Adopted Chinese daughters seek their roots

Patti Waldmeir:

We have all seen them: adorable Chinese girls holding the hands of their (usually elderly, often overweight, but definitely doting) Caucasian parents, strolling the streets from New York to New South Wales, growing up in a white, white world, far away from the land and culture where they were born.

In some ways, they are a permanent blot on the image of China: surplus daughters the country couldn't care for, unintended consequences of the 30-year-old "one-child" policy that led to the abandonment of hundreds of thousands if not millions of female infants at birth. But now, as the balance of global economic and political power shifts subtly in favour of China, Beijing is reaching out to all these lost daughters - and welcoming them back home.

China has invited thousands of foundlings back to their birthplaces for government-sponsored "homeland tours" which, like last year's Beijing Olympics or next year's Shanghai World Expo, give the country a chance to show off to the world. On one level, what the Chinese adoption authorities call "root seeking tours" - filled with extravagant expressions of love and kinship and lavish gifts for the returning orphans - are a transparent public relations exercise aimed at raising money for Chinese orphanages, justifying the decision to export surplus children and countering decades of unfair international criticism that Chinese people "hate girls".

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 27, 2009 5:11 AM
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