While this was one of the largest and possibly one of the best-run orphanages in China, its main business was to save as many children as it could within its limited resources and arrange for domestic adoptions. In fact, it had always been able to find domestic adoptive parents for the healthy infants it received and for those it could restore to health. Other large orphanages I investigated also emphasized arranging domestic adoptions and were quite successful in doing so. It was at this point that international adoptions began to open up, bringing a new source of prospective parents as well as an important new source of funds to this and other orphanages. As a result, physical conditions and staffing have improved greatly.
Improvements are strikingly evident here, as in a dozen or more other institutions.
There is at least one point on which Human Rights Watch and I agree. Liberalizing domestic adoption regulations would quickly help reduce the numbers of children in orphanages. China has a long tradition of adoption and many people would be happy to adopt a daughter. Contrary to widespread belief outside China, contemporary Chinese popular culture increasingly values daughters as a source of emotional support and closeness for parents. Using adoption policy, rigidly codified as law in 1992, as a means to plug up a hole in the dike of the one-child birth planning policy has cruel consequences for the victims of birth planning.