There has yet to be a full accounting of the events that have unfolded in central Hunan where orphanage officials were linked in a partnership with baby traffickers. But it now appears that a lot of children adopted by foreign families were indeed bought by these orphanages in a bid to profit from larger foreign adoption fees, although the orphanages have plausibily claimed that their ultimate aim was to serve the best interests of the children involved. Still, the children were initially acquired and traded for more than small gifts of lucky money envelopes. The operation had the look of a business scheme with orphanages jumping to get on board. To join in, the orphanages were willing to fabricate reports to the police that served to document, falsely, that these children were abandoned locally.
From their offices in Changsha, provincial social welfare officials responsible for managing and facilitating foreign adoptions, as well as for collecting and disbursing foreign adoption fees, seem to have failed to investigate obvious spikes in the numbers of children coming from the Hengyang area orphanages involved in baby trafficking even though the traffickers themselves reportedly had been picked up while attempting to sell children to orphanages in the region twice before--once in Zhuzhou in 2002 and again in Changning in 2003.
Most of the evidence from the Hunan baby trafficking trials still indicates that all the children obtained from baby traffickers in this case were initially abandoned. In fact, some research indicates that intermediaries like traffickers may be the de facto informal adoption system generally for rural China and that the children they handle are very often given up to them by parents who believe they cannot keep their child but who don't want to physically abandon her in a public place. During the trials it was argued that the orphanages in this case were simply providing the safe means for these children to be formally adopted through a government regulated system.
Perhaps this is fair enough. But in Hunan very large numbers of foreign adoptive families from across the globe were lied to, although we're not sure exactly which families.
The Hunan baby trafficking case first surfaced late last fall and culminated in a flurry of news stories likely gathered from initial brief reports by the Chinese news agency Xinhua about arrests and officials being fired.
Confirmation of the seriousness of this case seems to be evident in an example of a much more detailed Chinese news account of the trials that appeared in March 2006 in a three-part article series from the magazine Fenghuang Weekly published in Shenzhen in coastal Guangdong Province. The series appears based primarily on evidence submitted to the court in Qidong, Hunan, during the trials last February. Translations of these articles have been posted on the Research-China.org blog.
The Fenghuang Weekly articles include some numbers presented during the trials that have not been translated elsewhere: that in 2005 the Hengnan County SWI purchased 22 female infants, the Hengdong County SWI purchased 18, the Qidong County SWI purchased 15, the Hengyang County SWI and Guangrong SWI purchased 11, and the Hengshan County SWI purchased 10.
But the sale of children to orphanages in the area was said to have begun at the Hengyang County SWI at least three years earlier in 2002. "Over time more and more welfare centers were drawn into the tide of infant buying," according to the first article in the series, which estimates the total number of children purchased to be in the hundreds.
It is unclear when exactly the Hengdong SWI was drawn into the tide. Beyond the 18 counted from 2005 in the charges from the trial we really have no idea how many of these Hengdong adopted children may have been purchased from traffickers.
After visiting the orphanage in February of 2005 I wrote that it seemed “remarkable” that almost all of its 70 or so children were between the ages of one and two and that its staff managed to place as many children in adoptions as the large numbers of children it was taking in, remarkable especially given that many children living in other SWIs at that time were said to be unlikely candidates for adoption either because of communicable diseases such Hepatitus B or other medical conditions. What was remarkable then at least seems a lot more curious now.
But caution is advised. While the Fenghuang Weekly articles are heavy on detail, they seem to rely on numbers likely presented by prosecutors, numbers that may not quite add up. For example, the second article focuses on the baby traffickers tried in the case and follows the evidence presented about how they began collecting children in Guangdong Province and how they became linked to Hengyang area orphanages through a relative of an employee at the Hengyang County SWI.
Although this description is somewhat difficult to follow it does seem that the traffickers could have easily supplied numbers of children matching those described for 2005 in the charges above. But the first article in the series claims that between 2003 and the first arrests in the case in November 2005, three area orphanages alone (in Hengnan. Hengshan, and Hengyang) had purchased large total numbers of children that together add up to more than 800 and still three more orphanages were involved in this case. In the next paragraph it similarly refers to the large figure 288 for Hengdong, but also identifies the number correctly as the total number of children placed in foreign adoptions from the orphanage. Could prosecutors or the author of the article have simply assumed that all children placed in foreign adoptions from these orphanages were purchased?
Nonetheless, heretofore the picture has been one in which Hengyang area orphanages were mostly handling children abandoned locally but had also accepted from traffickers some children who would otherwise have been sold through an unregulated black market. The higher numbers of children now reported to have been sold to orphanages in the region overall paint a picture that is even more troubling.
The Fenghuang Weekly articles also address some mystery surrounding the status of Hengdong SWI Director Chen Ming. In those first Chinese news service reports, he had been quickly identified as among those charged and was said to be "on the run," fleeing authorities. That Chen Ming was a fugitive was then repeated by other Internet news services and even the BBC. The information from these apparently solid sources was then picked up and worried upon by interested parties such as myself. The first article in the Fenghuang Weekly series identifies Chen Ming and Guangrong SWI Director He Yun as the two orphanage directors charged in the case. "Upon hearing this news He Yun fled the area in secret. Chen Ming was the only welfare center head to stand trial," it states.
It seems entirely possible now that widespread reports of Chen Ming fleeing arrest may have been the result of a widely repeated error. In other words, He Yun may have been the fugitive in question. Chen Ming was indeed the only orphanage director to stand trial in this case, although still inexplicably, and it has seemed incongruous that the trial could have taken place without him. Sentences were quickly meted out, with Chen Ming receiving a year in prison and the traffickers in the case up to 15 years. Chen Ming's attorney in Hunan has since confirmed that Chen Ming stood for trial and went to prison for a year. The attorney is still trying as yet unsuccessfully to appeal the sentence to clear his client's name.
The evidence reported thus far seems to show that the epicenter of this case was the Hengyang County SWI. It's still unclear why Chen Ming was tried rather than, say, Hengyang County SWI Director Jiang Jianhua.
We can only speculate about where the money went, an exercise hampered by such things as distance, unfamiliarity with local costs, and the huge chance of hidden intervening circumstance. But at the Hengdong SWI, 288 foreign adoptions from 2002-2005 would appear to have have produced $820,800 USD, cumulatively from each $3,000 foreign adoption fee minus a reported 5% for a provincial share. We know the new building planned there includes a total base construction cost of 4 million yuan, at current exchanges rates about $506,200. Local officials have planned for provincial support that would pick up half the cost. Subtracting the local portion of the construction costs from the total adoption revenue collected leaves $567,700 and dividing this amount by that 288 number of foreign adoptions produces a figure of $1,971 available per child to help with expenses such as food, diapers, medicine, medical care, adoption-related costs, salaries for additional care givers, administrative overhead, etc.
Since the revenue stream from foreign adoptions dried up almost a full year ago orphanage officials may have needed to dip into their savings to defray their operating expenses, with a substantial number of children still on hand to care for. If one were to reduce the per child figure above by a conservative 25% to compensate that would leave about $1,478 to support each child, most of whom were housed at the orphanage for about a year. My daughter was there for 17 months.
Would either $1,971 or $1,478 be a lot or a little in relation to what might have been spent? Could some of this revenue also have been fairly subsidizing support for the senior citizens at the SWI or other county welfare services? How often would money paid to intermediaries who brought the orphanages children need to be subtracted from this per child revenue figure? I really don't know. Perhaps for comparison, figures from the Hunan Bureau of Statistics show that in 2005 the annual per capita net income for urban households in Hunan Province overall was 9,523 yuan ($1,205 USD) and the annual per capita net income for rural households was 3,117 yuan ($394 USD). While funds were being saved for a new building, obviously little was invested in capital costs beyond the barest essentials at the Hengdong SWI in the meantime.
Still, one very important aspect of the Hunan baby trafficking case is its context within the Chinese Adoption Law, which apparently stipulates that revenue collected by orphanages from adoption fees “must be treated as a designated fund and can only be used for improving orphanage conditions.” This can be seen at least on the surface as indeed one source of a motive in the case of the Hengdong SWI and may have served as a motive for officials from the other orphanages linked to baby traffickers as well. Usually personal greed is the only inferred motive in debate over the case; this may be inaccurate.
China's National Bureau of Statistics collects a variety of demographic data each year at the county level and these can be searched through the University of Michigan's China Data Center. Figures collected in Hengdong County for the number of beds at its single "social welfare nursing center" that is very likely the Hengdong SWI show that its number of beds spiked from 50 to about 80 in 2001 at least a year before the orphanage became involved in China's foreign adoption program. This provides some but not exactly conclusive evidence that the orphanage was indeed struggling to manage locally abandoned children prior to that point.
In hindsight the trials have showed how difficult it can be to rely on news media reports out of China for information on this topic, including those from reputable foreign news sources. On the other hand, reports of baby trafficking in China are commonly found on internet news services. Examples include a man from the village of Paochi in Shanxi Province arrested in February 1999 for allegedly buying at least 100 children from poor couples and then selling them to wealthier couples or other intermediaries in that area. There was the 52-member gang tried in Yulin City in Guangxi in 2003 for trading 118 babies among regions including Guangxi, Henan, Anhui and Hubei Provinces. In 2004 one person was sentenced to death and two more given life sentences in Puyang, Henan, for their part in a kidnapping and child selling scheme. But the Hunan case appears to be the only case thus far linked to orphanages.
And other reports have indicated that occasionally some children in state run orphanages can be those forcibly taken by local officials from families who defy strict regional birth quota restrictions, the so-called ‘one-child” rule. But would be an illegal practice in China; iolating family planning restrictions has an established set of fines and other punishments.
Clearly most Chinese children still wind up abandoned and in orphanages because of those same population restrictions mixed with societal and economic pressures for couples to have a son or a child without special needs--children who really are left to fend for themselves typically by roadsides or in public places.
China began its foreign adoption program in the mid-1990s at least in part in response to foreign condemnation of orphanage conditions then being reported there. The program was successful in both providing good homes to children needing families while giving much needed financial assistance that the orphanages could use to improve their conditions, a cyclical incentive being that healthier children might be more likely candidates for adoption and better conditions would help ensure healthier candidates. It was a good idea, but probably not as a permanent measure without much adjustment to address just part of a larger problem.
There are still abandoned and orphaned children in China, and a substantial body of research to show this and most are likely being addressed outside of China's formal attempts to deal with them so far.
It now seems clear that many state controlled orphanages have become too dependent on foreign adoption fees higher than most Chinese can afford. Yet it has also been documented that childless couples in both rural and urban China are indeed willing to adopt, at least when healthy children are available.
In light of what we've seen from the Hunan baby trafficking case, to what degree has a burgeoning domestic market for the sale of children now become a substitute for effective state assisted child welfare?
China's new domestic economy is the fastest growing economy in the world and its remarkable benefits have visibly extended throughout the country, far outside of its coastal trade zones. But as the Chinese continue to press on in successfully reinventing themselves, at some point, sooner than later, they really need to craft a better, more secure place in this new society for vulnerable children, especially their baby girls.
Your website is just beautiful! I wish you much success in all your endeavours!
Good luck, Dr. Linda Hughes.
Posted by: Linda Hughes | November 08, 2006 at 02:07 AM
Thank you for this wonderful site. My youngest daughter was one of the last 15 children adopted from Hengdong on this day a year ago. I have been collecting news reports and information from you and Brian since the story broke soon after we returned to the US. It's hard to digest sometimes, but I want to have it available when my daughter is older. I have so many questions that I know will never be answered, but I appreciate all that you and Brian have done on this subject. Thanks again!
Posted by: Kelley | November 10, 2006 at 01:26 PM
Thank you so much for the wonderful, balanced information. We adopted our daughter Sophie from Hengnan SWI in September 2005, and while this whole situation horrifies me, I feel a need to understand it, for myself and for her when she is old enough to understand it. Your comprehensive (given the information you have access to ) and compassionate reporting is invaluable and somehow reasurring.
Robin
Posted by: Robin McLennan | March 08, 2007 at 01:04 PM