Results

The year 2000 witnessed significant changes in the legalities surrounding transnational adoptions, mainly because in September of 2000, the United States ratified a Hague Convention treaty that attempts to provide global standards, safeguards and practices for parents, agencies

and orphanages. Some key points of the treaty are that adoption agencies and facilitators must be approved at a national level, the child’s country of origin must maintain birth and adoption records, entry into the host country must be pre-approved before the adoption is finalized, all fees and policies must be publicly disclosed, children with two birth parents became “eligible orphans,” and agencies that conduct home-studies must be Convention accredited (Freivalds 2001).¹⁵

On October 30, 2000, President Clinton also signed into law H.R. 2883, the Child Citizenship Act of 2000. While the regulations regarding the implementation of this law are currently being drafted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, in effect, this law states that

“Beginning February 27, 2001, certain foreign-born children - including adopted children - currently residing permanently in the United States will acquire citizenship automatically”

(http://www.ins.gov/graphics/publicaffairs/factsheets/adopted.htm). In short, Chinese children can now meet their parents, board a plane, travel perhaps fifteen hours and, immediately upon landing on U.S. soil, “become” Americans. The lengthy process of acquiring citizenship, much to the relief of adoptive parents, has been largely eliminated for adopted children, in marked contrast to those who fall into other categories of immigrants.

China has also changed its policies on adoption, especially with regard to domestic adoption. Chinese birth planning policies up to 1999 treated adoptions within an “as if” biological framework, and thus considered a couple to have filled their quota of “births” regardless of whether their children were biological or adopted. However, these policies were revised in 1999 to give consideration to adoptive parents, and thus, hopefully, encourage domestic adoption. Though

15 There are extensive details and regulations with regard to home study requirements. Requirements are included within the text of the Hague Treaty and are also readily disclosed by accredited agencies.

she criticizes birth planning policies as damaging to families and women, Kay Johnson, in Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son (2005), notes that there has been a considerable increase in the number of official domestic adoptions. Johnson notes that 10,700 children were adopted by Chinese from Chinese SWIs in 2000, an increase of 4000 children from the previous year. In addition, “[t]here were also 24,400 registered domestic adoptions of foundlings outside welfare institutions in 1999 and 37,000 in 2000 adoptions” (Johnson 2005:150). However, she notes these increases are only in registered adoption. Given that historically, many adoptions in China were arranged outside of the state system, these figures do not necessarily represent an overall increase in adoption (2005:150).

The recent changes in U.S. immigration policy (the Citizenship Act of 2000), 1999 Chinese revisions to birth planning policies, and the Hague Convention treaty on international adoptions are all critical examples of state, and global responses to the local demands of U.S.

parents eager to expand their family through transnational adoption, the perceived need for regulation and the prevention of baby “selling,” and resistance of local families to national birth planning and economic policies. This dialogue is indicative of the complex webs of power relations expressed between and across the local, state, and global centers of power. Furthermore, these policy changes illustrate how the needs and desires of parents and children, (i.e., families) create situations in which state and global authorities feel compelled to respond. Regulating agencies such as U.S. state and federal governments, the Chinese provincial authorities and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the international body at the Hague, utilize tools such as home studies, immigration policies, and international treaties to mediate and even facilitate local familial needs. While this provides an important service to adoptive families, this form of regulation, like other modes of policing the family, illustrates how the key purpose of regulation is to ensure the

“good fortune of the state through the wisdom of its regulation and to augment its forces and its powers to the limits of its capabilities [situating the family] as both queen and prisoner” of the state (Donzelot 1979:7).

The reaction of the U.S. adoption community to these legal changes is compelling. Many view these changes as very real, first time public statements that “confirm the legitimacy and even the desirability of intercountry adoptions arrangements made between countries” by providing ethical accountability and a “central source of authoritative information [which] may keep intercountry adoption alive for decades to come” (Freivalds 2001, 30). Although 42 nations have accepted the Hague treaty, the U.S. adoption community clearly interprets the actions of various nations quite differently. For example, for many U.S. parents, to be a Chinese citizen implies that you are victimized by the state, its oppressive policies, and the resulting inadequate infrastructure.

Although there is no discernible pattern between nations that have implemented the treaty and nations that have not, it is frequently assumed that the Chinese government would oppose implementation of the treaty since they oppose ratification of other treaties perceived to be

“good” by the United States. Therefore, despite the strong state level regulation already in place in China, their signature of the treaty was seen as a “surprise move” and the liminal status of China was noted (Adoptive Families Magazine January/February 2001 13).¹⁶ That same assumption is not made about Great Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, countries that have been equally slow to implement the treaty but that are “receiving”

16 Of the 42 nations involved, at the time of this trip in 2001 the following twelve countries had adopted but not fully ratified the treaty: United Kingdom, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, Switzerland, Uruguay, Bolivia, Russia, Germany, Slovakia, Belarus and China. As of October 12, 2005, China had fully ratified the Hague treaty.

countries (i.e. countries that have a large population of adoptive parents), and whose policies are perceived to be more altruistic.

Among U.S. parents, scholars, and activists, there were two main factors that might account for the interpretation of China’s hesitation in ratifying the treaty. First, China accounts for the greatest single number of adoptees currently coming to the United States and is thus monitored very closely. Second, many argue that China’s government has changed and opened dramatically since 1978 but remains a communist state with coercive birth planning policies and is consequently singled out for particular criticism.

While these are perhaps factors in Western perceptions of China’s participation in the world community, I would argue that in the case of adoption, China’s ratification status was singled out because of an increasingly pervasive perception of the “sending” countries (countries who have large adoptee populations and are most often underdeveloped nations in Asia and Latin and South America) as an “Other” whose state and family systems are unable to accommodate the needs of children. In conversations and articles concerning this subject, the adoption community consistently invests a nation’s signature with a meaning that extends beyond the legalities involved and addresses how political economy is tied to their perceptions of what it means to be Chinese. Patterns of transnational adoption are often situated within concerns of stratified reproduction and the transnational flow of children from developing, “producing” nations to wealthy “consuming” nations (Hartmann 1995; Solinger 2001). These concerns and issues of race will be discussed in Chapter 4, Gender, Race and Citizenship. However, the primary concerns of parents remain focused on the “local” as they begin to build their families, not on state and global legalities.