Each year, thousands of children, almost exclusively young girls, are adopted from the People's Republic of China. In the last five years, as many as 10,000 of them have found new homes in the United States.
These girls represent just the tip of the iceberg of a profound social phenomenon in China-the abandonment of hundreds of thousands of baby girls each year and the resulting development of an overburdened orphanage system to care for and raise them.
This trend, which has existed for almost 20 years, is the result of complex forces in Chinese society as the country struggles to limit its population growth. Such social engineering-sometimes subtle, sometimes overt-has attracted the attention of human rights activists worldwide. Further, it is likely to result in profound implications for China in the next 10 to 20 years and beyond.
The one-child policy  |
Fred Bazzoli is an editor for a health information technology magazine based in Chicago, Ill. He and his wife, Margaret, adopted their daughter, Ellen, from Nanchang, Jiangxi province, in November 1995, to join sisters Carolyn and Meredith.
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