by Meredith Armstrong, adopted from China to the UK
When I first read the news that China had ended its overseas adoption programme, I did not really think twice about it. I simply thought ‘oh..ok’ and continued scrolling down my Instagram feed. Often, it takes a while for these things to sink in with me. Perhaps it is a sort of defence mechanism when my brain works faster than my emotions and thinks ‘quick let’s move on because this will hit her later and the longer we can postpone that the better’. Unfortunately, postponing emotions isn’t the same as dealing with them and moving on, and when the postponed emotions finally arrived, they did not hold back.
Was I angry? Was I upset? Was I hurt? Was I happy? Was I relieved? Who or what was even the recipient of my emotions? The Chinese government? Intercountry adoption itself? There were so many questions, and along with it came the age-old feeling of guilt and shame for feeling anything other than profound gratefulness for my adoption experience and the opportunities it has given me.
Knowing what I know now about how corrupt a lot of these intercountry adoptions turned out to be, and understanding the damage transnational, transracial, and transcultural adoption can be on adoptees, I was taken aback by the incredible sadness I felt, along with the other emotions swirling inside.
Surely, I’m not actually upset that it has ended? That would seem entirely illogical given my current view that a child should almost always remain within their country of origin, within their culture, and as far as possible, within their close communities. Indeed, Chinese babies will no longer be used as commodities, and can no longer be exported and traded between nations, simultaneously lining the pockets of corrupt adoption officials and feeding into the much overlooked but incredibly damaging white saviourism complex present within too many adoptive parents. So, why the upset? Why the anger?
After a few days of sitting in this discomfort and trying to arrange my thoughts, I realised that underneath most of these emotions lay jealousy and further, shame for feeling that jealousy. I felt, and still feel to an extent, jealous that since my adoption, China has stopped the one-child policy (the main reason most of us were ‘abandoned’ in the first place), and now has stopped the very system that has put me in the position I am now.
I am jealous, no, perhaps I am even envious, that Chinese babies born now are less likely to be abandoned firstly, but secondly will grow up within their own culture, speaking their native language, surrounded by people who genetically mirror them.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that I was adopted into a good family and have had several opportunities that I simply would not have had if I had remained in care in China, hence the immense shame I feel about even being jealous (am I even disgusted with myself for envying a life where I might have had to grow up in an orphanage as opposed to a family in the UK?)
However, there is the line of thought that says, ‘if I had been born now, maybe I would not have been abandoned; maybe I would be at home, in China, with my birth family, in my birth culture, speaking my birth language, eating the food my stomach is designed for, in the weather my body is ready for’. And thus, it is in this space between what actually happened and what could have been, hinging on a mere 24-year gap, that all my emotions seem to rest.
Resources
To the parents I do not know (music)
UK intercountry adoptees webinar
China abolishes adoption program: No more children abroad (first to verify it by Chinese officials, Dutch Truow news, reporter is a Chinese intercountry adoptee and author – Cindy Huijgen)
I was adopted from China as a baby. I’m still coming to terms with that. (NY Times Opinion written by Chinese intercountry adoptee and author – Cindy Huijgen)
End of an era: China’s international adoption program (Nanchang Project – Chinese adoptee led platform with multiple Chinese adoptee views)
Why did China stop its foreign adoption program? (DW Taipei)
China’s halt of foreign adoptions leaves questions about pending cases AP News, US News, ABC News, NY Times (China stops foreign adoptions, ending a complicated chapter), BBC News (video),
We won’t let you adopt our children, China tells the West (The Times)
The Missing Girls: How China’s One-child Policy tore families apart (Walls Street Journal)
This is a very vulnerable and honest reflection. I truly would never have chosen to live outside of China if it had been up to me, especially learning from my Chinese friends and people living there how much better it is than Canada in so many ways. I’m very happy that children in China won’t be subjected to such a horrible and exploitative system anymore, but I wish it had come sooner. I think one way to look at it is that China is in a better place to be able to take care of its people than it was coming off of the Cold War. As a semi-peripheral country, it, like many other Asian countries, ceded so much land and resources to the imperial core, and orphans became a part of that. I’m glad that now at least China is strong enough to challenge the imperial core and isn’t in a position to be as easily exploited.