The Chinese government announced the end of its international adoption program, leaving some Canadians who may have already been in the process of foreign adoption in the lurch.
During a daily briefing in the country on Thursday, Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, said the inter-country program will come to an immediate end, halting foreigners from adopting Chinese children.
Presently, only people who are blood relatives or step-relatives of Chinese children can apply for international adoption.
Much is still unclear about the fate of foreigners who have already begun the adoption processes, as well as the future of Chinese children living in orphanages.
Mao said the decision to stop international adoption was made in line with the spirit of relevant international conventions.
“We express our appreciation to those foreign governments and families, who wish to adopt Chinese children, for their good intention and the love and kindness they have shown,” she said.
Officials in Beijing told U.S. diplomats in China that international adoption “will not continue to process cases at any stage,” The Associated Press reported.
According to the non-profit China’s Children International, more than 160,000 Chinese children have been adopted by foreigners since the country began permitting international adoption in 1992. Over 82,000 of those children have been adopted in the U.S. alone.
China had already suspended foreign adoption during the COVID-19 pandemic. The country later resumed adoptions for families who received travel authorization prior to 2020, but the future of Chinese international adoption was hazy.
Chinese officials did not specify how adoption in the country will be handled domestically, or if potential adoptees will be matched to local families.
Beijing’s announcement comes as birth rates continue to fall in the country. The number of newborn babies declined to 9.02 million in 2023, while the overall population slumped for the second consecutive year.
China ended its one-child policy — an attempt to curb the country’s population by insisting families could only have a single child — in January 2016.
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Delia Ramsbotham, the executive director of the non-profit Sunrise Family Services Society in British Columbia, said the rate of Chinese international adoption in Canada had already slowed greatly prior to the pandemic.
Chinese children that were paired with Canadian parents, according to Ramsbotham, were often older, or were children with medical needs. Ramsbotham said any family who has not been issued their notice of travel, whether they are Canadian or from another country, has been told that their adoptions will not proceed.
“The families that are going to be impacted are the families who accepted a proposal of a child, or were matched with a child before the pandemic,” Ramsbotham explained. “Those families held out hope that at some point they’d be able to proceed with those adoptions.”
International adoption in Canada is handled by provincial and territorial authorities.
Ramsbotham said there are currently no families in British Columbia that had been paired with a Chinese child. She does, however, expect to see higher numbers of the permitted familial adoptions from China, especially amid news of halting international adoption.
Ontario’s Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services told Global News the province’s agencies have not facilitated Chinese adoption since 2018.
“There are no Ontario families currently in the process of legal intercountry adoption from China,” the ministry wrote.
The Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) said its first priority is to “protect the safety and well-being of the child/children involved in international adoptions.”
“We are aware of this recent announcement by China and are working closely with contacts in China to review the changes,” the IRCC wrote in a statement. “We are also working with provincial and territorial partners to determine how many Canadian families will be affected by this change as adoptions fall under their jurisdiction.”
Ramsbotham speculated there are some families in Quebec who had been paired with a Chinese child and will be affected by the program’s end.
Quebec’s International Children’s Services Secretariat has not yet replied to a Global News inquiry.
South of the border, Ramsbotham said there are approximately 400 American families who had earlier been matched with a Chinese adoptee and were waiting for application advances.
International adoption is often expensive. The government of Ontario said agencies or individually licensed agents for international adoptions usually charge between $20,000 and $50,000 for their services.
It is unclear if Canadians who were in the process of adopting from China will receive any reimbursement from agencies or be returned any fees that have already been paid.
Adoptees on a quest for information
There aren’t many answers yet for Canadians who may have been in the process of adopting from China.
Karen Moore, the executive director of the Adoption Council of Ontario, said the biggest impact is likely to be faced by Chinese adoptees who have already come to Canada.
“Whenever there’s a change in the adoption landscape, it has impact on those who are waiting to adopt, but also those who already have — and the children, youth or adult adoptees who are on adoption journeys themselves,” she said.
Moore called adoption “a lifelong, changing experience” and a “continuation of someone’s story, rather than a new story.”
She said news of China ending international adoption could affect Chinese natives who were adopted by foreign families years ago and may be searching for information on their biological parents, familial history and culture.
“Often we have adoptees who are needing, wanting and deserving to be able to have the information of who they are, where they’ve come from, who their people are, who their birth family are,” she explained. “Any time there’s a change to policy or where we can access information, that has an impact on people’s journeys and knowledge about themselves.”
“Oftentimes in international adoption, we may not have the ability to access those pieces of who they are. And it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter to them,” she said. “What it means is we often can’t get that information, and that’s a loss and grief that people have to take with them and hold on throughout their life’s journey.”
Canada and China are signed to the Hague Convention, which protects children and their families against the risks of illegal, irregular, premature or ill-prepared adoptions abroad. All signee nations must agree to the adoption and must safeguard the best interests of the child and respect their human rights to prevent the abduction, sale of, or traffic in children.
Ramsbotham said she is hopeful China opted to end foreign adoption so that adoptees can be cared for within the country — though she noted it can be particularly tricky to obtain such information from Chinese officials.
“When a country gets to the point where they don’t need inter-country adoptions anymore, it’s actually a success story,” she said. “The hope is that the reason they don’t need it is because they’ve got the child welfare system that meets their own internal needs.”
— With files from The Associated Press