From China to America a true story of Abduction, Adoption and separation of twins. 3/12/25
In September 2000 a woman gave birth to twins in Hunan province, Fangfang and Shuangjie, notorious one-child policy the rise of international adoption.
2017 The author was a journalist in NY for the Los Angeles Times, but had spent 7 years in Beijing. The story slowly unfolded that's 160,000 Chinese mostly girls had been adopted all over the world.1979 the Communist Party had a mystical belief that population control was the key to jump starting the economy. Slogan on the wall said The economy rises as the population falls and Later, longer and fewer was another slogan. This was a policy simply not in the Chinese tradition and would only be lifted in 2015. Till mid 20 C 1 in 5 babies died before the age of a year.
Moa Zedong was a from Hunan the largest rice producing province in China, born 1893 in Shoashan. 1927 he joined the Socialist youth league. The diversion of the workforce away from agriculture caused famine. 45 Million died in the Great Leap Forward. Then in the decade long Cultural Revolution caused the death of up to 2 million and displaced and damaged the economy ,only ended with the death of Moa in 1976
2000 In Geofeng village. Till 1960s there were still tigers in the mountains. Zanhau the oldest daughter born 1995 attended school but had to take care of her brothers so dropped out after and never mastered literacy. Second daughter born 1997 According to the law Zehau were supposed to wait 5 years before the second birth. Abortions were a common and inexpensive way of birth control. A rural women could only be buried next to her husband in the Zengs cemetery only if she had a son. The status of the family in the village suffered by failure to produce a son, and this was a common cause of a woman committing suicide. Like with Fangfang she lived under a false name and fabricated age. Goafeng had a bank a bus station, cluster of government offices including the Family Planning one, a wet market where the floor was covered with the mess of newly slaughter animal, open 5 days a week for farmers to sell their produce as well as counterfeit Nike athletic shoes.
1979 Deng visited the US. He embraced socialism with Chinese characteristics all about making money. lifted controls on domestic travel, so you could move outside of the place you were registered. Migrants are expected home for the Lunar New Year and all industry closes for 15 days. Daughters move to the husbands family.
2000 was the year of the Dragon and people born that year would be strong, independent and destined to success and wealth. Citrus grew well and the family had fat quality pomelos, a source of cash. She gave birth to identical twins. Nobody in the family had, had twins. Identical twins comes from a single fertilized egg that splits, often the second child is a breech birth.
Heroes of the revolution were celebrated in the 50s purged in the 60s and rehabilitated in the 1970s
720 to 645 BCE Guaan Zhong and ancient Chinese philosopher boasted of his big nation, with vast territory and strong military forces to attain Supremacy. 1953 China briefly banned the import of contraceptives. The Party did not want to admit that the failed policy caused famine. They saw the booming population not as a miracle but as a nightmare. Thomas Malthus 1768 in Essay of principle of Population said the perpetual cycle of poverty as population always outpaced food supply. The 1969 UN Population Fund aim was curbing population growth.
1968 Population Bomb by Paul Elhrich joined the chorus of doom. Sterilization of millions of men in India was unpopular, that in 1977 Indira Gandhi's Congress Party was booted out of office.
China's was poorer that many African countries at the time. China's GDP was $164 as against Taiwan $1,917 and the US of $11,164 Reducing the population was considered easier that increasing the countries output. and in 1979 China's population just passed the billion mark. Family planning morphed into a monstrous organization and by 1990s it was estimated that eight three million Chinese worked at least part time for Family Planning. After giving birth to the first child women were required to have a IUD inserted that could not easily be removed without the medical profession. A second child received a fine and a civil servant could lose their job. It could result in punishment of their house being set on fire or pigs, chickens and oxen being confiscated. their tractor could be taken - you violate the policy your family could be destroyed. Forced abortions, and planning officers had quotas to meet.
People were exhorted to exterminate class enemies that is anybody less poor or better educated. Rural china were not among the people clamoring for democracy in 1989 at Tlemamen Square. A pregnancy without a marriage certificate could be terminated and a fine had to be paid. $314 Billion was collected in fines and many rural jurisdictions were dependent on those fines for their budgets like small American town who set up speed traps to raise revenues. Legal marriage age was also raised in 1980 the wife had to be 20 and husband 22. In Hunan Province the law allowed for a second child if both parents were farmers.
If a child was not registered it could not receive an ID card to receive medical insurance open a bank account or even buy a railroad ticket. These were "black children" till 2015 when the One Child Policy was lifted and 30 million people belatedly received them. With parents getting jobs in cities 61 million children were left behind in villages.
Migrant women made up to 60% of the workforce, since they were not as useful for work on the farm, could be sent to earn cash for the family.
Female infanticide was noted way back and was more common in times of famine as families did not want to pay a dowry or for the foot binding at the time. Sometimes things backfired as folktales tell of angry ghosts returning to kill sons. Under the Communist Party, Marriage law in 1950 explicitly banned killing newborns, prohibited polygamy, concubinage or forced marriage. However with the One child policy killing newborns returned. After 1991 China opened up to International adoption. In some provinces there were 140 boys to 100 girls, thus 60 million girls were missing. No quite as large numbers of girls were hidden and not registered until 2015. Mothers were aunts, aunts were mothers, as people became adept to circumventing the rules.
Note 19C Europe up to 40% of babies were abandoned. The philosopher Rousseau disclosed that he had dumped 3 babies at a foundling home likely most died.
Enforcement of one child policy took place where the family was registered. Trafficking's was a long standing plague in China with thousand being kidnapped. In 2008 the year of the Beijing Olympics China boasted double digit growth. Family planning had taken pigs and tractors now it was taking children. The issue started when in 2005 when they dared to take a boy, and the parent was a well off person who stood up. The boy was returned malnourished covered with sores, but this opened up the floodgates. Families started to talk and organize. Their next miscalculation was when a girl was taken from a farmer who had married a young women who was pregnant. He had been an early member of the party. he had kept the obligatory poster of Mao on his war long since. A big group brought a petition and there was an office in Beijing accepting petitions. A great rage against the local officials and challenged the system. There was a suspicion that the children had been trafficked for their organs.
2005 police acting on a tip stopped a van with 12 sedated babies which were taken to a hospital and the suspects arrested. Later 27 a total suspects were arrested mostly belonging to the same family. The suspects claimed they were selling to welfare institutions that were run by the government thus legitimate. 1991 China enacted a Adoption Law as children were piling up in orphanages. Most babies headed to the US. Like the Panda diplomacy where they supplied foreign zoos so this was a friendship building program. By 2005 the number explorted was 7,906 babies the top country to adopt out, US ,Spain, Canada , France, UK, Dutch and Australian were also destinations. The families wanted girls not boys and 95% of the babies were girls offered from China. Initially singles could adopt that opened the way to gay couples to adopt, and most came from the countryside where women tended not to drink or smoke, so were children of choice.
At this stage young women leaving the countryside to work in industry were earning nearly as much as men and sending home the money. Finally the policymaker began to grasp the demographic catastrophe and even before 2015 stopped enforcement and fewer babies were abandoned. But there was big money in adoption. By 2006 the secrets of the adoption business spilled out into the public. Orphanages were required to look for birth parents for 60 days before putting them up for adoption and found a way of laundering these trafficked babies. The government temporary suspended adoptions from the Hunan Province while they investigated.
1997 Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule, but still enjoyed self rule.
The family got their first TV in 2007 and soon after that the 3 wheeled motorized cart that families used as it was cheap and could take produce to market. Most Chinese adults at this stage had cellphones. A fortune teller told them Fanfang was alive would have a good future and one day they would see her. In adult life at 20 or 30 these women would want to know where they came from and how they got there.
The writer moved to Beijing and was the China correspondent she was a career women who put off having children till after 30. In 1979 the US normalized relation with China and news organization opened offices there. During the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics journalist had freedom to travel around the country. She interviewed people with AIDS caused by unnecessary blood transfusions. On one assignment she reported on lead poisoning in Hunan province.
1949 The Communist Party standardized Chinese but local dialects persists. In rural China the further up the mountain you go, the scarcer the facilities and shabbier the houses and smaller the agricultural plots. Fangfang had a identical twin sister a look alike and perhaps she would succeed in finding her. By 2024 when China ended her international adoption over 160,000 had been sent out. Fangfangwould have been 2 and a half a full year older than most adoptees.
1968 The Population Bomb by Paul Enrlich failed to materialize, the Chinese economic miracle caused hungry migrants to leave the countryside. In 2011 China's working population plateaued at 900 million. There were 7 males to 5 females. Sexually frustrated people are not conducive to social stability. Educated women , many chose to remain single. The one Child policy of 1979 was a billed as a temporary measure. In 2008 the Sichuan Province earthquake killed 69,000 people and thousands of children in shoddily build schools leaving rural families childless. People forced to get sterilized now mobilized a campaign to reverse vasectomies'. Fertilities treatment was offered to menopausal mothers to get "replacement babies." In other disaster where parents were separated from babies and searching for them some ended up being kidnapped.
Urbanization had been more effective in keeping down birthrates than coercion. Thousands trashed Family Planning offices. In 2012 Mo Yan won the Nobel prize for the book Red Sorghum. A portrayal of rural China and its history, the same year that Xi Jinping became head of the CCP.
2013 couples were allowed to have a second child if one of the parents was an only child, finally they pulled the plug in 2015 as an active response to the aging population.
In Romania Nicolae Ceausescu had banned abortion and contraception believing that a high birth rate would lead to economic growth. After he was shot in 1989 by firing squad it was discovered that orphanages had more than 170,000 children. As a religious Christian she felt a mission to adopt babies.
Till WW2 international adoption was rare, Noble Prize 1938 writer Pearl Buck who wrote The Good Earth adopted 7 children in 1920s and advocated transracial international adoption. Italy sent 3000 children to the US as war orphans. In reality they were babies taken from unwed mothers by the Catholic Church. The largest program was from the Korean War1950 to 1953 under the help of an Evangelicals couple who sent abroad 200,000 Korean children half to the US. many of these children had been fathered by US soldiers. As the Vietnam war was winding down Operation Babylift brought 3,000 babies to the US.
In the Post War baby boom pregnant young women in the US without husbands were forced by maternity homes to sign away at least 2.7million babies, between 1944 and 1975. In 1970 sex education in schools started and birth control became widely available. Single motherhood gained respectability. 1973 Roe v Wade. legalized abortion nation wide in the US. Less children became available at a time when there was a queue to adopt due to infertility and same sex marriage. 2002 Angelina Jolly adopted from Cambodia , Ethiopia and Vietnam and Madonna adopted 4 of her 6 children from Malawi.
Families adopting in China would be in a group with a bus and a guide and she adopted 2 and a half year old Esther. The orphanage gave a story of the child's origin many were not true, everything she had been told about Esther was a lie. Marsha with her son Sam and his wife set up a nonprofit Adopt a Child with a website. Also the Christian Alliance for the Child, leading adoption agencies were started by missionaries, Evangelists and Baptists. Adopting parents receive a certificate of parental rights through abandonment and the birth parents have no legal claim on the child . When Marsha discovered saw an article in the press about a kidnapped twin she realized where Ester came from and shut down the Website. It was when Esther reached 16 that she was ready to meet her twin and in 2017, 8 years after the author had contacted Marsha that they returned the call and were ready to deal with the situation. Marsha was shocked that she had been an unwitting participant in a system tainted with corruption, a large money making venture. In the US adoptees are allowed to obtain the original birth certificate.
The author organizes for them to visit the family and the all go to China to the village meet the family and the other twin. We learn a lot about China for example from 1949 Mao made China all stay on 1 time line. It is UCT 08.00 which is the Beijing area instead of 5 time zones. Births of fraternal twins are 3 times more frequent than identical twins where the zygote spits. Fraternal twins have 2 eggs and 2 sperms. Identical twins have the identical DNA. Esther was told she was an early speaker and spoke Chinese which she could not remember at all. They had to visit on the 15 holiday of the Lunar New year when the whole of China return to their villages to be with family and they travelled in 2019. Meeting her twin sister and finding out she had been loved and not abandoned also she felt she did not look like an American but could not speak Chinese. The Zeng family had the land they farmed even though the communist system did not give them outright ownership. They had no mortgage and no car. They remembered people dying of starvation. Moa death led to an end of collectivization and they were able to eat. Economic liberalization of the 1980s enabled new freedoms, the right to cultivate your own fields and to travel out of the village. Girls married out but boys stayed in the same village. younger Chinese had been forced to learn English at school but nervous of using it. When they visited an orphanage most of the children appeared to be disabled. It appeared that most people build big houses in the village but work in the cities and use them once a year. It is not uncommon for 1 identical twin to be gay and 1 strait. People were earning more than their parents and living longer. With internet is has become very easy to find people across the globe and DNA testing confirms relationships. However not everybody wants to be found. Many return to China to discover their heritage and learn the language.
Covid started in Wuhan China in 2019. Covid Lockdown in US from March 2020 till May 2023.. Nearly the entire US press core was expelled from China for reporting on Covid . China spurned the MRNA vaccines in favour of its own a product that proved ineffective. It was estimated that 1.4 million died in the 5 weeks after the lockdown ended in China. by 2022 there are more deaths than births. There are not enough women in China today, as many as 20 million bachelors.
2023 China's economy can be described as stagflation or a malaise. Xi Jinping cracked down on private education as it promotes inequality. The political climate in China and Donald Trump in the US discourages travel between them.
Israel had Covid from March 2020 till April 2022. Because Israel's a small country's with health system has been computerized for 30 years and the country would act as a resource for the inoculation company who were given open access to all Israel information. Israel was the first country to get the vaccination.
Leaders of the Chinese Republic
Sun Yat-sen (5 May 1921 - 29 June 1922)
- 1949 Mao Zedong
- 1976 Hua Gofeng
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping
- 1993 Jiang Zemin.
- 2003 Hu Jintao.
- 2013 Xi Jinping.
