An orphan from the Xining City Orphan and Disability Children Welfare Centre in the Qinghai Province, China, waits to be adopted. ( China Photos/Getty Images)
From 2001 to the present, there have been approximately 80 “abandoned babies” in this welfare home. With the exception of 2 baby girls with disabilities, the other 78 babies have all been adopted by families from the U.S., Belgium, and Spain.
The former chief of the local birth control office, Shi Guangying, claimed that they have documentation from all the families who have had babies out of line with China’s “one-child policy.” According to the local policies in this region, once a baby is born, there is a window anywhere from 20 days to 3 months, where the baby may be seized. It seems that they don’t want kids who are a few years old as they are afraid of kids running away and going back home to their families.
Between 2003 and 2005, there were almost no families in Zhenyuan County who had kids out of compliance with the Chinese policy who could afford to pay the fines, which were in the upwards of 40,000 Yuan (US $5,882). Shi said, “If they cannot pay, we will seize their children to compensate for the fines. Once the baby was taken into the welfare home by the birth control office, they remain there indefinitely or until they are adopted.”
Evidence suggests that the seized babies have all been labeled as orphans by the Zhenyuan County Welfare Home. Each child when adopted, usually by a foreign family, leaves at the maintenance cost of $3,000, which adds up to 900,000 yuan income for all the babies adopted.
In Zhenyuan County, Tang Jian, the head of the Bureau of Birth Control Management, Discipline, and Inspection, said during an interview, “We have investigated and found irrefutable evidence that those babies have been forcefully seized from their parents, sent to orphanages, and then adopted by foreign families.”
On the morning of July 2, Quizhou Province’s local government had a press conference and announced that they will be taking the investigation to a more serious level and that currently, there are six people in particular who will be closely investigated.
Read the original Chinese article .
