Over at Brian Stuy's blog, he's reprinting a three-part feature from the Chinese press on the Hunan baby-trafficking scandal. Translated into English.

From his intro:

But a survey of orphanage directors reveals that little has changed -- a few staff meetings, an official memo or two, but fundamentally the policies and procedures remain unchanged from those in place over a year ago. No significant safe-guards have been installed to keep trafficked, or abducted children for that matter, from being adopted through the highly lucrative foreign adoption program.

In March 2006 I came across three articles published in the Shenzhen-based magazine "Fenghuang Weekly" that represent the most accurate reporting on the background, causes and prosecution of those involved in the Hunan scandal. They include first-hand testimony, court reporting, and a knowledge of Chinese law that was unrivaled in the Western Press.

And here's the kernel of the problem outlined in the first part of the Chinese article:

...Towards these ends, the Hengyang County Welfare center once clarified the mission for lower levels: one employee that was responsible for the adoption of three children within that year could be said to have completed their work duties for the year and was able to receive an extension of their salary and also a bonus at the year's end.

When the number of infants that were taken to the welfare centers began to decrease welfare centers started to directly remunerate those that brought them infants. "At the beginning it was only 200 yuan given in a traditional red envelope," said a Hengyang county insider. Later on, welfare centers started to buy from some human traders. As many welfare centers began to compete for the infants their price began to consistently rise, at one point reaching over 2000 yuan. Some welfare center employees even went so far as to urge the human traders to secure infants with complete disregard for any sense of morality or legality.

Money.

And the really unpleasant bit:

Six welfare centers in the city of Hengyang provided the infants that they had bought with fabricated documents. They would go to the local police office and file reports claiming that the infants had been picked up in the streets and brought into the center. After receiving a certificate that proved that the infant was abandoned, the centers were able to obtain notarization of the child's origin without hassle and also were able to obtain the associated "booklets of proof."

One participant told Fenghuang Weekly: “We would just randomly choose some place to say that we had picked up the abandoned infant from, and then we would say that we had been informed about the infant from the public hot-line. The police and the notary office didn't find anything unusual."
Only a small portion of the infants obtained by the welfare centers were placed into domestic adoption. Many more were sent into foreign adoption.

Stuy does point out that nowhere has he found any suggestions that the babies adopted out to foreigners were ever kidnapped. But still -- it's all a bit iffier than I'd like.


The second article in the series focuses on the Duan family, who provided a lot of babies to the SWIs.