Kate has always identified as an American, but she was born in China. At the age of one, she was one of twenty in a cohort of Chinese girls chosen for adoption in a small village orphanage near Nanjing. Each girl has since become part of an American family. Kate was stunned when China suddenly announced this year a complete ban on foreign adoptions. “Where are they going to go?” was her first reaction, as she reflected on the fate of children like her. For decades, Chinese daughters were abandoned in favor of sons, leading to waves of international adoptions like Kate’s. This new restriction on international adoption seems to signal a change in how Chinese society views its daughters today.
To understand this change, it’s essential to examine the legacy of China’s One-Child Policy, a population control program that shaped the demographic landscape of the country for over three decades. Implemented in 1979, the policy was designed to curb China’s rapidly growing population by limiting most families to only one child. While it was effective in slowing population growth, the policy also created several long-term challenges that haunt China today, including a severe gender imbalance and an aging population.
One of the most significant unintended consequences was the exacerbation of traditional cultural norms that favored boys. Chinese society has long been influenced by the concept of zhong nan qing nü, a social concept that loosely translates to “important-male-unimportant-female.” The term stems from traditional Chinese beliefs rooted in an agrarian society where male children were valued for their economic contributions and their role in supporting aging parents—a cultural bias carried into modern times. Sons are expected to care for elderly parents and carry on the family name, while daughters belong to their husband’s family after marriage.
This patriarchal social structure is exceptionally strong in China, going “beyond the types of wage and power imbalances one might find in America or Europe”. During the One-Child Policy era, this cultural preference for sons was abetted by modern medical technological developments. Ultrasound technology allowed parents to determine the sex of their child before birth, and many couples chose to terminate pregnancies if the fetus was female. Despite legal restrictions, these practices continued, leading to an imbalance in the population. By the early 2000s, China’s gender ratio was heavily skewed, with approximately 117 boys born for every 100 girls. Although the government tried to address the issue by banning doctors from revealing the sex of fetuses, it was not effective in preventing the practice.
As a result of these population imbalances, China now faces a demographic crisis. The country’s population is aging rapidly, and the long-standing preference for sons has left it with a significant gender disparity. China also faces the challenge of a shrinking workforce and an increasing number of elderly citizens who require care.
In response, the Chinese government has implemented a series of policies to address these demographic challenges. The One-Child Policy formally ended in 2015, allowing families to have two children, and in 2021, the limit increased to three children. However, these policy changes have had limited success, as many couples are reluctant to have more children due to the high costs of living and issues with raising a family in China’s urban areas.
On the surface, the recent ban on foreign adoptions appears to be another step in the government’s efforts to address demographic concerns, following in the footsteps of the Netherlands, Denmark, Israel, and various other countries who have recently outlawed international adoption. However, this is not a full explanation of the policy change.
In the United States, the leading country in Chinese adoptions, the State Department recorded only sixteen adoptions from China in 2023. This marks a drastic decline from the period between 2008 and 2016 with 3,000 adoptions. But Wang, a Chinese college student, does not believe the adoption ban is related to the population decline. He notes that a decline in just a few thousand foreign adoptions would not have a significant impact on the demographic of the Chinese population.
Instead, this shift may also signal a change in the gender attitude and appreciation of the value of women in Chinese society. Not only is China grappling with an aging population, but it is also facing a gender imbalance. According to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, as of 2021 there were more than 30 million more men than women in the country. This gap has created significant social and economic problems, ranging from a surplus of unmarried men to a higher dependency ratio (the number of working-age people supporting non-working dependents). In a country where men significantly outnumber women, daughters suddenly hold more value, both culturally and demographically. This change, combined with growing pride in national identity, is what is driving policies like the adoption ban. The decision to formally end foreign adoptions seems symbolic of China’s broader goal of retaining its population, particularly its daughters, within the country.
When asked about the zhong nan qing nü phrase in today’s China, Wang remarked that “[Women] are treated mostly the same as men now in China…There is no difference. People might prefer sons, but when they have a daughter, they still treat them as good as the son.”
One major factor causing the shift in how women are viewed socially is China’s efforts to improve access to education. During the 1990s and early 2000s, public education became widely accessible across China, helping to close the gender gap in educational attainment. Today, women make up more than half of all university students in China. As more women pursue higher education, their participation in the workforce has also grown. In urban areas, women are increasingly taking on leadership roles in business and government. The World Economic Forum states that women now contribute about 41% of China’s GDP, higher than North America and most other regions. These changes in education and economic participation have helped to reshape the traditional view of daughters as less valuable than sons. Daughters are no longer merely future members of their husband’s family but vital contributors to China’s economic growth.
While this shift in the perception of the value of women is evident within the nuclear family, one female Chinese citizen notes that, “In the Shanghai job market, some women still experience discrimination based on their marital status and also the condition of their child because of questioned commitment to the job”.
What’s clear, however, is that family dynamics are changing, especially in China’s urban centers. In cities like Beijing and Shanghai, daughters are now seen as equally valuable to sons, both in terms of emotional support and economic contributions to their families. In some cases, daughters are even taking on the traditional role of caring for their elderly parents, a responsibility that was once reserved for sons.
It’s still worth questioning how effective this change of state policy will be. As one interviewee noted, “It’s definitely not good for the infants because the [internal] Chinese adoption system isn’t very developed”. Unlike foster care in the United States and many Western countries, there is a greater stigma among Chinese against raising an adopted child who does not share the bloodline of the family. In cases of abuse or neglect, the Chinese State depends entirely on extended families to step in to protect children and reserves foster care for orphans. Now that foreign adoptions are no longer an option, the State will need to find ways to support the remaining orphans.
In the past, China’s international adoption program reflected a society that valued sons over daughters, and economic pressures that led to thousands of Chinese girls being sent abroad. Today, the message from the Chinese government is clear: daughters are no longer expendable. They are essential to China’s future. Whether it’s a result of rising education rates, economic necessity, or national pride, one thing is certain—the value of women in Chinese society is evolving. The adoption ban is just one part of a larger shift, where daughters are seen not just as part of their husband’s family but as integral to China’s own development.
Featured Image: Chinese girl looking out at urban Chinese city. October 2024. © 2024 Deepai AI Image Generator.
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