More children, mostly girls, are being abandoned
                 and are increasingly being adopted by foreigners
                 who have to incur hefty costs to find a child

                 BEIJING -- Faced with a growing number of
                 abandoned children, China is quietly encouraging foreign
                 adoption under tight state control and at a heavy price.

                 Its strict one-child birth control policy has placed
                 immense importance on having a son, with the result that
                 girls form 99 per cent of the children put up for
                 adoption.

                 The state-run China Centre for Adoption Affairs
                 (CCAA) declined to give any details on the number of
                 adoptions by foreign couples, but the official
                 English-language China Daily newspaper last June gave
                 a figure of 21,000 foreign adoptions since the mid-90s.

                 Diplomatic sources in Beijing give a figure of 5,000
                 adoptions by foreigners in 1998 and say the figure has
                 been rising year after year.

                 Most of those adopted find homes in the United States.

                 With Americans fuelling an adoption boom in China, the
                 US consulate in the southern city of Guangzhou has set
                 up an adoption unit -- the first of its kind in an American
                 mission abroad.

                 According to the consulate, there were 4,174 adoptions
                 in the year up to September last year, compared to
                 4,192 for the same period in 1998 and 3,533 a year
                 earlier.

                 Canadian couples adopted around 800 Chinese children
                 in 1998, while the Netherlands and Denmark bacame
                 home for about 200 children each that year.

                 A young Dutch woman, showing off proudly a
                 newly-adopted eight-month-old baby from a poor
                 province, said: "We are so happy, we have been waiting
                 for three years.

                 "To us, the money does not matter," added the woman,
                 who was part of a 20-strong Dutch party in Beijing on
                 an "adoption tour" organised by Chinese travel agencies
                 specially approved by the authorities.

                 The government handed the running of all adoption
                 matters over to the CCAA in 1996, ostensibly to
                 protect China's children from foreign bounty hunters.

                 But the issue of money is also never far from the
                 equation.

                 The price of the 10 to 15-day tour, including a trip to the
                 countryside to find a suitable child to adopt, can reach
                 US$4,000 (S$6,800).

                 Added to this is a long list of costs taking in registration,
                 translation and lawyers' fees as well as payments for
                 various official certificates and visas.

                 And of course there is the obligatory "voluntary"
                 donation to the orphanage of between US$3,000 and
                 US$4,000.

                 According to several foreign adoption agencies, the
                 average cost of adopting a Chinese baby for a couple
                 living outside the country is between US$13,000 and
                 US$24,000.

                 New parents are told little about the abandonment of
                 children they adopt -- that their daughter was found at,
                 say, 10 days old in a department store or a park, and
                 was placed in an orphanage or, occasionally, in foster
                 care.

                 Many girls were undernourished when their new parents
                 saw them.

                 Some had developmental lags, most of which American
                 doctors say are easily reversed.

                 Many had respiratory infections, skin conditions and
                 parasites, but nearly all of these disappear within weeks
                 with the right medical treatment. -- AFP

                       Adapted from The Straits Times, 10 Feb 2000.