With the decision last week, it is unclear what will happen to foreign families waiting for years on pending Chinese applications. In a phone call with US diplomats in China, Beijing said it “will not continue to process cases at any stage” other than those cases covered by an exception clause, the Associated Press reported on Friday.
Last week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that exceptions would only be allowed in cases of the “adoption of a child or stepchild of blood relatives of the same generation who are within three generations of foreigners coming to China to adopt.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic, China imposed travel restrictions and suspended international adoptions. From 2020 to 2022, no Chinese children were sent to the US for adoption, and only 16 children were adopted from China last year, according to US official statistics.
Due to the pandemic shutdown, many foreign families who had been matched with a Chinese child for adoption have been waiting for at least four years for the process to complete. The same disappointment goes for children in China waiting for adoption.
A Chinese dissident running an influential X account shared several screenshots of Chinese social media posts written by “staff working in the relevant field.” The accounts of these sources were anonymised.
One of the posts said, “These children in China … They know there are families waiting to bring them home. They’ve received birthday and Christmas gifts, clothes, family photos, letters, and some even had FaceTime calls, but now all of that has been cut off.”
“We will write to ambassadors, government officials, and others to see what more can be done,” the post said, “praying that the doors will be opened.”