the traditional preference for sons drove some people who could not have one of their own to buy one from criminal gangs.
Despite strict penalties against child trafficking, it remains an ongoing concern. Last year, Yu Huaying, a woman who had sold 17 kidnapped children in the 1990s, was sentenced to death following a retrial.
The previous year, three former officials in Henan province were jailed for their part in the theft and sale of birth certificates which were used to fraudulently obtain hukous for children – many of whom may have been abducted and sold to families.
But these barriers to adoption mean that there are far more children living in institutions than there are families on the approved adoption list.
In 2023, the most recent available figures from the Civil Affairs Bureau, there were 144,000 orphans awaiting homes but only 8,000 families had successfully registered to adopt a child. There is no data for other children awaiting adoption.
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Although it is hard to find exact figures about the extent of the problem, media reports and grass-roots volunteers have said there may be hundreds of thousands of children and families affected.
Some local authorities have previously recognised that there are large numbers of children whose families cannot properly care for them.
But attempts by some provinces to deal with the problem by way of “baby hatches” that would allow babies to be dropped off anonymously to be cared for were abandoned because local care services could not cope with the weight of numbers.
Lu Yu, a lawyer with the Beijing Qianqian Law Firm, which specialises in women’s rights advocacy, argued society needed to provide resources for people at the bottom, saying: “When society doesn’t allow these people to abandon their children, but doesn’t provide other options for them to raise the child either, it’s a dilemma.”
These limited channels for legal adoption have led to the existence of what China Youth Daily has described as “illegal de facto adoptions” across the country.
While searching for a solution to her own problems, He came across a network of women trying to resolve similar problems in a chat group on the messaging app WeChat.
The group’s organiser Wei Ximei, a domestic services agent from Zhengzhou in central China, had recently solved a similar problem for her adopted daughter Niuniu.
The birth mother had tricked Wei’s mother into taking care of the baby by hiring her as a nanny, and then refusing to pay and disappearing.
Although Wei decided to raise the girl alongside her two other children, three years later when she wanted to register the girl in a kindergarten and could not get a hukou she decided to contact a local television station for help.
After a story about the case was broadcast, local police helped her track down the birth mother while a local kindergarten also offered assistance in securing a hukou, a process that took her around a year, a process that can take as little as a few days in some cities.
Anyone wanting to adopt an unwanted baby faces a series of hurdles. Photo: Shutterstock
The publicity the case generated made her realise there were others in a similar position after dozens of people started contacting her with details of their own difficulties in getting a hukou.
One woman in the group told the Post that she had agreed to adopt a newborn after the birth mother contacted her via social media and told her “just come and take the baby, I will never ask about the child, whether in sickness or in health”.
Another woman had been given a baby by a 25-year-old who did not even know who the child’s father was and said she dared not take the baby home with her.
Lawyers and campaigners have warned that the country’s adoption laws need updating to suit current conditions.
The decades-long one-child policy was scrapped in 2015 when authorities raised the limit to two children, then to three in 2021.
Lu said the plight of women like Wei and He showed that the adoption laws were outdated.
These laws have changed over time along with the country’s population policies.
Previously the adoption law had stated that children under 14 could be adopted if they had no legal guardian or the parents had “special difficulties” in caring for the child.
But those adopting the child had to be over the age of 30, with no children of their own and be judged capable of raising children.
But a new order issued in 2023, two years after the three-child limit came into force, said the birth parents needed to give a statement that they could not raise the child and explain their problems.
Meanwhile, the adopters would be asked to obtain a statement from local authorities stating how many children they already had as well as confirming their ability to raise the child.
Meanwhile the Civil Code, released in 2020, also included the over-30s rule and said adoptive parents should have “no child or only one child” and have no criminal record or “diseases making them unable to raise a child”.
But Lu argued that these requirements match the two-child policy rather than the three-child limit, adding that the law is too generalised and vague.
She said this meant local governments usually issued their own ordinances to fill out the details.
“For example, the law says those with ‘special difficulties’ may give up their child for adoption, but what does that mean? Does going to prison count as difficult? Is having no other relatives difficult?” she said.
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The strict adoption rules still have their defenders. Wang Zhenyao, director of the China Philanthropy Research Institute at Beijing Normal University, has warned in the past that government regulation is needed to stop disputes from hurting children.
“Adoption around the world is very strict. It must be child-centred and attach importance to the protection of children’s interests. People have basic dignity and cannot be treated as commodities,” he told China Youth Daily.
Wei acknowledged the trafficking issue, saying she had been accused of encouraging such crimes by the parents of missing children.
But she insisted there is another side to the story, citing the example of a friend of hers whose daughter died in an accident after being left at home when the mother had to go out to work and could not find anyone to care for her.
She had previously tried to give away the girl, but the adoptive parents returned her when they could not get a hukou.
Wei said this case had made her especially sad and she had visited the child’s body at the local funeral home, bringing offerings to help her rest in peace.
“I often wonder, if the child’s hukou issue had been solved, would she have lived?” Wei said.
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