China Shuts Down Its International Adoption Machine

Foreign adoptions were a cornerstone of enforcing the One Child Policy. But now China's population is collapsing, and that particular source of hope for U.S. families is gone for good.

by Yi Fuxian
March 15, 2025

Late last year, China’s government announced that it will no longer allow foreign adoptions of Chinese children, except by blood relatives or step-parents. The move reflects China’s changing perspective on population growth, with anxiety about overpopulation supplanted by fears that a rapidly aging, shrinking population threatens the country’s future.

For decades, adoption was critical to China’s One Child Policy. Additional pregnancies were either terminated, or the baby was given to a childless couple. In 1981, when I was in elementary school, officials gave an infant who had survived a forced abortion in a neighboring village to an infertile couple in mine. (The baby died soon after, owing to injuries related to the abortion attempt and a premature birth.)

A couple of my own relatives, threatened with huge fines and confiscation of farmland and livestock, had to give up children for adoption. They were still fined for illegally giving birth, but they were ab…