“一个时代的终结”：中国不再允许外国家庭收养中国儿童
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China Stops Foreign Adoptions, Ending a Complicated Chapter
艾莎, ZIXU WANG
For three decades, China sent tens of thousands of young children overseas for adoption as it enforced a strict one-child policy that forced many families to abandon their babies. Now the government will no longer allow most foreign adoptions, a move that it said was in line with global trends.
在中国严格执行独生子女政策的30年里，许多家庭被迫抛弃婴儿，政府曾将数以万计的幼童送给海外家庭收养。现在，中国政府将不再允许大多数外国家庭收养来自中国的孩子，并称这个做法符合全球趋势。
The ban raises questions for many of the hundreds of families in the United States who were in the process of adopting children from China and had heard earlier this week from adoption agencies that China was moving to bar international adoptions. The official confirmation came in the form of a brief comment by China’s foreign ministry on Thursday.
这项禁令让一些正在走领养程序的美国家庭产生了疑问，他们早些时候从领养机构听说中国计划采取该政策。中国外交部在周四的一份简短声明中确认了这个消息。
“We are grateful for the desire and love of the governments and adoption families of relevant countries to adopt Chinese children,” said Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the ministry. She offered few details about the new policy, except to say that exceptions would be made only for foreigners adopting stepchildren and children of blood relatives in China.
“我们对有关国家政府、收养家庭希望收养中国儿童的愿望和爱心表示感谢，”外交部发言人毛宁说。她几乎没有提供新政策的相关细节，只说“外国人来华收养三代以内旁系同辈血亲的子女和继子女”例外。
Before the Covid pandemic, China was a top country of origin for international adoption, having sent more than 160,000 children overseas since 1992. But its program had been tainted by past allegations of corruption and by its association with China’s harshly enforced birth restrictions. Many families left their babies in alleyways or at the doors of police stations or social welfare institutions, to avoid severe penalties for violating the one-child policy.
新冠疫情暴发前，中国曾是跨国收养的主要送养国，自1992年以来已将逾16万名儿童送给海外家庭收养。但送养项目也曾因以往的腐败指控以及与中国严格执行的生育限制的关系而被玷污。许多家庭将婴儿遗弃在小巷、派出所或社会福利机构门口，以避免因违反独生子女政策而受到严厉处罚。
Unable to pay for the care of these children, orphanages turned to international adoption to help fund their services.
由于政府没钱抚养这些弃婴，儿童福利院转向跨国收养来帮助资助它们的服务。
“This is, in a way, the end of an era and the closing of one of the most shameful chapters of the three and a half decades of social engineering known as one-child policy,” said Wang Feng, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Irvine who specializes in China’s demographics. “The Chinese government created the problem and then they couldn’t deal with the financial constraints and that is why they allowed foreign adoption as a last resort.”
“在某种程度上，这是一个时代的终结，也是所谓的独生子女政策长达35年的社会工程这个最可耻篇章的终结，”加州大学尔湾分校专门研究中国人口统计学的社会学教授王丰说。“中国政府制造了这个问题，但之后他们没有财力来应对后果，所以他们把允许跨国收养作为最后一招。”
Today, China’s population is shrinking as the country grapples with one of the lowest birthrates in the world. It maintains a nominal policy of limiting families to three children, and it has been trying to encourage births.
如今，中国的人口正在减少，生育率处于世界最低国家之列，政府正在努力应对这个问题。它目前的政策是名义上支持每个家庭最多生三个孩子，并一直在努力鼓励生育。
Nearly all foreign adoptions involve children with disabilities, according to the Chinese government. Adoptees from China have largely been girls, because of a cultural preference for boys, along with some boys with physical and developmental disabilities, said Zhou Yun, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan.
据中国政府的说法，几乎所有的跨国收养涉及的都是残疾儿童。密歇根大学社会学助理教授周韵说，由于中国有重男轻女的文化，跨国收养的中国儿童大多是女孩，也有些有身体和发育障碍的男孩。
Being adopted by families in countries far from their place of birth, with vastly different cultures, has left many adoptees wondering about their identity, Ms. Zhou said. “It touches on some of the most emotionally fraught and politically charged questions of citizenship, belonging, nationalistic sentiments, and gender and racial politics,” she said.
被远离出生地、文化上截然不同的国家的家庭收养，这让许多被收养者想弄明白自己的身份，周韵说。“这涉及一些最充满感情和政治色彩的问题，如国籍、归属感、民族主义情绪，以及性别和种族政治，”她说。
In recent years, Chinese officials have sought to promote domestic adoptions. International adoptions peaked and began to slow in the mid-2000s, as China’s economy boomed and the government allocated more money to support orphans.
近年来，中国官员一直在努力推动国内收养。随着中国经济蓬勃发展，政府为抚养孤儿拨出更多资金，跨国收养已在本世纪头十年的中期达到顶峰，并在那之后开始下降。
Fewer children have been put up for adoption, too, a reflection of slowing birthrates and more support for children with disabilities. By 2018, the number of children registered for adoption had fallen to around 15,000, from about 44,000 in 2009, official statistics show. There were 343,000 orphans in China in 2019, according to Chinese officials.
送养的儿童数量也在减少，反映了出生率正在下降以及对残疾儿童支持的增加。官方统计数据显示，到2018年时，登记送养的儿童数量已从2009年的约4.4万人下降到1.5万人左右。据中国官员，2019年全国共有孤儿34.3万人。
Some Chinese may have regarded the international adoption program as a form of national humiliation, said Guo Wu, an associate professor of Chinese studies at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.
宾夕法尼亚州阿勒格尼学院负责中国研究的副教授伍国说，一些中国人可能将跨国收养项目视为一种国耻。
The new ban “might reflect the popular feelings of rising national pride and a kind of resentment of America,” Mr. Wu said. “This policy might fulfill that feeling that ‘we don’t need to send our kids to America.’”
新限制“可能反映了民众日益高涨的民族自豪感和对美国的某种不满”，伍国说。“这项政策也许能满足人们‘我们不需要把孩子送到美国去’的想法。”
Activists like Peter Moller, a Korean adoptee raised in Denmark who is a co-founder of the Danish Korean Rights Group, welcomed the halt in international adoptions, which in general reflects concerns about abuse and neglect of adopted children, he said.
活动人士对中国停止跨国收养表示欢迎，如被丹麦家庭收养、在丹麦长大的韩裔活动人士彼得·莫勒，他是韩裔丹麦人权利组织的联合创始人。他说，对跨国收养的限制总体上反映了人们对被收养儿童受虐待和被忽视的担忧。
“International adoption has been proven very problematic in both donor and recipient countries, and international adoption takes a toll on both adoptees and the adoptees’ biological families,” he said.
“跨国收养已被证明在送养国和收养国都存在很大问题，跨国收养对被收养者和被收养者的亲生家庭产生了严重的负面影响，”他说。
Other countries have started to wind down or stop foreign adoptions in recent years, including Ethiopia, Russia and Kazakhstan. Some European overseas adoption agencies have also stopped their operations amid national concerns about abuse, falsified documents and accountability.
其他国家近年来也开始逐步减少或停止跨国收养，包括埃塞俄比亚、俄罗斯和哈萨克斯坦。欧洲的一些跨国收养机构由于本国对虐待、伪造文件和追究责任问题的担忧，也已停止运作。
At the same time, China’s decision came with little advance warning for many American families that were already in the process of adopting children. More than 82,000 children from China have been adopted by families in the United States, according to the State Department.
与此同时，对许多已在走领养程序的美国家庭来说，中国在做出这一决定之前几乎没有提前发出预警。据美国国务院称，已有逾8.2万名中国儿童被美国家庭收养。
The State Department said that China’s civil affairs ministry told the United States that it had completed processing of cases with previously issued travel authorizations, but it would not continue to process cases other than exceptions for those with relatives.
美国国务院表示，中国民政部通知美国已处理完之前获得旅行授权的收养申请，今后，除外国人来华收养三代以内旁系同辈血亲的子女和继子女外，不再处理任何领养相关工作。
“We understand there are hundreds of families still pending completion of their adoptions, and we sympathize with their situation,” the State Department said in response to questions about the issue. The civil affairs ministry in China did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
“我们了解到，仍有数百个家庭尚未走完领养程序，我们对他们的处境表示同情，”美国国务院在回答有关问题时表示。中国民政部没有回复记者用传真发去的置评请求。
At least six of these families told The New York Times they were in a panic, devastated by the news that they would no longer be able to bring home the girls and boys that they had been matched with in China.
这些家庭中至少有六个对《纽约时报》表示，他们惊慌失措，对无法再将已经选配好的中国男孩和女孩带回家的消息感到极为痛苦。
They said they had already received approval by both China and the United States to adopt children in 2019 and early 2020, before China closed its borders, and had been preparing to welcome them. They had bought clothes and modified their homes to accommodate the disabilities that some of the children had. Several described spending months communicating with the children they hoped to bring home through video calls, letters and photos.
他们表示，在中国关闭边境之前，他们已经在2019年和2020年初拿到了中国和美国政府批准他们从中国收养儿童的申请，并一直在为迎接孩子做准备。他们为孩子买了衣服，一些家庭为适应有残疾的孩子对住房做了改造。一些家庭说，他们通过视频通话、信件和照片与他们希望带回家的孩子进行交流，前前后后加起来已花了几个月的时间。
Courtney Moore and her husband, who live just outside Houston, said they had sent packages every year for Christmas and the Lunar New Year to the southern Chinese city of Guiyang, where the young boy they had been matched with was living in an orphanage. Then they stopped hearing back from the orphanage at the end of 2022.
家住休斯顿郊外的考特尼·摩尔和丈夫说，他们每年的圣诞节和春节都把包裹寄给中国南方城市贵阳的一家孤儿院，选配给他们的那个小男孩一直住在那里。后来在2022年底时，他们不再收到孤儿院的回音。
“It’s really hard that there are hundreds of families that are waiting, that have a place prepared and we sit here hopeless, with our hands tied,” said Ms. Moore, who spent a year living in China when she and her husband were students in Nanjing.
“有数百个家庭正在等待着，已经为孩子准备好了住处，但我们只能无助地坐在这里，没有任何办法，这真的很难受，”摩尔说，她和丈夫曾在南京读书期间在中国生活了一年。
“We loved the country, we love the people, and part of my grief is for the connection with China.” “我们爱中国，爱中国人民，我的悲伤部分是因为失去了与中国的这种关系。”
黄安伟(Edward Wong)对本文有报道贡献。 艾莎(Alexandra Stevenson)是《纽约时报》上海分社社长，报道中国经济和社会新闻。 Zixu Wang是时报记者/研究员，报道中国大陆和香港的新闻。 翻译：纽约时报中文网