So Goes China: The End ofIntercountry Adoption asWe Know It?

Abstract In September 2024, the People’s Republic of China announced that it was closing its intercountry adoption program after 30years. Since this program was once one of the most active in the world, its cessation brings the future of intercountry adoption into question. Here, we present a brief history of intercountry adoptions from China and other countries, discuss reasons for its demise, and consider the consequences—for China’s children and for intercountry adoptions more broadly. We question whether we are indeed seeing the end of intercountry adoption “as we know it,” while recognizing the emergence of new systems of care. This includes improved child protection, family preservation, and alternative forms of care — including domestic adoption in previous “sending” countries like China — that more closely align with children’s rights. Keywords Intercountry adoption· Social work· China· Child rights· Social welfare China has been one of the top three countries of origin for intercountry adoptions (ICAs) over the last 30 years, spe- cifically for those adopted to the USA (Neville & Rotabi, 2020; Selman, 2024). On September 5, 2024, China announced that it was ending its ICA program, stating only that it wished to bring its policy “in line” with international standards. China’s ICA closure does indeed follow several other countries closing to ICA, but the world’s reliance on China as a primary source for “adoptable” children for over three dec- ades means its closure is felt to have a larger impact, particu- larly as ICAs continue to wane worldwide (Selman, 2020). In this article, we explore the decline of ICA and ques- tion whether the closure of ICA in China is in fact the end of ICA “as we know it.” We consider the significance of this trend for children’s rights and social welfare, as per the Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), 1989) — specifically, the right of a child to be cared for by their own parents whenever possible (Article 7); for the child to not be separated from their parents against their will, except by a competent authority guided by the best interests of the child (Article 9); to receive care that is congruent with their cultural background (Article 20); to not be sold, kidnapped, or adopted in a manner that violates the domestic laws of their home country; and to not be adopted to other coun- tries when appropriate care is available in the child’s home country (Article 21). Ultimately, we argue that, though this may be the end of ICA “as we know it”—characterized as it has been by illicit and ethically questionable practices—this development actually bodes well for children’s rights and well-being, in China and elsewhere. Overall Global Decline ofIntercountry Adoption: US Statistics Since its peak in 2004, ICAs have dropped by approximately 90% (Selman, 2024). Because the USA has been the most frequent receiving country in the world, with US citizens adopting nearly half (48.1%) of all children adopted inter- nationally (Neville & Rotabi, 2020; Selman, 2012, 2024), the use of US State Department data is illustrative. The overall trend of ICA to the USA is illustrated in Fig.1. It is notable that US adoptions from China remained consistently higher than adoptions from other major sending countries from the 1990s until 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began and virtually all intercountry adoption ceased glob- ally. In that time, however, over 120,000 children left China for international adoption—at least 85,000 of them to the USA (Johnson, 2016

Despite the outcry that China’s halt in ICAs has elicited from the international press, primarily for how it inconveniences prospective parents (see, for example, Kim, 2024), China has been gradually drawing down its ICA program for some time now: Since its peak in 2005 when nearly 15,000 children were adopted from China, only 15 were adopted in 2022 (Selman, 2024; see Fig.2). To understand why the numbers dropped, however, we must first consider how China came to be the top sending country for ICAs in the first place. 

China’s One‑Child Policy The rapid growth in ICA from China is overwhelmingly attributed to its One-Child Policy, a state-imposed plan to thwart rapid population growth by restricting most families to having a single child between 1979 and 2015. Mainland China became a significant source of ICAs when it opened to foreign adoptive parents in 1992. Kay Ann Johnson, who carried out extensive field research in China, outlined a com- plex social context: …the standard discourse of intercountry adoption from China explains that healthy infant girls, the most desir- able object in intercountry adoption, became available in large numbers in the 1990s because of the clash between an ancient patriarchal Chinese culture and the government’s effort to control runaway population growth through a set of policies commonly referred to as the ‘One Child Policy’ (Johnson, 2012, p. 128). When families could only have one child in this patrilo- cal society, many opted to keep male children, who were expected to remain and provide care for their parents in old age, whereas girls were expected to move to their husband’s home once they married and to contribute to that household. Due to this preference for male children, abandonment of overwhelmingly female children — as well as disabled chil- dren — into large residential care institutions created a push factor for ICA (Dowling & Brown, 2009; Selman, 2009). However, Johnson also pointed out that gender pref- erences and ICAs were only part of the story; if given a choice, Chinese families would have preferred children of both sexes. But factors such as China’s strict birth control program prevented them from doing so; pregnant women were coerced into abortions or abandonment of their chil- dren born “out of plan” (Johnson, 2016). This scheme violated not only the parents’ rights to family life but also children’s rights to life, family, identity, and nationality—as well as precipitating a rise in child trafficking. Moreover, in addition to China’s draconian family planning program leading to mass child abandonment, the lack of government social services—from old age to disability support—meant that many disabled boys were abandoned, along with girls (Johnson, 2016). Passage of the 1992 Adoption Law meant that many of these children ended up in ICAs, as the law not only opened the country to ICAs but also limited domestic adoptions to one child per childless couple over 35years of age (Wilkerson, 2021, p. 465). For many years, then, China was viewed as a stable and secure source of internationally adoptable children (Dowl- ing & Brown, 2009; Selman, 2020). However, evidence of corruption and illicit adoption practices intersecting with the One-Child Policy gradually emerged. For example, Meier and Zhang (2008) documented a scandal in Hunan, in which government officials utilized the One-Child Pol- icy to forcibly remove infants from families—even those allowed more than one child, such as families living in the countryside whose first-born child was a girl . The abducted children were sold into the ICA sys- tem. As is the case in other countries with a history of illicit adoptions, the children’s identities were changed in order to make them appear abandoned. These children may be called “paper orphans” as their paperwork was altered to make them appear to be without parents due to death, or “social orphans” due to abandonment (Huygens, 2013; Terre des Hommes & UNICEF, 2010). It is notable that the term “orphan” is often a misnomer (Rotabi & Bunkers, 2011), as it has been estimated that roughly 80% of children liv- ing in residential care institutions (so-called orphanages) worldwide have at least one living parent and are in those institutions largely because of poverty (Csáky, 2009, p. 5). The Hague Convention onIntercountry Adoption China signed the 1993 Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption(HCIA) in 2005, the year in which the highest number of ICAs from China—nearly 15,000—was recorded. The HCIA is a binding international convention that holds signatories to child rights-based standards to ensure that ICAs are in the best interests of the child. This includes the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that domestic options for finding a family for children without parental care should be exhausted before ICA can be considered. Its intent is to strengthen adoption practices and prevent illicit adoptions involving “the abduction, the sale of, or traffic in children” (The Hague Conference on Private International Law, 1993). Since China signed the convention, the number of ICAs from there has dropped precipitously with each con- secutive year (see Figs.1 and 2), though the HCIA has not always been effective in curbing criminality in ICA practices (Cheney, 2023). Additional Restrictions onICAs In the early twenty-first century, China’s adoption program saw a significant downturn in sending children overseas, with at least a 60% reduction from 2005 to 2010 (Selman, 2012). The policies and practices shifted as a result of the Chinese government placing restrictions on who can adopt internationally and domestically. These included a ban on single women and gay couples, among other factors like prospective adoptive parents’ body weight (Bellock & Yardley, 2006; Selman, 2009). Domestic adoptions became more prevalent as the Chinese government allowed Chinese families to adopt their own citizen children—albeit with restrictions as noted above (Johnson, 2012). Subsequently, many of the children who entered the ICA system after 2010 were considered “special needs,” ranging from children with minor physical deformities to those with chronic physical and developmental disabilities (Dowling & Brown, 2009).

The End oftheOne‑Child Policy In 2016, China’s One-Child Policy was abolished, allow- ing Chinese couples to have two children (Johnson, 2016). This change was crucial, as China was starting to experience adverse demographic effects from the policy, including an aging population/workforce and a gender imbalance skewed toward males, which could adversely affect the country’s emerging economy. In 2021, the state allowed Chinese families to have three children (Feng, 2021). This prompted further reformation of China’s adoption and child protection systems, prioritizing the best interests of children through family preservation and limiting institutionalization (Wilkerson, 2021). Limiting ICAs toChildren withSpecial Needs Despite the outcry at the news of the closure, China’s ICA program had already been restricted to children with spe- cial needs. By 2009, 49% (over 60% of those adopted to the USA, the Netherlands, and Sweden) of all ICAs from China were already special-needs children (Selman, 2020). There is some speculation about whether the increase in aban- donment of special-needs children to Chinese orphanages spurred their adoptions by foreigners, or whether foreign demand spurred their abandonment, but the percentage of abandoned children who also had disabilities or other special needs increased by 50% from 2008 to 2015 (Raffety, 2019). There has therefore been some concern about China creating an ICA “market” for special-needs children, raising addi- tional concerns about incentivizing abandonment (at best) and (at worst) trafficking children with special needs into ICA. Leslie Wang (2016) argued that China started promot- ing the adoption of special-needs children and “grooming” them for futures in middle-class foreign homes, effectively “outsourcing” care for China’s unwanted children. In any case, the number of special-needs children gradually came to dominate ICAs from China while the country drew down adoptions of healthy infants and toddlers, especially with the lifting of the One-Child Policy. ICA Interruptions Due toCOVID The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2022 essentially closed down ICAs globally (Fronek & Rotabi, 2020) for the dura- tion of lockdowns and travel bans, with different countries reopening on timelines related to their lifting of restrictions. As China was the epicenter of the pandemic, the lockdown there was quite dramatic, and the lifting of restrictions occurred later than in other countries (Zhou & Tian, 2023). According to Wilkerson (2021, p. 479), “Aside from the uncertainty within ICA processes resulting from COVID- 19, the temporary cessation of international travel allowed countries to focus on domestic affairs and reform adoption practices to address the social injustices and poverty among those in need.” Reopening borders thus did not result in a resurgence of ICAs, as was hoped by prospective families with open adoption cases. Even as other countries reopened to ICA, China still refused to process ICAs, ostensibly to protect adopted chil- dren from COVID-19 (Wilkerson, 2021). At the same time, concerns about COVID originating in China may have led prospective adoptive parents to search elsewhere for adopt- able children. The COVID-19 health emergency therefore only hastened the end of Chinese ICAs. Why Did China Close Its ICA Program? This gradual closure in the wake of COVID restrictions makes sense—not only because of widespread evidence of human rights violations in ICAs globally (Loibl & Mackenzie, 2023), but also because ICA was only ever meant to be a tempo- rary measure to weather crises in care. Indeed, ICA has been proven not to be an effective child protection measure, espe- cially when one considers the number of children in need of parental care globally versus the number of children actually adopted internationally (Rotabi & Bromfield, 2017). ICA has always ebbed and flowed, with such circumstances precipi- tating an opening of the market to meet demand (Cheney, 2014; Cheney & Rotabi, 2017), so it is no surprise that China has experienced a similar shift. While China has increased its wealth, its demographics have shifted such that perhaps too few babies are being born. China is currently the second largest economy in the world (U.S. Bank, 2024) and so will have more trouble claiming that they cannot take care of Chi- nese children, including those with disabilities. Countries that experience such growth tend to close down ICA programs as a point of national pride, suggesting that while they may have needed to “outsource” care for a while, they can now provide for their own children. As mentioned above, fewer and fewer children were being offered for ICA amidst falling birth rates in China—fall-out, perhaps, from the One-Child Policy that survived long enough to become ingrained in the society, where parents and their children were harshly pun- ished for violating the rules. As also noted above, the policy had the effect of skewing the sex ratio in favor of males, such that men are now finding it difficult to meet women eligible for marriage (Feng, 2021). In addition, the increasing costs of living—particularly child care—have caused young Chinese citizens to delay and even forego having children. Reuters reports that the birth rate has fallen for two consecutive years, despite China incentivizing young women to have children (Feng, 2021; Master, 2024). In 2022, deaths in China outnum- bered live births for the first time since 1961, posing a threat to recent economic growth (Ng, 2023).

The End ofICA asWe Know It? China’s Closure inInternational Perspective When China announced that it was ending ICAs, spokes- person Mao Ning stated only that it was “in line with inter- national trends” (Master, 2024). This is indeed the case, as a number of other countries have either reduced or ended their ICA programs for various reasons. Russia, the sec- ond most common sending country since 2004 (Selman, 2024), ceased adoptions to the USA in 2012 for largely political reasons (Rotabi & Bromfield, 2017). Ethiopia, the third largest sending country since 2004 (Selman, 2024), closed its program in 2018 due to concerns over corrup- tion, child trafficking, and adopted children’s well-being following high-profile cases of abuse, neglect, and death (BBC, 2018; Steenrod, 2021). Several more African coun- tries have also closed ICA programs due to illicit practices and other concerns about adopted children’s rights. Guate- mala, the fourth-largest sending country, had already closed its ICA program in 2007 due to illicit practices, includ- ing intermediaries paying birthmothers for relinquishment and even child abductions into adoption (Bunkers etal., 2009; Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad, CICIG [International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala], 2010; Monico etal., 2022). South Korea makes for an interesting comparison with China, as it was the first country to engage in large-scale ICA in the wake of the civil war in the 1950s. As such, it is the only country which has sent more children abroad in adoptions than China. Today, both are relatively wealthy Asian countries, and for a long time, both were lauded as having sound ICA policies and strict regulations. How- ever, in recent years, illicit practices and irregularities have marred both countries’ reputations in regard to ICA. Though South Korea imposed no national birth control program, persistent stigmatization of single motherhood and poverty have been identified as major factors in the number of babies available for ICA—many of whom were preyed upon by unscrupulous, for-profit, government-abetted adop- tion agencies looking to meet overseas demand for adopt- able children (Tong-hyung, 2025). Agencies procured babies directly from hospitals and maternity homes, using illegal payments. Many adoptees who searched for their origins found that their identity documents had been doctored or switched with other children’s files to facilitate speedy adop- tions (Tong-hyung and Galofaro, 2024). Kim Tong-hyung (2025) writes, “Most Korean adoptees were registered by agencies as abandoned orphans, even though many had rela- tives who could have been easily identified or located. This practice has often made it difficult—or even impossible—for them to trace their roots.” Due to this and other violations of adoptees’ rights to identity, family life, and culture, they lobbied the Korean government for a Truth and Reconcili- ation Commission (TRC) on ICA. In March 2025, the TRC released its first report, which implicated the government in fraud and abuse in at least 56 of the hundreds of cases filed by adult adoptees (Tong-hyung, 2025). Though it is unclear whether the TRC will proceed due to political turnover, some reforms are already taking shape: South Korea rati- fied the HCIA and ended private adoptions, in line with the Convention’s requirement that signatory countries establish a Central Authority whose primary mission is to protect the rights of the child in ICAs (Jihae, 2025). However, ICAs persist, even as hundreds of adoptees await justice from the TRC for human rights violations. With every closure of a country to ICA over the years, a new adoption destination has typically emerged. In line with free-market principles, ICA has moved from countries that impose regulations to countries with fewer regulations (Cheney, 2014). Even though Africa was considered to be the new frontier for ICA a little over a decade ago (Bun- kers etal., 2012; The African Child Policy Forum, 2012), Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have since declared moratoria, mainly due to the rapid growth in illicit practices (Trillas, 2006); others, like Uganda, have severely restricted ICAs by enforcing resi- dence requirements for prospective adoptive parents, allow- ing only for medical exceptions (Cheney, 2021). But by some measure, Africa was already the last frontier for ICA; there is simply no “new frontier” to open beyond Africa, thereby making the continent the final frontier (Rotabi & Bromfield, 2017). In fact, both countries of origin and receiving countries have closed their ICA programs. The Netherlands placed a moratorium on ICAs in 2021 — after a government inquiry revealed unethical and illicit practices (Loibl, 2021) — which was lifted briefly but then permanently reinstated in 2024 after outcry from Dutch adoptee advocates and activ- ist groups (De Vries, De Vos, and Cheney, forthcoming). Several other EU countries, including Belgium, Denmark, France, Norway, and Switzerland, appear to be following suit, as they have launched similar investigations that are coming to the same conclusions (Kruijsse-Brugge, 2024; SWI, 2025). These findings imply that illicit ICA practices are indeed systemic. Moreover, advances in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and the growth of the international commercial sur- rogacy industry are often posited as reasons why ICA has declined. ARTs have offered viable alternatives — especially for prospective LGBTQ+ families excluded by ICA send- ing-country policies — with the added bonus of a genetic relationship between the child(ren) and at least one parent. ARTs are thus in fact the new frontier in alternative family formation (Rotabi & Bromfield, 2017).  

Supporting China’s “Unwanted” Children To ensure that the closure of ICA is sustainable, the Chi- nese government and social service workforce will need to do more to support families—which ICA programs often disincentivize (Cheney & Rotabi, 2017). This includes providing more affordable childcare options to encourage couples to have more children, if that is their objective. As for children currently living in institutional care, the state can do more to encourage domestic adoptions within China. Though the state-sponsored foster care system has aided rather than replaced ICA with more sustainable domestic practices that would support the rights of children (Raffety, 2023), this closure may quickly change that. China will also need to reduce the stigma of disability in order to discourage abandonment, prevent unnecessary sepa- ration, and support families to raise children with special needs — though, as mentioned above, the Chinese govern- ment has been accused of perpetuating disability stigma in order to maintain ICA (Raffety, 2019; Wang, 2016). Despite international concerns that the ICA closure will cause undue suffering for China’s special-needs children, maintaining an ICA program is not the answer for those children in need of care. As Raffety (2019) writes, …any proposed solution to the problem of disabled abandonments in China must take into account not only the Chinese government’s lack of welfare provi- sions and discrimination toward children with disabili- ties, but also the demand for such children from the West and international structures that facilitate ICAs at the expense of sending countries and in favor of adopting countries. In other words, effective alternative care solutions actu- ally begin with the closure of ICA. Yin (2024) has noted that China had already been bolstering its alternative care system for nearly a decade, having reduced the number of children in need of alternative care by two-thirds between 2014 and 2021. With ICA’s market structure now removed, however, it remains to be seen whether China will continue stepping up to “take care of their own.” Significantly, there is evidence that Chinese families are willing to adopt special-needs children (Raffety, 2023); they just need to be supported to do so. Many countries (far poorer than China, e.g., Rwanda) that had previously insti- tutionalized children with disabilities have come to realize that such children do better when raised in a family environ- ment (as do all children), and so have focused on lessening stigma and increasing their support to families of children with disabilities in order to reduce reliance on institutionali- zation for disabled children and ensure their rights to family life (Habimfura, 2023). This is also a more cost-effective solution than maintaining institutions that are damaging to children’s development (Williamson & Greenberg, 2010). The Future ofICA In closing, we note that very few children were actually impacted by Chinese adoptions when one considers that the population of China is well over one billion people. As a result, ICA was never truly an effective child protection meas- ure for orphaned and vulnerable children in China—nor has it been anywhere else. This is particularly true when factor- ing in a history of illicit adoption practices, including child trafficking, sales, and abduction (Rotabi & Bromfield, 2017). As ICA ends in China and elsewhere, instead of respond- ing with alarm, we should acknowledge that countries like China have been developing their child protection and alternative care systems. It is now time for those systems to engage in supporting children and families to prevent unnec- essary separation or out-of-family care and, when necessary, intervene appropriately with approaches that adhere to child rights. It seems China may now focus more on family pres- ervation and/or domestic adoption as a solution for those children who might otherwise have ended up in the ICA pipeline — and that is a good thing, in line not only with global trends but with international best practices and the recognized rights of children to family life, national identity, and culture (UNCRC, 1989). In summary, it does appear that the end of ICA, as we have known it, is upon us. While there may still be countries willing to engage in ICA as a stop-gap measure in child care emergen- cies, more and more countries are acknowledging the pattern of corruption and criminality that puts children at risk as much as it might provide an avenue of “rescue” from difficult cir- cumstances (Cheney, 2023). Though some countries (includ- ing China) still allow a small number of ICAs by biological relatives abroad, ICA as a whole has in fact been in decline for two decades, and it is unlikely that we will see the high numbers we did in the early 2000 s again. So, it is indeed the end of ICA “as we know it.” As we move forward, though, it is important to recognize that China and other previously active countries of origin have the capacity to strengthen their domestic alternative care and child protection systems in order to respond to children truly in need of parental care and protec- tion. It is more a question of political will.