China's One Child Policy

I'm not really sure what to title this post. I figure the morning is a good time to post it-- the bitter taste of coffee mixes well with the taste of bile in my mouth.

IMO, we can try to talk about this in any terms we want, but this screams government sanctioned, government approved, child trafficking.

I cannot imagine the pain of a tortured heart these parents will carry for the rest of their life.

http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2011-05/653266.html

Over the last 10 years, family-planning "enforcers" in Shaoyang have seized at least 20 children from Longhui county, who were born outside their parents' birth quota, and dispatched them to a local children welfare center, according to media reports.

“The welfare center then named all the seized children "Shao" and listed them as orphans available for $3,000 adoption. Some now live in the US, the Netherlands and Poland and have never met with their Chinese parents since adoption, the Xinhua News Agency reported, citing a report by Caixin Century Magazine.”

. . . . .

Their explanation for the action was that either the child had been illegally adopted or the parents had breached the national one-child policy and could not afford a fine.

Some victims were actually a family's first child, the report said.

. . . .

"They mistook my daughter for being illegal when my wife and I were working in Shenzhen," Yang Libing, a local migrant worker, told the magazine, adding that their 7-year-old child has been found living in the US.

The child-snatching phenomenon climaxed in about 2005, the Beijing-based magazine reported, and some welfare centers even worked with human traffickers to obtain children and reclassify them as orphans for "export."

The magazine said that for every child sent to a welfare center, the family-planning office could receive 1,000 yuan ($154) or more from the welfare center.

Their explanation for the action was that either the child had been illegally adopted or the parents had breached the national one-child policy and could not afford a fine.

Some victims were actually a family's first child, the report said.

. . . .

Lu Jiehua, a sociologist with Peking University, told the Global Times that the difficulties of enforcing the one-child policy might have forced the officials to resort to extreme measures.

"They are under extreme pressure as all their job evaluations are related to the effectiveness of reducing the number of children," Lu said. "Their job is difficult, but that is no excuse for trafficking children, which is absolutely illegal."

Other analysts called for more adoption regulations to prevent a profit chain in which family-planning offices snatched babies and welfare centers repackaged them into "products" for export.

. . . .

Some of the welfare centers even required employees to look for children that could be seized, the Caixin Century Magazine said, citing local news reports.

Two years ago, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported similar cases in Zhenyuan county, Guizhou Province, where local welfare centers bought children for 3,000 yuan and sold them to adoptive foreigners for $3,000 each.

. . . .

More than 13 million people in the country have no hukou, or household registration, and most had been born in violation of the national family planning policy, according to Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics.