I'm going to tread very carefully into this thread because I'm close to the subject.
First, let me link up the links you present (because this topic got moved, I can't do a mod edit on the original post) :
http://www.wnmu.edu/academic/hum/contest2004/onechildpolicy.pdf
http://www.taliacarner.com/thedyingroomsspecialreport.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002/06/19/china-usat.htm
Now, my first reaction is that none of these seem incredibly up-to-date -- the most recent (the paper that appears to be from 2004) is based on sources that are a few years earlier. The Dying Rooms came out in the mid-90s, and caused big changes in the way China dealt with orphanages...as far as we know.
Which is the second thing to be aware of when discussing China. The government, as discussed elsewhere in this forum, has a much firmer grip on information than we're used to. The press is far from free, and research is occasionally sidelined (or never funded at all) for ideological reasons. For the common good, you understand.
Doing sociological research in China is very difficult.
Nevertheless, there are a few sources of statistics & a general sense of what's going on that I trust, more or less.
One is Unicef. That's a link to their site on China -- although the one-child policy isn't really their main concern, as you can see from just a cursory glance.
Another, more anecdotal source is Brian Stuy's blog. He's a guy from Utah who has research business -- he tries to find "finding locations" for children adopted from China, among other things. He's been to many orphanages, and spent a lot of time asking impertinent questions and thinking about China's children. I don't always agree with his conclusions, and I know many adoptive parents who view him as either a loose cannon or a sloppy researcher. But still, he's there. The blog also has lots of links to ongoing news stories and other information about the abandoned.
If you're really concerned about the abandonment issue, there's a book I haven't read that's pretty mandatory (everyone else in my family keeps wandering off with the copy, and my dog-eared Wing-Tsit Chan is just more fun) called Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, and Orphanage Care in China by by Kay Ann Johnson.
Both Johnson and Stuy write about informal adoptions, which seem to be a major theme in contemporary Chinese culture.
My general sense after reading around this subject is that there's going to be less of a problem with mateless men then there is with paperless women -- many children *don't* wind up in orphanages, and *don't* wind up on the books, thus *can't* participate in the benefits of a communist government. No free meds & pensions if you're not in the system, basically.
More in a bit, after I've collected myself. (Oddly, it's spring break this week, and there's a kid in the office just down the aisle from my desk. She was adopted from China five or six years ago.) |
