China's Hidden Children: Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human Costs of the One-child Policy

233 Pages·2016·1.08 MB·English

by  Kay Ann Johnson

C h i n a s
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H i d d e n
C h i l d r e n

C h i n a s
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H i d d e n
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Abandonment, Adoption, and the Human
Costs of the One- Child Policy
Kay Ann Johnson
The University of Chicago Press | Chicago and London
Kay Ann Johnson is professor of Asian studies and political science at
Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, where she is also director of the Hampshire
College China Exchange Program and the Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and
the Environment.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2016 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 35251- 0 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 35265- 7 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226352657.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Johnson, Kay Ann, author.
China’s hidden children : abandonment, adoption, and the human costs of the
one- child policy / Kay Ann Johnson.
pages ; cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978- 0- 226- 35251- 0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978- 0- 226- 35265- 7
(e- book) 1. Abandoned children—China. 2. Girls—Civil rights—China.
3. Intercountry adoption—China. 4. Child trafficking—China. 5. China—
Population policy—Social aspects. 6. Family size—Government policy—Social
aspects—China. I. Title.
hv887.c6j66 2016
362.70951—dc23
2015028490
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/
NISO Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
To Wang Liyao (1940– 2013), my colleague, close friend, and
research partner for most of the work that appears in this book. His
wisdom, kindness, and generosity inspired this project and shaped the
understanding it conveys. Following his wishes, the research presented
here is further dedicated to the hundreds of people who have shared
their personal stories with us and, above all, to the 120,000 children
who were sent out of China in the wake of the one- child policy and
their current and former families.

C o n t e n t s
Preface ix
Chapter 1
Introduction: Somebody’s Children
1
Chapter 2
Relinquishing Daughters— from Customary
Adoption to Abandonment
27
Chapter 3
Adopting Daughters and Hiding
Out- of- Plan Children
57
Chapter 4
From “Unwanted Abandoned Girls”
to “Stolen Children”: The Circulation of
Out- of- Plan Children in the 2000s
99
Chapter 5
An Emerging “Traffic in Children”
144
Chapter 6
Conclusion: The Hidden Human Costs
of the One- Child Policy
163
Acknowledgments 173
Notes 175
Bibliography 199
Index 209
P r e f a c e
The initial impetus to turn my attention as a China scholar to the
investigation of infant abandonment, its causes, and consequences
arose from my own adoption of a three- month- old foundling in
March 1991. I did not know at that time that my daughter would
be one of the first of over 120,000 children to leave China through
international adoption over the next twenty years, 85,000 of them
to the United States. Adopting just at the beginning of this exodus,
I spent five weeks visiting a large state orphanage that was begin-
ning to sink into crisis due to underfunding in the face of escalating
numbers of infants arriving at the orphanage.1 Like most adoptive
parents, I wondered about the people who gave birth to my daugh-
ter and apparently left her on the streets of a big city. Ever since
that time, I have pursued this study as both a China scholar and
an adoptive mother of a child who was born and abandoned in the
midst of what I later learned was one of the largest, most brutal
birth planning campaigns that ever swept the rural areas of central
south China.2
I hoped that through my research I could provide for my daugh-
ter a record of what was happening at the time she was abandoned,
a record that could foster some understanding about her origins by