Adoptions in Guangzhou

I went back to my hostel and chatted with my roommates from my top bunk. "I noticed a lot of babies," I said....and then the stories came out. Two of the longer-term residents had plenty to say about what was going on. Shamian was one of the many places foreign parents stayed for the one month period they needed in order to adopt a Chinese baby. Andrew, the outspoken Canadian, had no problems wondering about the fitness of these parents. He felt that many of the ones he had seen were too obese to raise a child or too elderly. He speculated that the price of adopting a child from China was about USD $30,000. George speculated about USD $68,000 from the quote a couple gave him of their first adoptee.

I asked why children in China were adopted over ones in their home countries. The answer I got was red tape. In China, it only takes a sum of money and one month and one can get a child which is still a baby. In their home country, these folks may have to wait years to adopt and on top of that, the codes are extremely stringent.

Andrew also went on to wonder about the adoption industry. He mentioned that it had come out about a year or two ago that a racket was uncovered where about 300 of the adopted "orphans" were in fact kidnapped. Some of these babies weren't kidnapped at all but sold by their parents, for maybe as little as RMB $1,500. But with foreigners like Americans, Canadians, and Germans willing to pay top dollar for a baby - the Chinese mind will find a way to create a lucrative business out of this demand. Of course, this happens in many other countries around the world, but I don't find it surprising that babies are kidnapped and then sold to orphanages (acting as the middle men) who in turn sell for a profit to foreign adopters. And according to my roommates, it's not only Guangzhou where you see this phenomenon. Plenty of other Chinese cities are in the business of exporting babies.

Of course there are those babies that are abandoned; I noticed about 9 Chinese girl babies to 1 Chinese boy baby while I was in Shamian. And there was no there was no particular type of parent; I saw parents who already had 1-3 biological children who had adopted a Chinese baby; I also saw parents who already had 1-3 previously adopted Chinese-American children who came back to adopt another. While for some, it did look as if it were their first child.