When the West infects the East

The Washington Post has a great article on Adoption and China. It talks about how the increasing desire in the United States for Chinese infants is creating a market for stolen babies in China. This is of course not new information, but it is still appalling how need in what part of the world creates markets for everything in another part of the world. The West has become dependent on the rest of the world not only to provide cheap labor, but also to provide other things that are harder to find in the West. In this case, the fact that we are talking about children show how difficult it can be to survive in a country where the laws and the civil society aren’t strong enough to stop the trade of children. China is not the only country facing this type of problems, and the sad fact is that being stolen isn’t the worst thing that can happen to children. They can be raped and sold into prostitution some by family members. China has started a morality campaign in order to remind its citizen of their moral heritage. It will not stop anything for what is needed is more than words. In these situations, the countries with the means (money, power, etc…), countries from the West, have to act and do everything they can to make sure that in this case, the children that are adopted have not been stolen by their parents.

Comments

[Ray DeFrese]

I am an adoptive parent to a girl from China and I can say without a doubt that any adoptive parent I know would be heartbroken to learn that the child they adopted had been stolen from its birth parents.