Society

Adopting a Chinese baby gets tougher

By Tan Yingzi (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-02-25 16:59

WASHINGTON: The competition to adopt a lovely Chinese baby is getting much tougher among American couples due to fewer being available compared to the soaring interest in them, a senior US official told China Daily on Wednesday.

In 2009, over 3,000 Chinese children were adopted from China to the United States, the largest number among all other countries, the figure has been falling dramatically from nearly 8,000 in 2005, according the data from the US Department of State.

The reasons why the number has gone down, said Michele Thoren Bond, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Overseas Citizens, are because there are fewer children in China who need to be adopted, more Chinese families are adopting these children, and fewer unwanted children are being born.

"But the interest in the United States of the possibility of adopting a Chinese child has not gone down," she said.

Usually the inter-country adoption procedure takes about three and a half years. Now it may take even longer and the applicant families will face more paperwork and higher standards as the Chinese government imposed the changes and the requirements for adopting parents.

"They were simply trying to reduce the pool of all well-qualified people who were applying to adopt. They had many more than they could vet and many more than they needed,' she told the press at the National Adoption Day briefing on November 20. But Bond does not worry about the shrinking number of adopted Chinese children to the United States.

"It is very important to remember that in adoption, we are not to find a child for a family but to look for a good family for each child," she said.

"Our ultimate hope is that each child grows up in a family, not in an orphanage or an institution."

If more and more Chinese families adopt Chinese children, less babies are left to foreign families, "The fact that the numbers are going down is not necessarily a bad thing," she said.

China has always been a hot destination for American couples who wish to adopt a baby abroad. Since 2000, China is the country from which most US citizens have elected to adopt. "Because the children are beautiful, healthy, smart and perfect little babies", Bond said.

The statistics shows that nearly 90 per cent of the adopted Chinese children are female, 44 percent under one year of age and 52 percent between one and four years old.

"For many couples, they want to adopt a child as young as possible, because children can achieve their full potential more easily." She added.

But still many adoptions from China and other countries are of special needs children, children with medical problems, various disabilities or older children.

A growing number of the children now available for inter-country adoption from China are being adopted through the Waiting Child Program. They are kids who are older or they have special needs. And many American families are now pursuing this option, Bond said.

The US official thinks highly of her Chinese counterparts who have lots of experience and set up good programs in terms of caring for the children, identifying who is appropriate candidate for an adoption.

"We have very good and very close cooperation with Chinese central authorities," she said.

Both China and the US are parties to the Hague Convention on Inter-Country Adoption, an international treaty that exists in 76 nations around the world.

What impressed Bond most is how serious Chinese government is about protecting its children.

In occasional cases that involved criminal activities, "China is as serious as a heart attack about responding it and investigating, holding a criminal trial if that is appropriate and stopping it," she said.

"They make sure that whenever the adoption is taking place, it is appropriate and it is the best thing for that child. Both birth families and adopting families are carefully informed and well prepared."

After the case of an American adoptive father sexually abusing his Chinese adoptive daughter in December, China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) announced a series of measures to guarantee the rights and interests of Chinese adoptive children, including a possible change in the post-placement reporting policies.

"Whatever China elects to do in that respect, we would fully endorse and encourage families to completely comply," Bond said.

The US official finally noted that one of the many benefits of the inter-country adoption is that "a link is forged between the two countries as each child has a huge impact on Americans' appreciation for China."