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China recently ended most international adoptions, leaving hundreds of families devastated as all pending applications are suspended. 

As of Aug. 28, the Chinese government ceased foreign adoptions in order to be “in line” with international trends, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told Reuters. 

The ban affects all international adoptions except for cases where parents are adopting their own children or stepchildren from China. The decision has significant implications, particularly on families who have waited years to adopt children from China. 

“We want answers. We wonder what the kids who had pictures of us and videos of us, do they think that, ‘Oh I’ve been abandoned again?’” Laurie Carey from Birmingham, Ala., told NPR. 

Three years ago, Carey was set to adopt a little boy from China. She would cherish videos of the 3-year-old boy, who would say “mama” and “baba” while looking at pictures of Carey and her family, according to NPR. 

The family expected a delay due to the pandemic, yet after two years, the situation remained unclear. 

“‘Just be patient’ is what we were told for four years,” Carey told NPR. “‘Just be patient,’ which is hard when you have a child on the other side of the world and your whole life is … wrapped up in this.” 

When word about China’s policy change went out in August, it was the worst form of closure for families who spent years waiting. 

Over the last three decades, international families have adopted 160,000 Chinese children—half of whom were adopted by U.S. families. Most adoptees are girls or children with disabilities. 

Why China Implemented the Adoption Ban 

After China abandoned its 35-year-old “one-child policy,” it is now facing a “demographic crisis,” according to Michael Cunningham, a research fellow specializing in China’s domestic politics and foreign policy at The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center.  

 Cunningham told The Daily Signal there are several reasons motivating China’s decision. 

“They have a declining birth rate, and they’re coming into a demographic crisis,” Cunningham explained. “They want to keep as many of their children in China as possible.” 

Cunningham expects that some Chinese families will step up to “give these disadvantaged children an opportunity,” although he warned that there will likely be many orphans who don’t have the benefit of a loving family to care for them. 

Foreign adoption restrictions are changing globally, and Cunningham said international adoption is “controversial everywhere.”  

As it pertains to China, Cunningham said the issue is whether a child would be better off being adopted by a foreign family or spending their childhood living in an orphanage. 

As of 2022, there were 159,000 orphans in China, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. That data suggests there could be an additional 353,000 orphans in China that live independently or whose extended families cannot care for them. 

China’s Population Policies 

After more than three decades of enforcing its one-child policy, the Chinese Communist Party is now seeking to incentivize population growth.  

Cunningham said the COVID-19 pandemic showed the Chinese that they could implement a ban on international adoptions without facing a population problem. The CCP used the pandemic period to test the impact of cutting international adoptions.  

“It was so hard—in most cases impossible—to do the adoptions during the pandemic,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham added that China’s decision doesn’t appear to be malicious but rather in its own interest to address its needs. Even with that being the case, Cunningham speculated that China would likely need to offer incentives to Chinese families to encourage adoption. 

“There’s no longer a ‘one-child policy,’ but people are still not having babies,” he said. “The cost of living is quite high now. It’s often seen as being too expensive to have more children. The government is trying to get people to have more children now, and they’re failing to do so.” 

Cunningham pointed to decades of population control, including the one-child policy, as difficult cultural barriers to overcome. 

“Will it be enough to convince families to adopt children after decades of forcing them to abort children, sometimes forcibly ripping children out of the arms of their parents because they weren’t supposed to have another child?”

China’s new approach will not only have implications in its own country for years to come, but more immediately on the many U.S. families whose hopes for adoption appear unlikely to happen.