The Orphan Market · Episode 4 of 10 · 39 min
China and the Lost Daughters
For three decades China was the largest source of children adopted by Americans, about 82,000 between 1999 and 2023, mostly girls born under the one-child policy. As supply dwindled while demand and a roughly $3,000 donation per child kept rising, orphanages bought babies from traffickers and officials relabeled confiscated children as orphans. China ended the program in August 2024.
Who's who
- Kay Ann JohnsonScholar; author of China's Hidden Children
- Brian StuyResearcher at Research-China.org who analyzed orphanage ledgers
- David Smolin+1 more episodeLaw professor; author of Open Secret
- Barbara DemickJournalist; author of Daughters of the Bamboo Grove
- Nanfu WangFilmmaker; director of One Child Nation
- Mao NingChinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson who confirmed the closure
Where it happens
- Hunan Province, ChinaOrphanages there paid traffickers for babies
- Shaoyang and Longhui, Hunan, ChinaSite of documented family-planning confiscations of children
- Hengdong County, Hunan, ChinaHome of an orphanage whose director was jailed
- Beijing, ChinaSeat of the central agency that handled foreign adoptions
Timeline
- 1979-1980The one-child policy is adopted.
- 2005Peak year: 7,906 U.S. adoptions from China.
- November 2005A Hunan trafficking ring is busted and 27 people are arrested.
- May 2011Caixin magazine's Abandoned Children exposé details the confiscations.
- 2020China pauses international adoption during the pandemic and never reopens it.
- August 28, 2024China's Ministry of Civil Affairs ends intercountry adoption.
Still debated
The scale of trafficking is the central dispute: the trial involved about 85 to 100 babies, ledgers show hundreds, and thousands are alleged but not provable. Brian Stuy's estimate that more than three-quarters of adoptions were affected is contested, as is whether demand caused the abuses or merely fed existing local corruption.