The industry insiders said that overseas families wishing to adopt a Chinese child almost always make donations to the welfare home, leading homes to put up more children for adoption and resort to illegal practices to find more children, Xinhua reported.The article then mentions the earlier Hunan scandals about orphanages buying babies and the confiscations of children by family planning authorities. There is also a reference to "some welfare homes had been forging certificates to make trafficked children appear legally available for adoption," without attribution to any particular story. I mention this so that folks can guage whether this is reportage about what is already known or about something new in corruption in China adoption.
An agreement prepared by the adoption center of Nanchang City, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province, has a clause mentioning voluntary donations.
The amount suggested is 35,000 yuan (US$5,405), an unnamed insider told The Beijing News yesterday.
Fu Yuechan, director of the adoption center, admitted the mention of a donation but said the amount "could be negotiable."
The donation was part of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, an international agreement between participating countries on best procedures, Fu said.
Asked of the welfare home "sold" children for profit, Fu said the donation was used to cover the expense of raising them, the report said.
Under Hague Convention and China's Adoption Law, adoptive parents are not required to make donations and it is strictly prohibited for anyone to exploit the process for profit, the report said.
Tan Mingzhu, Party secretary of the Nanchang Welfare Home, told The Beijing News that it didn't profit from donations, which went to a special account managed by the Nanchang finance bureau.
But the newspaper found some welfare homes, eager to make money, resorted to criminality in their search for children to put up for adoption.
Some other interesting points: first, the references to "industry insiders." It would certainly be interesting to know if people inside the orphanages are now talking to the press. Second, the reference to the fact that Xinhua is reporting this -- Xinhua is the official Chinese news agency, not one of the independent, proprietary newspapers that has been reporting about corruption in Chinese adoption.
"Voluntary"...well, they sure weren't called "voluntary" back in 2002. Hmm. Any current adopters not giving the "voluntary" donation?
ReplyDeleteYes, I find it odd that they say due to Hague the "donation" cannot be mandatory, yet I have never heard of an adoptive parent that was not "required" to pay it. Anon-A
ReplyDeleteThe Hague does allow a sending country to charge a "reasonable" fee that takes account of the costs of caring for the child prior to the adoption. And it can be mandatory, so this stuff about voluntary donations is definitely weird.
ReplyDeleteWhen I asked my adoption agency if I could deduct the "donation" on my income tax return, as donations to charities are deductible, I was told that the IRS does not consider this a "donation" and therefore, I could not deduct it.
ReplyDeleteIn our paperwork this was called the "orphanage fee" and we wired the money directly to the provincial authorities. No mention of a voluntary donation. Our revisit was translated as "orphanage donation". As for taxes the 5000 this time and 3000 in 2006 were deducted as adoption expenses.
ReplyDeleteIt is corrupt, but most Chinese parents that cannot take care of their daughters,give their baby girls to the orphanage for a fee. The donation fee actually saves children, it is not untrue that baby girls were "done", in another words, killed.
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