China Halts Foreign Adoption of Children Amid Demographic Crisis

The Chinese government on Friday announced that it will no longer allow foreign families to adopt Chinese children, ending a program that has found homes overseas for more than 160,000 children since 1992. While Beijing refused to clearly explain its decision, most observers suspected it was a response to declining birth rates in China.

The cutoff of foreign adoptions was so abrupt that families with pending cases had no idea if their adoptions would go forward. When the U.S. State Department sought clarification, Chinese officials said they “will not continue to process cases at any stage.”

“We understand there are hundreds of families still pending completion of their adoption, and we sympathize with their situation,” the State Department said.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry mumbled something about bringing foreign adoptions into line with “the spirit of relevant international conventions.”

This might have been a vague reference to Denmark and the Netherlands saying earlier this year that they will no longer allow overseas adoptions. Both of those decisions were prompted by bureaucratic irregularities and allegations of fraudulent paperwork, after a sharp decline in foreign adoptions during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. (Read more from “China Halts Foreign Adoption of Children Amid Demographic Crisis” HERE)