Chinese adoptees say they feel conflicted after China announces end to international adoptions

After China announced earlier this month that it was suspending international adoptions, Maze Felix, a 28-year-old adoptee from China, said he was hit with a heady mix of “anger, relief, grief, confusion — everything that “.

Felix, who uses “they/them” pronouns, is one of more than 80,000 children adopted from China to the United States over the past three decades. They were adopted at age 2 by their parents in Cleveland. And they are not alone. Whether it’s the relief of knowing that abandoned children can now retain the culture of their birth or the mourning of a program that was central to their own experiences, Chinese adoptees say the new policy has only make an already complicated experience even more complex.

Grace Newton, an adoption researcher and author of the adoption-focused blog Red Thread Broken, told NBC News that whether adoptees feel positive about the development or not, “there’s more to it than that.”

“The feeling is just this disconnect,” Newton said. “How could this massive thing that has influenced so many areas of our lives just be over on a political level, when it can never truly be over for us on a personal level?”

But given the diversity of opinions, ultimately finding connection among those who shared their experiences was important for many adoptees, Newton said.

“We are a group that is going to disappear,” said Newton, herself a Chinese adoptee. “With this, it seems even more important to come together and be in community with each other.”

At a press conference in early September, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning confirmed that international adoptions would no longer continue, “in accordance with the spirit of relevant international pacts.” Exceptions, she added, will be made for foreigners who adopt the children or stepchildren of blood relatives in China, up to the third degree of kinship.

This comes after China green-lighted international adoption in 1992, leading to around 160,000 Chinese children being adopted to other countries, half of them to the United States. But in recent years, these adoptions have slowed considerably. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, China suspended adoptions completely, and no children were adopted in the United States for the next two years. But they have resumed, with the US consulate issuing 16 visas for adoptions from China between October 2022 and September 2023.

The slowdown in international adoption coincides with a 2016 reversal of China’s one-child policy, which limited each Chinese family to one child to control population growth. In recent years, the country has also faced a massive decline in birth rates, which portends major economic and political challenges to come. In an effort to correct the situation, China turned to a “three-child policy” in 2021. And local governments announced incentives, including tax deductions, longer maternity leave and housing subsidies . However, a report from the Beijing-based Yuwa Population Research Institute says the subsidies have been insufficient or simply not implemented due to a lack of funding. And for two consecutive years, the country’s population has continued to decline.

Katelyn Monaco, a 25-year-old adoptee based in Quincy, Massachusetts, said the new rule has sparked thoughts about the one-child policy, a critical backdrop to development. This policy has enabled tens of thousands of girls and children with disabilities to benefit from the country’s social protection system. It’s also the policy Monaco said it was adopted under, and it’s been difficult to “know that this is the end of people who may have similar experiences to me.”

But Monaco said she also sees positives, optimistic that the new change could help give children in orphanages a chance to stay in their original culture, country and heritage. Often, adoptees grieve the separation they experience from their culture, she said. And people adopted into a family of a different race can often feel ethnically isolated, feelings she said she experiences. Monaco pointed out that some adoptees also face legal difficulties in obtaining citizenship, adding an institutional layer to their identity struggles. Currently, adoptees born on or before February 27, 1983 do not automatically receive citizenship, according to the Children’s Citizenship Act.

“For me, it was really difficult,” Monaco remembers. “Growing up with a single mother, although she loved me and did her best, she didn’t have the resources or knowledge to help me understand my Chinese heritage.

For Felix, one of the most troubling aspects of the new rule is its potential impact on the cases of existing adoptees. Felix, a model, actor and sign language interpreter based in Los Angeles, was adopted from Yangzhou, China. They said they have long conducted DNA testing in an effort to access their old medical records, adoption documents and other documents. With little clarity on the fate of those documents, Felix and many other Chinese adoptees said they feared that any potential for orphanage visits, finding birth parents and other ties to their home country would be abruptly broken.

“I was craving something that would never happen…a potential cultural connection, or a cultural reconnection,” Felix said. “My own life seems to have less validity because they shut the door on it.”

A Chinese government official did not say how adoptees’ documents would be handled.

Newton noted that there have been many cases in which records were falsified or contained scattered information. Despite this, there are individual and collective documents “that we even existed in China,” she said.

“There is great fear that we, as a group, will potentially be a footnote in history or not even mentioned at all,” Newton said.

With the door closed to international adoption, Newton stressed that for those currently enrolled in China’s welfare institutes to thrive in their country of birth, they also need more support. She said money that China once spent on strengthening international adoption should be allocated to strengthening social support for children and people with disabilities in the system. And more should be done to end the social stigma surrounding disability in the country, she said.

“The situation is really a little more complicated for these children with intense disabilities, especially with the increasing cost of living in China,” Newton said. “Many people, even now that the one-child policy is over, intentionally choose to have only one child. The social infrastructure must change so that families can afford to care for their child if they have a disability.

Although people had varying reactions to the news, everyone who spoke to NBC News emphasized that adoptees should be at the center of discussions about policy change, even if that hasn’t often been the case. Newton said adoptees are often seen as “perpetual children” whose views don’t need to be considered. And speaking to adoptees in activism spaces can be uncomfortable for many outside the adoptee community when their religious or other widely held beliefs are challenged. There is also a misconception that adoption is a “one-time event” rather than an experience processed in waves throughout life, Newton said.

“It might not occur to some that we would have any thoughts or feelings about this because our adoption has already happened,” Newton said of the new policy. “This should be ‘over’ for us.”