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 able to manage, and at least their babies were safe. The same cannot be said of the children of families who could not afford the fines, as they were often left on roadsides. Though their parents might tuck some cash into their blankets in the hopes that someone would take in their abandoned newborn, such a happy outcome was rare, not least because families with children were not eligible to adopt.
Illegally born babies’ chances of survival improved in 1992, when the government began allowing international adoptions, effectively exporting the “burden” of “excess” children. With that, China’s government not only relieved itself of the financial pressures associated with supporting orphans, but also gained a new revenue stream: donations from foreign adoptive families.
International adoptions were so lucrative, with foreign families paying thousands of dollars to adopt a Chinese child, that some local governments took to “confiscating” babies. In one case, twins were separated; one was sent to an adoptive family in the United States, and the other remained in China with her biological parents.
When it came to supplying children for adoption, China was tough to beat. An abundance of babies and a centralized, predictable, and relatively affordable adoption process — about half as much as adopting in the US — quickly turned China into a leading country-of-origin for international adoptions, which reached 160,000 over the last three decades, peaking in 2005, at 13,000.
The US is a leading destination: in 1999-2022, American families adopted 82,658 Chinese children – nearly one-third of all US adoptions from foreign countries. If one includes pre-1999 adoptions, it is estimated that US families have adopted more than 100,000 Chinese children, some of whom were taken from their parents by family-planning officials.
Girls have been more likely to be put up for adoption than boys, reflecting Chinese parents’ preference for sons. But that preference has not been nearly as pronounced as the international community seems to believe, and it was clearly the One Child Policy that fueled it. In 2000, there were 120 boys aged 0-4 for every 100 girls across China. But where a two-child policy had been piloted since the mid-1980s, the ratio was far more balanced, with 103 boys for every 100 girls in Yicheng county and 110 boys for every 100 girls in Jiuquan prefecture. This is in line with the global average: across human populations, there tend to be 103-107 male babies for every 100 female ones.
In any case, other countries also tend to prefer sons over daughters. In ten Gallup surveys conducted between 1941 and 2011, about 40% of American respondents said that, if they would have one child, they would prefer for it be a boy, while about 28% said they would prefer a girl. The difference is that, in China, the One Child Policy forced parents to make cruel choices.
China’s foreign-adoption machine could not run forever. The country’s fertility rate dropped from 2.3 children per woman in 1990 to 1.6-1.7 in 2010, naturally reducing the number of children available for adoption. At the same time, the infertility rate rose from 1-2% in the 1970s to 10-15% in 2010 and 18% in 2020, increasing domestic demand for adoption. Meanwhile, fertility rules were loosened: a “selective two-child policy” was introduced in 2014, then made universal in 2016, with a three-child policy following in 2021. As a result, far more Chinese families became eligible to adopt.
These developments, together with the tightening of international adoption rules in 2007, contributed to a sharp decline in US adoptions of Chinese children, from 7,903 in 2005 to 6,492 in 2006, 2,696 in 2012, and just 819 in 2019. (China suspended international adoptions during the COVID-19 pandemic.)
This can be viewed as part of a broader shift away from international adoption. Some receiving countries — including Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway — have restricted or suspended the practice, largely over ethical concerns about adoption procedures. Remarkably, while the US has not introduced such restrictions, foreign adoptions by Americans have declined precipitously, from 22,987 in 2004 to just 1,517 in 2022.
But the goal of easing domestic demographic pressures is the main motive for the Chinese government’s decision to ban foreign adoptions, despite speculation by international media that it is politically motivated. Not long ago, Russia took a similar step. In 1992-2012, Russia was among the leading countries-of-origin for international adoptions, with Americans adopting 60,000 Russian children, as the chart shows. But in 2012, it banned adoptions by American families. While there was a political dimension to the decision, Russia’s rapidly declining fertility rate — from 2.0 in 1989 to 1.16 in 1999 — was the leading factor.
As for China, its fertility rate continues to fall, despite the implementation of the three-child policy and other government efforts to encourage childbirth. Last year, it was 1.0 across China and just 0.6 — the lowest rate in the world — in provinces like Shanghai and Heilongjiang.
Given the severity of China’s demographic crisis, ending international adoption amounts to a mere drop in the bucket. Still, it is a welcome change, as it highlights the Chinese government’s recognition, at long last, that people should not be viewed as a burden. One can only hope for a broader shift toward policies that respect life and protect human rights.
— Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spearheaded the movement against China’s One Child Policy and is the author of Big Country with an Empty Nest (China Development Press, 2013), which went from being banned in China to ranking first in China Publishing Today’s 100 Best Books of 2013 in China. This article originally appeared at Project Syndicate.
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I had read there is a shortage of Chinese women of childbearing age to match the number of young men in China. I see that the birth rate of male babies was slightly more than female, which is normal, but I didn’t see this in the article. Is it true?