The News
China on Thursday said it would formally end most international adoptions, reflecting its drastic shift from grappling with a problem of overpopulation to one of declining birth rates.
Tens of thousands of Chinese-born children joined families in the US and other countries when Beijing first launched its adoption program in the 1990s. It became a mechanism for families to escape punishment for violating China’s one-child policy, which was eventually scrapped in 2015.
International adoptions had largely been on pause since the pandemic but hundreds of American families still have applications pending, The Associated Press reported, and the US said it is seeking clarification on how this decision will impact them.
SIGNALS
A problem of birthrate – again
The decision comes amid a “crisis” around China’s birth rate, with fewer than 10 million babies born in 2022 compared to some 16 million in 2012. The One Child policy began in the 1990s as a countermeasure to the country’s then-high birth rates and limited resources, unwittingly supercharging the economy to become the second largest globally today, The Wall Street Journal reported. However, since the controversial policy ended in 2015, the expected baby boom never materialized, and authorities are working hard to ensure there are more babies in China in the coming years, not least to help support its rapidly aging population.
Pending adoptions have also been suspended
It is unclear how China’s decision will affect the hundreds of American adoption applications already in motion: Beijing said those currently in progress “would no longer be processed at any stage,” The Associated Press reported, and the US embassy is seeking further clarification. American families have adopted 82,674 children from China since the international adoption program began, the highest of any foreign country. In 2007, Beijing tightened the vetting process for prospective adoptive parents, limiting foreign adoptions to only heterosexual married couples, according to the South China Morning Post.