Abstract
The delivery systems for caring for dependent children have undergone a radical transformation in Reform-era China. Beginning in the mid-1980s, a dramatic resurgence in the number of abandoned infants as well as homeless youths from rural to urban areas placed great strains on the existing framework of state-run institutions for the young. China’s Civil Affairs branch has responded to the crisis by embracing a policy of “multi-approachism” 多元化 that places primacy on local experimentation and initiative. Civil Affairs workers have expressed the need to “societalize” 社会化 social welfare work, in which the government works hand-in-hand with both outside organizations and Chinese families to provide a better future for at-risk children. These findings suggest that societalization has led not to the privatization of services or the withdrawal of the state, but rather to the formation of creative partnerships between government and nongovernment entities in aiding the dependent child. Throughout the post-Mao period, we can also observe a paradigmatic shift from institution-based care to a family-centered approach that aims at providing the disadvantaged youngster with the warmth and love of the kin unit.
By 1956, the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had erected a nationwide system of care for the two categories of marginalized minors it deemed deserving of full state support: abandoned infants of unidentified parents and homeless street children. Throughout the Mao era, the state took full responsibility for sheltering these individuals, a policy that was based on the premise that government-run organizations were uniquely qualified to foster these children’s physiological, mental, and ethical development in line with the objectives of socialist construction. Private individuals and charitable associations, the primary players in child relief during the Qing Dynasty and much of the Republic, were suspected of operating from ulterior motives and were virtually barred from participating in this undertaking. Though administrators followed the practice of placing foundlings in adoptive families, group-care institutes—namely orphanages 儿童福利院 and youth correction homes 儿童教养院—were regarded as indispensable in carrying out a youngster’s transformation into a skilled laborer devoted to constructing the motherland. Though relevant historical records from the decade of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) are scarce, there is little to suggest that the institutional framework for child relief developed in the mid-1950s was altered or expanded upon in any meaningful way by the end of the Mao era.
But the “closed,” centrally coordinated system of child relief of previous decades gradually gave way to an “open-ended” multifocal support structure during the course of the Reform Period (1978–present). A continuously growing strain on the network of state-managed care facilities and the renewal of cultural and educational exchanges between China and the outside world in the 1980s have opened the field of child relief to new groups of actors, led to a broader definition of those deserving support, and given rise to an emphasis on local initiative and experimentation. The Chinese government, particularly the Civil Affairs branch, has endorsed this cluster of trends, openly touting the need to “societalize” 社会化 social welfare work. Some scholars have interpreted this transition as a zero-sum shift from public to private sponsorship of social services for disadvantaged persons in China. 1 This article, however, shows that amid this change in policy, the Chinese government has continued to play a pivotal role as both a provider and a coordinator of initiatives to enhance the well-being of dependent children. The campaign to “societalize” social assistance has given birth to a novel configuration of service provision in which both official agencies and nongovernment groups have expanded their range of activities to address the growing needs, both real and perceived, of deprived youngsters.
The opening of this sector of public assistance to outside actors, along with the relaxation of socialist ideology, has also provoked a reconsideration of the particular challenges faced by at-risk children and the ways these needs can best be met. Throughout the 1980s, China’s state-managed facilities continued to employ a regimen of care giving and youth training that had become the nationwide standard by the early 1960s. But Civil Affairs authorities, as well as domestic and international civic organizations new to the scene, have since broken from this mold, pursuing a multiplicity of approaches to target the various developmental deficiencies—physiological, mental, social, emotional, and the like—of their charges. In conjunction with the embrace of “multi-approachism” 多元化, we can observe a paradigmatic shift within China’s child welfare sector from institution-based rearing toward family-centered care. As China entered the twenty-first century, a growing commitment among child-relief practitioners to the notion that a family setting was best suited to foster the dependent child’s development was reshaping the field of care in a significant way for the first time since the welfare system was set up in the 1950s.
Shock to the System: A Resurgence of Abandoned Infants and Homeless Children
All records indicate that the national network of relief facilities had the capacity to admit and care for the number of China’s foundlings and street urchins throughout most of the Mao period. While a sudden spike placed an indomitable strain on these facilities during “three difficult years” of famine (1959–1961), the number of dependent children receded shortly thereafter to pre-Great Leap Forward (1958-59) levels. The government’s creation of a social safety net, the use of a household registration system to curtail the population’s mobility, and the success in creating an egalitarian society and narrowing the gap in living standards between city and countryside, all worked to keep the totals of at-risk children from growing through the 1970s. In 1978, at the dawn of the Deng Xiaoping era, 49 state-run orphanages were operating throughout the nation—eight fewer than the total of those founded in 1956—with a mere 3,665 charges in their care ( Minzheng tongji lishi ziliao huibian: 1949-1992 ). Indeed, Civil Affairs officials in locations such as Shanghai noted that the yearly figures of foundlings entering the city orphanage gradually declined from 1962 through the early 1980s (Liu Jiequan, “Qiying,” Wenhui bao, May 22, 1989). The majority of Youth Correction Homes were shuttered by the onset of the Cultural Revolution, suggesting that Civil Affairs units no longer recognized the issue of delinquent and homeless youths as a pressing social problem. But the forces that had kept the number of unprotected youngsters in check during the Mao years were increasingly undermined by the design of the state’s modernization program and policies in the Reform Period.
“Missing Daughters” and Disabled Foundlings
Beginning in the late 1980s, a flurry of reports in the Chinese media laid bare a surge in infant abandonment that would persist well into the following decade. The accounts appeared in a range of publications, from newspapers and legal periodicals to Civil Affairs journals, and showed that the uptick was occurring in regions throughout the country (“Shehui de yige ewai fudan,” Renmin ribao, Dec. 15, 1988). In Hengyang city, Hunan province, in central China, officials noted that the number of forsaken babies rose from 233 in 1988 to 352 in 1989, before soaring to 854 the following year (Hunan sheng minzheng ting, 1992: 34). The annual number taken in by the orphanage in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou rose from 150 in 1987 to 200 in 1988 and then climbed to 240 in 1989 (“Guangzhou qiying cheng shangsheng qushi,” Xianggang wenhui bao, Feb. 28, 1991). Observers discerned a steep rise in northern cities as well. The number of foundlings picked up from Beijing’s streets in 1987 alone comprised 37 percent of the total retrieved in the capital over the previous ten years (“Shehui de yige ewai fudan,” Renmin ribao, Dec. 15, 1988). The figure of 725 abandoned infants found in Xi’an in the northwest during an 18-month stretch in 1988 and 1989 exceeded the total entering care-giving units in the city during the nine-year period of 1951 to 1959 (“Dalu qiying rijian zeng duo,” Mingbao, Nov. 20, 1991).
While a systematic nationwide survey of this social problem has not been undertaken, the findings in scattered local reports can help shed light on patterns of abandonment and the underlying factors behind its resurgence. First, these accounts make clear that female infants comprised an overwhelming majority—typically, between 75 and 95 percent—of those forsaken by their birth parents in the post-Mao years. 2 While these percentages are not out of line with those of late imperial and Republican times, the PRC’s aspirations to create a gender-equal society compelled many commentators to speculate on the reasons behind the substantially higher proportion of baby girls in the contemporary period. Chinese officials and reporters alike were wont to see the crisis grounded in moral terms. Like many others, Vice Director of Hunan Provincial Civil Affairs Department Li Dingkun posited that the persistence of a “feudal mentality” 封建态度, specifically an age-old cultural “preference for sons over daughters” 重男轻女 rooted in kinship organization and concerns about old-age support, was primarily to blame (Sheryl WuDunn, “China’s Castaway Babies,” New York Times, Feb. 26, 1991). Members of the Civil Affairs bureaucracy and Chinese press also suggested that a breakdown in public morality and family responsibility amid the rapid economic and social change of the Reform Period was at the root of the problem (Liu and Zhu, 1987: 21; Hunan sheng minzheng ting, 1992: 35). As the austere and communal values of the Mao era lost favor, giving way to an ethic of individual pursuit, a growing number of ordinary Chinese betrayed an unwillingness to take responsibility for their kin.
By contrast, Western researchers and observers singled out the implementation of the government’s birth-planning program, known as the “one-child policy” in the West, as the primary factor behind the upswing in abandonment and the skewed gender ratio among the deserted. A series of demographic surveys reported that the baseline of a natural sex-at-birth ratio of 105 to 106 boys per 100 girls rose to between 114 and 118 in the late 1980s; this finding was due to underreporting of births by parents who feared punishment for violating the state’s family-planning policy. The coauthors of one study estimate that underreporting accounted for an average of 500,000 “missing girls” per year from 1985 through 1987 (Johansson and Nygren, 1991: 42–45). Investigators concluded that the practices of informal adoption, female infanticide, and female abandonment accounted for the large number of females missing from official registration rolls. In her pioneering research on foundling care in the central provinces of Hunan and Hubei, Kay Johnson found a strong correlation between times when the birth-planning policy was enforced rigidly and escalation in the number of abandoned infants entering increasingly overburdened orphanages. More to the point, Johnson’s research showed that the majority of those funneled into the state-run orphanages in Changsha and Wuhan cities since the early 1980s were healthy baby girls, most likely second daughters; by contrast, she points out, it was quite uncommon in the 1960s and 1970s for healthy daughters to be abandoned except during times of famine (Johnson, 1993: 73). She concluded that the “duress created by the draconian, coercive measures undertaken to implement the [government’s] population control policies has revived practices that were dying” (Johnson, 1993: 84). While the early investigative work carried out by Johnson and other Western demographers have brought to light an important dimension of the resurgence in recent decades, further studies show that other policies and social forces have played a hand in aggravating the crisis.
Another noteworthy pattern among deserted infants is the preponderance of those who face serious medical complications. In spite of what Johnson found in central China, reports emerging from other areas of the country reveal staggering proportions of children who entered state-run orphanages with developmental disabilities and congenital diseases. Outside of Hunan province, the proportion of foundlings who suffered from a serious medical condition at the time of abandonment is roughly on a par with skewed female ratios, typically reaching between 75 and 95 percent. 3 Moreover, the percentage of handicapped charges in some institutions has been on the rise in recent decades; at Shanghai Orphanage, for example, it rose from 81 percent in 1989 to 98 percent in 2006 (Ren Chiyue, Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, interview by the author, April 2006). Common abnormalities among the abandoned range from physical deformations, such as cleft lips and palates, clubbed feet, and syndactyly (webbed digits), to serious heart conditions and such severe mental disabilities as cerebral palsy and Down syndrome.
The decision reached by growing numbers of parents to abandon their disabled and ill offspring appears to be driven by two developments in the Reform Period. First, scattered evidence suggests that the number of neonates with birth defects is on the rise. A study conducted in 1994 found that a total two million infants were born with disabilities over the previous five years, which comprised one-half of the four million minors (i.e.,14 sui and younger) living with congenital disorders in China at the time (Sun, 1994: 41). A survey carried out in 2006 by China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission 国家人口和计划生育委员会 (NPFPC) showed that the number of infants with birth defects has recently risen to an average of one million per year and that the total number of those afflicted increased by 40 percent from 2001 to 2006. 4 The authors of the NPFPC report, along with those of a separate 1994 survey of the problem in Guangzhou, saw the rise of birth defects connected to worsening environmental pollution, particularly chemical waste pollution and toxic emissions, as a consequence of China’s scramble to develop its economy. Second, the shattering of the “iron rice bowl” 铁饭碗—the colloquial term for the PRC’s government-supported social safety net, which came with decollectivization and the partial privatization of state-owned enterprises, has meant that couples are now forced to bear the rising, and oftentimes crushing, medical costs of raising a disabled child entirely on their own. Furthermore, concerns over the ability of a disabled only child to provide old-age support for parents who can no longer count on a pension and medical care from the state have most likely encouraged the decision to relinquish the youngster to the care of a state institution.
A third pattern tied to the resurgence in infant abandonment is the large-scale movement of little bodies from countryside to city. Whereas the act of deserting one’s kin often took place in urban centers, where China’s state-run orphanages are concentrated, a sizable majority of couples who resorted to this practice hailed from rural areas. For example, a survey of abandonment in Hunan province undertaken by Johnson and others in 1995 and 1996 revealed that 88 percent of those deserted were born into rural families, 8 percent into suburban households, and only 3 percent into urban homes. 5 In 1989, Shanghai Civil Affairs authorities disclosed that 70 percent of foundlings taken in by the municipal orphanage were born in the countryside, 15.1 percent in the suburbs, and 14.6 percent in the city (Liu Jiequan, “Qiying,” Wenhui bao, May 22, 1989). Parents now traveled greater distances to abandon their kin, typically leaving them in crowded urban places, such as waiting rooms in railway stations, outside hospital gates, and on public piers, where speedy retrieval by a passerby was likely. Some cited the greater availability of resources and the greater number of kindhearted people in the cities as their rationale (“Dalu qiying rijian zeng duo,” Mingbao, Nov. 20, 1991). Others had taken their infants with health problems to a city hospital but decided to leave them behind upon failing to secure appropriate treatment (Li, Shang, and Cheng, 1994: 87). It is clear that an awareness of the yawning gap between urban and rural living standards and availability of resources since the launch of China’s Reform program was shaping and perhaps even encouraging the practice of abandonment. In addition, in sharp contrast to the rigid social controls of the previous era, Reform-era China offered its citizens tremendous freedom to travel and become aware of conditions in distant cities. Facing greater limitations on social and medical assistance in the village, some couples determined that it was in the best interest of their disabled offspring to channel the child into the last edifice of the state’s welfare apparatus, facilities that cared for those who fit into the “san wu” 三无 category of dependents (that is, those who had no family to rely on, no source of income, and no ability to work).
When government officials and Chinese journalists began raising concern over the revived practice in the late 1980s, they argued for launching public education and health campaigns to curtail it. They advocated strengthening citizens’ understanding of laws against abandoning one’s kin. The PRC’s Constitution, Penal Code, and Marriage Law each contained clauses stipulating that those found guilty of committing the act would be subject to jail sentences, criminal detention, or surveillance for a period of up to five years (Liu and Zhu, 1987: 21). Concerned with what they saw as a decline in public ethics, local officials also recommended initiatives designed to reinstall traditional Chinese values, such as “revering the aged and loving the young” while rooting out the “preference for sons” mindset that they saw instilled in the masses (Liu and Zhu, 1987: 21; “Jingcheng qiying xianxiang lü jin bu zhi,” Xingdao ribao, Oct. 12, 1996). The authors felt that village and neighborhood committees were in the best position to detect a couple’s intention to abandon and could direct criticism-oriented education in a way that would deter the couple from carrying out their intention. Lastly, Civil Affairs authorities recommended that public health and birth-planning authorities carry out research aimed at improving birthing techniques, conduct prenatal tests and postnatal checkups, and provide follow-up care for newborns with disabilities (Liu and Zhu, 1987: 21). For the most part, though, the cluster of preventative proposals has failed to gain traction and produce noticeable results; the number of abandoned infants has continued to rise steadily in subsequent years. 6 One potentially positive sign, however, can be seen in the NPFPC’s launch, following its 2006 study on birth defects, of a free prepregnancy screening program for women in the eight provinces most afflicted by congenital disorders. 7 It remains to be seen whether this initiative will have a substantial impact on lowering the rates of abandonment.
Unable to strike at the source of the problem, Civil Affairs authorities have instead pursued an unstated policy of coping with it through institutional expansion. According to statistical yearbooks compiled by the Civil Affairs Ministry, the number of state-run orphanages increased gradually from 49 to 73 during the years from 1978 to 1994, before skyrocketing to a total of 208 during the following decade ( Minzheng tongji lishi ziliao huibian: 1949–1992 ; Zhongguo minzheng tongji nianjian, 1993–2005 ). The capacity of these facilities, measured by the total number of cribs and beds, more than quintupled, from 5,235 in 1980 to 29,592 in 2004. The number of staff members working at orphanages increased by roughly the same ratio, from a baseline of 1,658 to 6,645, during the same time period ( Minzheng tongji lishi ziliao huibian: 1949–1992 ; Zhongguo minzheng tongji nianjian, 1993–2005 ). But the most significant indicator of the government’s commitment to expanding services for at-risk children is the escalating number of foundlings and orphans taken in by state-run facilities. The year-end total of dependents in orphanages grew more than sevenfold from 1978 to 2004, a jump from 3,665 to 26,140. Moreover, when it includes minors taken in by Children’s Wards 儿童部 of Social Welfare Institutes, the total number of children placed in state care exceeded 56,000 (see Table 1 for yearly statistics) ( Zhongguo minzheng tongji nianjian, 1993–2005 ).
Statistics on Institutional Care for Children in the People’s Republic of China, 1978–2004.
Note. Each figure represents a year-end total. The acronym SWI denotes Social Welfare Institutes 社会福利院, many of which include a Children’s Division 儿童部 to provide support for foundlings and orphans in areas not serviced by orphanages (i.e., Children’s Welfare Institutes).
And yet, in spite of these efforts, there were clear indicators that the meteoric rise in the number of abandoned infants, particularly those with disabilities and disorders, was placing an undue strain on the system of state care. For example, in December 1988, the director of Tianjin City Orphanage disclosed regretfully that whereas 500 of the home’s charges were in need of medical treatment, limitations on financial, material, and human resources had allowed only 20 percent of the total to receive it (Lai Renqiong, “Shehui de yige ewai fudan,” Renmin ribao, Dec. 15, 1988). But it was a controversy surrounding Shanghai Orphanage in the mid-1990s that most poignantly exposed the heavy toll on the system. In early 1996, Human Rights Watch, a New York City–based organization, published a report, based on testimony by former orphanage physician, Zhang Shuyun, outlining a string of abuses allegedly committed by facility administrators. Zhang, who had fled to Canada after failing to persuade authorities to investigate the matter, claimed that staff followed a policy of systematically singling out the most vulnerable orphans for “summary resolution,” placing them in separate chambers, where they were denied proper care and left to perish (Patrick Tyler, “Chilling Figures On Orphan Toll,” International Herald Tribune, Jan. 9, 1996). According to Zhang, more than a thousand “unnatural deaths” occurred in the orphanage from 1986 through 1992. By her account, nearly half the 200 orphan deaths that took place between November 1991 and October 1992 could be attributed to third-degree malnutrition (Patrick Tyler, “Chilling Figures On Orphan Toll,” International Herald Tribune, Jan. 9, 1996).
Irrespective of the accuracy of the charges, the contention over the state of care giving at Shanghai Orphanage highlights the excessive burden being placed on the state’s network of relief homes for the young. The PRC government vehemently denied the allegations, viciously assailing the character and motivations of Zhang Shuyun and those who publicized the charges in a barrage of media reports. 8 Nevertheless, an article featuring an interview with Han Weichang, director of the facility during the time of the alleged maltreatment, exposed the depth of the orphanage’s difficulty in meeting the needs of its charges. While former director Han rejected the notion that the facility systematically denied care to the most vulnerable, he openly acknowledged that 20 percent of the home’s orphans in 1989 died that year due to the prevalence of illness and disease among its population. He also conceded that “freezing cold conditions” in the orphanage could have played a part in the high number of deaths (“Zhang Shuyun shexie xinchang lieji banban,” Xianggang wenhui bao, Mar. 17, 1996). Tacit recognition of these problems is also suggested by the fact that, within three years of the exposé’s publication, the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau announced plans to relocate the home’s orphans from the institute’s original structure, built in 1911, to a newly constructed, state-of-the-art compound designed to serve as a model facility for orphan care throughout the nation (“Gucan ertong tian fuyin,” Wenhui bao, Dec. 26, 1999).
The Return of “Sanmao”: Street Urchins in Post-Mao China
At the onset of the Reform Period, the numbers of homeless children in Chinese cities appeared to be in decline as well. The vast majority, if not all, of Youth Correction Homes were shut down during the Cultural Revolution and not reopened in its aftermath, suggesting that Civil Affairs administrators did not view youth vagrancy as a pressing problem. By the late 1980s, however, both the government and media outlets were launching studies and issuing reports on the renewed problem of street children. Some of these accounts were headlined by the title, “the new Sanmao” 新三毛, an allusion to a popular comic book and film character from the late 1930s and 1940s who lived a hardscrabble life on the streets of Shanghai alongside a cohort of fellow waifs. 9 But marked differences between the war-torn social environment of the fictional figure from the past and that of his contemporary counterparts raise important questions about the ways in which China’s Reform program, despite its successes on many levels, has helped to revive a largely dormant social problem.
By all accounts, the number of homeless youngsters in China has been on the rise since the middle of the 1980s. A local survey found that authorities in Shanghai took in an average of 1,765 street children per year from 1984 through 1987; that figure shot up to 2,344 in 1988 and rose once again to 2,870 in 1989 (Tao and Ding, 1990: 20). The total number collected from Shanghai’s streets in 1992 was well over 3,000 (“China Seeks to Help Children,” China News, Mar. 29, 1994). A separate study noted that in Jixi, a small city in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, the number of runaway children picked up increased by 26 percent over a two-year period, from 198 in 1995 to 269 in 1997 (“Jingji fazhan bu jun,” Zhongguo shibao, Sept. 15, 1991). On a broader scale, the Vice Director for Social Affairs at the Civil Affairs Ministry, Li Mingshan, stated in 1991 that 60,000 to 70,000 homeless children were appearing in Chinese cities each year. Based on an investigation the Ministry undertook nearly a decade later, the agency estimated that the number of homeless children picked up across the nation had risen to 150,000 each year, a figure that outside experts nevertheless found low. 10
Collectively, these studies offer an insightful glimpse into the backgrounds and lifestyles of China’s fast-growing population of street children. They indicate that, in sharp contrast to the population of abandoned infants, boys constituted the overwhelming bulk of minors living on the streets. 11 Like those deserted by their parents, however, the vast majority of young vagabonds were born in the countryside and eventually made their way to urban centers. 12 Though patterns of livelihood varied from one city to another, newcomers most commonly turned to begging, scrap collecting, the selling of fake goods, or busking in crowded areas, such as railway stations, markets, and public squares, to subsist (Zhang, 2002: 11). Those who were on the street longer were more inclined to steal, to pick pockets, or to pilfer goods from shipping yards and public areas. Whether thieving, picking pockets, begging, or performing on the street, waifs rarely operated alone, preferring to work in groups of three or four. At night, they typically sought shelter in the waiting rooms of train stations, in vendor stalls within local markets, in abandoned or partially constructed buildings, or under bridges (Tao and Ding, 1990: 20; Li and Zuo, 1993: 28; Qi, 1990: 10-11; Zhang, 2002: 11). Beyond the struggle to meet their subsistence needs, street children were exposed to a wide variety of abuses, from being discriminated against to being cheated, ridiculed, and scolded or being driven away by city residents who saw them as a nuisance, threat, or both (Zhang, 2002: 12). The precarious conditions and harsh realities of street life encountered by wayward youngsters prompt us to ask why minors have been striking out on their own in dramatically increasing numbers during a time of rising prosperity across China.
Various explanations for the resurgence in child homelessness in recent decades have been put forth, but three main social forces appear to be at work. First, a substantial rise in the number of broken families and discord in the home arguably serve as the chief factors behind the decision to run away. 13 In the past, a widespread adherence to Confucian family values and restrictive divorce laws functioned to thwart the dissolution of the kin unit. After 1980, though, the divorce rate in China began to climb appreciably for the first time in history, due to changes in the economy and the relaxation of social and ideological controls. 14 In many cases, the child of a divorced couple was subject to physical or psychological maltreatment at the hands of a stepparent, compelling the youngster to flee. Children in disharmonious or broken families were also more likely to suffer neglect and be deprived of the socialization necessary for building strong and trusting relationships, leaving them emotionally disconnected and alienated. A number of independently sponsored local surveys on homeless children, conducted in the early 1990s, revealed that roughly one in three came from divorced households (Qi, 1990: 10-11; “Jingji fazhan bu jun” Zhongguo shibao, Sept. 15, 1991; Tao and Ding, 1990: 21). But unfavorable family conditions registered even more prominently in a larger-scale joint investigation undertaken by the Civil Affairs Ministry and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 1992. Their findings revealed that two-thirds of the 1,000 homeless children sampled ran away due to parental divorce or to free themselves from mistreatment in the home (“China Seeks to Help Children,” China News, Mar. 29, 1994).
Second, heightened competition in China’s education system has played a definitive role in the upsurge in child homelessness. The establishment and expansion of China’s modern public education system in the twentieth century reshaped the everyday agenda of the country’s youth while forging a new sense of identity tied to student status among them. In the Reform Period, the introduction of the one-child policy, coupled with the disintegration of the state-sponsored pension program, had the effect of saddling school-age children with immense parental pressure to succeed in the classroom. Couples came to view their single child’s record of academic achievement as a key indicator of the child’s eventual ability to provide for them after retirement. Critics inveighed against the education system for its nearly exclusive focus on knowledge acquisition and test taking at the expense of moral learning and physical training, but competition in the school system seems to have only intensified over the years. Students unable to excel in academics and advance in the ranks might find themselves the target of their parents’ scorn, oftentimes manifest in verbal abuse or even physical punishment. For example, 739 of 2,000 homeless children (27 percent) picked up in Shanghai in 1989 reported that they ran away because of beatings or out of fear of suffering such abuse from their parents due to poor academic performance (“Jingji fazhan bu jun,” Zhongguo shibao, Sept. 15, 1991). For students under this kind of pressure, the decision to drop out of school has gone hand in hand with the decision to leave home.
Third, droves of children from rural areas, lured by the prospects of a better and more exciting life in the city, have been pouring into China’s bustling urban centers. In the early PRC, the government set about to eliminate the urban capitalist class, private enterprise, and disparities between municipality and countryside. During the Mao era, the leveling of these differences provided little incentive for village youths to set out for urban areas except in times of natural or manmade catastrophe (Yang Huimin, Director, Shanghai Youth Correction Center, interview by the author, May 29, 2006). But the model of economic development embraced by Reform-era authorities regenerated and widened inequalities between China’s urban and rural sectors. Tantalized by the images of a prosperous and exciting city life on television screens across the countryside, a growing cohort of youths abandoned what they saw as a dull existence in the village to seek adventure and money-making opportunities in thriving commercial centers. 15 But being unskilled, semiliterate, and underage, runaways have had to grapple with a limited availability of options after making it to the city, prompting them to resort to mendicancy, scrap collecting, or for the more seasoned urban dwellers among them, a range of illicit activities to meet their subsistence needs. 16 Echoing concerns voiced by officials and reformers in the 1930s and 1940s, contemporary commentators feared that the packs of children currently roaming the streets would, if not placed on a disciplined path, naturally become tomorrow’s criminal gangs.
Such warnings failed to resonate throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s as municipal Civil Affairs units stuck to a passive approach of collecting and releasing the young vagrants. As noted above, the Youth Correction Institutes 儿童教养院 founded in the early PRC had vanished by the end of the Cultural Revolution. With child homelessness subsiding at the onset of the Reform era, China’s new leadership chose not to revive full-time care facilities, relying instead on an expansive set of repatriation (literally, “detain and send back”) stations 收养遣送站. Standard procedure involved removing homeless children from the streets, placing them in one of the nation’s 600 stations for a brief stint, and facilitating their return to their native places. 17 Most tellingly, child and adult vagrants were treated virtually the same. The system not only failed to staunch the torrent of runaways from rural areas but also proved particularly vulnerable to recidivism. Civil Affairs officials in Jiamusi, Heilongjiang province, pointed to a seemingly endless stream of runaways entering the city, noting that though from 1989 through 1991, an aggressive three-year campaign had successfully removed 600 youths from its streets, 500 runaways were roaming them once again within a year (“China Seeks to Help Children,” China News, Mar. 19, 1995). Among a group of Shanghai-based homeless children who were interviewed in 1991, 37 percent reported that they had run away from home more than once. In 1987, one unnamed runaway was detained in Shanghai and returned to his home village seven times, only to make his way back to the city each time. While this case may be extreme, it exposed the then current infrastructure’s inability to address the root of the problem (Xu Qinfu, 1988: 12).
In the early 1990s, the Chinese government began sending signals that it recognized the inadequacy of its policy of simply detaining and sending runaways home. A turning point in official activism took place in 1992, when the Civil Affairs Ministry partnered with UNICEF to conduct a survey of 10,000 homeless children in Anhui, Guangdong, and Hunan provinces and Shanghai city and to explore new types of support services for the afflicted (“Minzhengbu yu Lianheguo xieshou bo erbai wan jiuzhu liulang er,” Mingbao, Oct. 27, 1993). In accord with the study’s findings, the two agencies worked with relief institutes in the areas in question to launch a range of trial programs, from psychological counseling and sociological casework to labor-skills training and hygienic instruction, for youngsters taken off the streets (“Minzhengbu yu Lianheguo xieshou bo erbai wan jiuzhu liulang er,” Mingbao, Oct. 27, 1993). The transition from a reactive to an interventionist approach was buttressed by new legal provisions and agreements. Ever since the 1930s, when the issue of homeless children first sparked public discussion in China, urban administrators and private reformers alike discussed it overwhelmingly in terms of its implications for the community, society, and the nation at large. The passage of the Minors Protection Law 未成年保护法 in September 1991 hinted at a shift from focusing exclusively on broader, collective concerns toward an interest in ensuring the individual child’s well-being. One of the law’s provisions obligated local Civil Affairs offices to provide shelter, education, and care to street urchins until their parents or legal guardians could be identified (Li Liqin, “Liulang ertong jieshou ‘quanli’ jiaoyu,” Hunan ribao, Aug. 22, 2001). The PRC government also became a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 儿童权利公约; the agreement, which took effect in China in April 1992, stipulates that homeless minors have the right to receive protection and assistance from the state (Li Liqin, “Liulang ertong jieshou ‘quanli’ jiaoyu,” Hunan ribao, Aug. 22, 2001). These declarations, and ones that would follow, made a point of distinguishing young vagabonds from old, underscoring the special status and particular needs of the former.
The pilot programs and resolutions on children’s rights would serve as a foundation for building a new set of institutions designed to protect and aid the growing ranks of homeless youths. In 1995, the State Council 国务院, a top-level administrative body in the central government, issued a directive calling for the institutionalization of both protection and education services for children who had been separated from home (Minzheng bu, 2002: 13). The circular stated somewhat broadly that all cities with large numbers of homeless minors ought to set up new care-giving facilities known as 流浪儿童保护救助中心 (referred to hereafter as Youth Correction Centers), but noted that local governments, with Civil Affairs offices taking the lead, should handle this task. This decision resulted in a sporadic, decentralized pattern of institutional growth based more on local need than on a central mandate: for example, Shanghai and Changsha opened centers in 1998, Beijing and Shijiazhuang in 2001, and Nanjing and Shenzhen as late as 2004. By 2005, 130 Youth Correction Centers had been set up in urban centers throughout the country (Xu Ziting, “Quanguo liulang ertong jiuzhu baohu gongzuo yantaohui zai jing zhaokai,” Zhongguo shehui bao, Mar. 8, 2005). Unlike the network of repatriation stations, the centers were tasked with giving shelter for a period of up to one year while offering a nonstandard curriculum of instruction and training specially designed to transform the character and habits of their charges. Finally, they were obliged to track down each child’s legal guardians in order to bring about the eventual reunification of the sundered family. Though the surge in youth homelessness had ignited a round of institutional expansion, it was not long before the administrators of these centers followed the lead of orphanages by experimenting with various family-based approaches to care giving, the subject of the following section.
“Multi-Approachism” and the Rise of Family-Centered Care
Judging by the rapid proliferation of facilities alone, the mounting number of at-risk children in the Reform Period appears to have simply deepened the state’s commitment to the model of collective care adopted initially in the 1950s. In the early PRC, the Civil Affairs apparatus and People’s Welfare League had articulated the need to eliminate the irregular practices, eclectic objectives, and inefficiencies they identified in the operations of privately run children’s institutions of previous times. For the first time in history, the Chinese state showed itself determined and capable of building and assuming full managerial control of an integrated system of welfare for the young. In a time of ideological austerity, the erstwhile leaders in relief work—religious figures, capitalist-philanthropists, foreign nationals—were unsurprisingly suspected of acting in accord with motivations and objectives that ran counter to building a socialist society and thus were denied further participation in this sector. The party state adopted the role of surrogate guardian for youngsters separated from their natal parents, claiming full responsibility for meeting their physiological needs, shaping their mental and ethical development, and expecting them to direct their future talents and labor to the construction of the motherland in return. Under the direction of the Civil Affairs Ministry, orphanages and youth correction homes offered the collective existence of a family that was ideally suited to the vulnerable child’s proper socialization and inculcation of socialist values. The turnover in national leadership at the inception of the Reform Period did not engender a departure from the established approach to aiding dependent children and, given the overall trend of institutional expansion, it would seem that the group-care model remained predominant well into the new era.
Beneath this pattern of growth, however, there emerged an unmistakable change of direction in the way care givers in post-Mao China have been thinking about the needs of at-risk children and the methods best suited for meeting them. Adherence to the singular approach of supporting the young in an institutional setting began giving way to a spirit of flexibility and experimentation with new techniques under the banner of duoyuanhua 多元化, a Chinese term that may be rendered as “multi-approachism.” 18 Beijing’s decision to reopen its borders to the outside world in 1979 allowed for the flow of new ideas on child development, drawn primarily from the Western fields of psychology and social work, into China. From the mid-1990s onward, Civil Affairs officers and orphanage administrators began working with foreign specialists and international aid organizations to develop new types of services tailored to the specific needs of vulnerable youngsters. Amid the bustle of local initiative and embrace of diversification, we can discern a paradigmatic shift from institutional-based assistance to family-centered support, marking the most significant development in the PRC’s system of child welfare since it was set up in the 1950s.
Legacies of the Mao Era: The Group-Care Approach to Aiding the Young
In order to grasp the extent to which this shift is altering the larger framework of child relief in contemporary China, it will be helpful first to sketch out the fundamental components of institutional care. Moreover, in spite of the trend toward family-centered support, many policies and procedures associated with the older approach remain in effect. In short, the system at the time of this writing is in a transitional state, consisting of a mix of both formats. The description of institutional care below focuses primarily on the operations at the sole state-run orphanage in Shanghai. The case of the Shanghai orphanage 上海市儿童福利院 is particularly revealing, given its dual status as the largest institution of its kind in China in terms of total children housed and as a leading force in creating and implementing family-care programs for the young. 19 The account that follows is based largely on interviews the author conducted at this facility and at the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau in the spring of 2006, supplemented by data drawn from local gazetteers and reports in the Chinese media.
China’s state-run orphanages have responded to rampant abandonment in contemporary times by developing an elaborate set of procedures to streamline the process by which foundlings are admitted and guardianship is transferred. Any individual who identifies and picks up a deserted infant is required to take the baby to the nearest police station, which logs the time and location of the sighting and any identifying marks (i.e., the cut and color of the child’s clothing) before delivering the youngster to a nearby hospital (Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006). The hospital is required to conduct a physical checkup to determine if the foundling suffers from a congenital disorder, administer any medical attention, and then arrange for its charge to be transported to the city orphanage (Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006). The rights and responsibilities associated with guardianship follow the abandoned child in each step of this process, transferring automatically from birth parents to the city Public Security Bureau 公安局 to the municipal Public Health Bureau 卫生局 and finally to local Civil Affairs authorities (Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006). During the foundling’s first three months at the orphanage, its administrators arrange for photos and a brief description of the youngster to be publicized in local newspapers in an effort to track down the child’s natal parents and reunite the kin group. 20 If the child is still unclaimed by the end of this term, the orphanage issues the foundling a residence permit that carries with it the rights and access to services accorded to registered local inhabitants (Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006).
Care for the wards of the orphanage is structured around a three-pronged approach of “nurturing, treating, and educating” 养治教. Initially touted by central authorities in a 1964 circular as a policy to be extended throughout the country, the formula found renewed endorsement at a conference on urban social welfare work convened by the Civil Affairs Ministry in 1982 (Fan, 2000: 166; Wang et al., 2002: 331). In the context of institutional orphan care, nurturing was defined primarily as providing nutrition, clothing, and a level of hygiene necessary for healthy physiological development (Li Ping, “Shanghai ertong fuliyuan de zhenmao,” Xianggang wenhui bao, Mar. 8, 1996). The second leg of institutional care, medical treatment, took several different forms. A roster of full-time pediatricians and nurses at Shanghai Orphanage—totaling over 35 for some 550 charges in 1996—administer regular checkups and treat children who have contracted common ailments or regularly occurring diseases in the institution’s designated sick room (Li Ping, “Shanghai ertong fuliyuan de zhenmao,” Xianggang wenhui bao, Mar. 8, 1996; Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006). A child in need of corrective surgery for a treatable congenital disorder or defect, such as clubbed feet, heart disease, a cleft lip or palate, and the like, is sent for necessary surgery to one of three hospitals with which the orphanage has special ties (Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006). Increased awareness of the special needs of orphaned and disabled children 孤残儿童 has prompted an expansion of medical treatment procedures in the Reform Period. In 1985, the municipal Civil Affairs agency set up the Shanghai Rehabilitation Center for Handicapped Children上海市伤残儿童康复中心 to provide a range of services, such as assessment, physical therapy, acupuncture, and massage for children with physical defects as well as evaluations and a special education track for those with mental deficiencies or paralysis. Four years later, the Center added testing and speech therapy services for children with hearing problems and speech impediments (Fan, 2000: 166).
The stated objective of education, the third component of the institutional-care model, was teaching the wards of the state a set of skills that would enable them to be reintegrated into mainstream society and to provide for their own livelihood (Zhang Xiaoling, “Ai de yuezhang – ji Shanghai shi ertong fuliyuan,” Wenhui bao, May 27, 1987; Li Qiong, “Beijing shi gucan ertong fuliyuan caifang ji,” Huasheng bao, May 23, 1986; Feng, 1999: 7). The educational enterprise was limited initially to sending children deemed mentally normal to public elementary and middle schools, where they sat and learned alongside students from the community. The growing attention to meeting the particular challenges of children with developmental problems, however, can also be observed in more recent education initiatives. In June 1993, the orphanage opened Zhenchan school 真神学校 on its premises to offer a program of learning for children with mental and other disabilities too severe to allow for outside education. Its curriculum consisted of specially tailored courses in language and literature, mathematics, music and art, physical education, and ethics. Within two years, more than one-third of the orphanage’s charges were enrolled in the school. More recently, the orphanage has established an on-site preschool program based on the U.S. model that focuses on character development and building confidence, an emphasis in line with the needs of those who suffer the psychological loss of abandonment at an early age. 21
Broadly speaking, there are three pathways out of institutionalized orphan care for the young. Placement in an adoptive family, the first of these, served as the exit strategy pursued most vigorously by administrators of group-care facilities for foundlings from the early Qing through the Mao years, a point underscored by consistently high adoption rates. An overriding commitment to meeting birth-planning objectives, however, had the effect of severely constricting the pool of couples eligible to adopt throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s. In the absence of a uniform, national law on adoption, it was left up to local agencies to formulate policy for their jurisdictions. For example, the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau issued a set of regulations on adoption in October 1981, stipulating that only childless couples from Shanghai and other areas were eligible to adopt (Fan, 2000: 165). The Chinese government has not released statistics on domestic adoptions in the 1980s, but the imposition of such restrictions suggests that legal adoption remained a particularly narrow outlet for minors in state custody throughout the decade.
The promulgation of the PRC Adoption Law 中华人民共和国收养法 in 1992, most likely in response to a sustained surge in infant abandonment, created something of a safety valve for China’s increasingly overcrowded orphanages. Two of the law’s basic restrictions—prospective parents must be childless and may not adopt more than one child—were waived for those who adopted an orphan, a disabled child, or an abandoned infant of unknown parents from an orphanage or social welfare institution. 22 The annual number of legal domestic adoptions shot up from just over 2,800 in 1991 to more than 20,000 in 1998, before nearly doubling to 40,084 in 2004. The establishment of the Center for Chinese Adoption Affairs, also in 1992, helped to facilitate a steady increase in intercountry placements, which rose from a mere 252 in 1992 to some 5,887 in 1998, and then more than doubled to 12,519 in 2004 (see Table 2 for a fuller set of statistics). 23 Put in other terms, by 2004, the total number of domestic and international adoptions had risen to a sum that amounted to a near halving of the children in institutional care. 24
Numbers of Registered Adoptions in China.
Sources. Domestic figures and totals are derived from Zhongguo minzheng tongji nianjian, 1993–2005 . Figures for intercountry and U.S. adoptions from China are taken from William Robert Johnston’s table found at http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/adoptionstatsintl.html, accessed on August 8, 2012.
There were two main routes out of the orphanage for those not placed with an adoptive family: either assignment to an outside work unit or transfer to a separate relief facility. It was up to local officials to make arrangements for this group of dependents. In 1998, Shanghai municipal authorities issued a directive mandating that the government of the district or county in which an orphaned and disabled child resides—Minhang district in the case of Shanghai Orphanage—is responsible for arranging employment for the dependent when he or she becomes an adult (Feng, 1999: 7). Naturally, many of those who grow up in the institution are unable to establish a normal working existence. Wards of Shanghai Orphanage who have severe disabilities and thus lack the ability to provide for themselves are sent, upon turning 18 sui, to Shanghai Number Two Social Welfare Institute 上海第二社会福利院 in Chongming county, where they would continue to receive full support from the state (Fan Jingsi, 2000: 163; Zhang Xiaoling, “Ai de yuezhang,” Wenhui bao, May 27, 1987; Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006). Those who have partial labor ability are transferred to one of Shanghai’s welfare enterprises 福利企业, which offer job training, arrange participation in productive activities, and provide subsidies to help cover living costs. Beyond these established outlets, wards of the orphanage who gain admittance to a college or university receive full support for tuition and living expenses while pursuing an undergraduate degree. 25
The “Family-zation” of Orphan Care
In the late 1990s, administrators from various orphanages across China began experimenting with a new approach to aiding the young in their custody—foster care. They insisted that a family-based support system was capable of addressing the individual needs of the dependent child in ways that an institutional framework could not. And while adoption also provides a bridge to family life, the number of permanent home placements, growing as rapidly as it has, nevertheless lags further and further behind the total number of those who remain in institutional care with each passing year. The origins of China’s foster-care enterprise can be traced back to an activity sponsored by the Shanghai orphanage in 1994 called 好心人抱一抱孤儿 (literally, “kindhearted people hug orphans”). Just prior to the Chinese lunar New Year, the facility’s officers arranged for some 1,000 volunteer city residents to give hugs to children in the facility’s care, a type of physical connection rarely experienced by those long severed from family life (Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006). Following this ceremony, 103 couples each took home a vulnerable youngster for the weekend so that the child could celebrate the national holiday in a family setting (Li Ping, “Shanghai ertong fuliyuan de zhenmao,” Xianggang wenhui bao, Mar. 8, 1996). Huang Jiachun, Vice Director of the orphanage at the time, pointed out that this initiative was designed “to foster a warm feeling of attachment to others” (产生感情依恋) in the recipients (Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006).
Buoyed by the success of these activities, the Shanghai orphanage launched the country’s first foster-care 家庭寄养 program in July 1997. The first step involved issuing a public call for interested and qualified couples to submit an application. To be eligible to participate, prospective foster parents had to demonstrate that they met certain educational and economic requirements and had established a stable family environment and that neither individual had a communicable disease or history of criminal activity. Through a rigorous screening process that involved the dispatch of a social worker to conduct home interviews and on-the-spot investigations as well as several rounds of review, the officers of the Shanghai orphanage selected a total of 100 couples from a pool of 200 who applied during the first year of the program’s existence (Zhou and Lu, 1998: 24). Each placement began with a three-month trial period. If, at the end of the provisional phase, both the child and the couple were satisfied with the arrangements, the term of care was formally extended to a period of three years as specified in a contract signed by orphanage officials and foster parents. 26
Over the following years, Shanghai’s foster-care pilot project blossomed into a regulated and thriving program for youngsters otherwise bereft of family. Notably, in contrast to the statutory terms of adoption, the legal guardianship of a child placed in a foster home remains in the hands of the local Civil Affairs agency, a situation that demands a regular and open channel of communication between authorities and care givers. The Shanghai orphanage set up a foster-care office 家庭寄养办事处 to help with the logistics of exchange (Zhou and Lu, 1998: 24). On the one hand, the office has provided foster couples with specialized training to assist with the emotional growth and education of disabled and orphaned children. 27 On the other hand, it strives to monitor the well-being of these children in their new environment. Throughout the trial stage, the office conducts weekly telephone interviews with the foster parents and requires them to proceed to the office to meet with staff and submit a completed status report, known as a “situation feedback form” 情况反馈表, each month (Zhou and Lu, 1998: 24). Thereafter, representatives of the office schedule a minimum of four meetings per year with the couple and the child, two of which are mandatory home visits, to ensure that the family is still furnishing the support that was needed (Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006). The Shanghai program continued to flourish over the following decade: the number of children in foster homes increased more than twofold from July 1998 (100) to June 2000 (220), and nearly doubled again (to over 400) within two years (“Shanghai gucan er jiyang you zhangfa,” Wenhui bao, July 10, 2000; “Rang gucan ertong zoujin,” 2002: 31). By 2006, fully one-third of the 1800 children in the custody of the Shanghai orphanage were living in foster homes (Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006).
Shanghai’s family-care alternative was upheld as a model worthy of emulation by a number of orphanage administrators in other Chinese cities. The leaders of Guiyang Orphanage in the south central region founded a foster-care program in 1998, in part to cope with overcrowded conditions of the facility (Tong Fugui, “Jiating jiyang ertong fuli shiye zou xiang shehui,” Zhongguo shehui bao, Dec. 7, 2002). Beijing’s state-run orphanage followed suit the following year but deviated from the policy of Shanghai’s flagship program by sending its charges to foster homes located exclusively in rural areas. From the program’s inception in 1999 through the end of 2003, more than 30 percent of all children admitted to the capital’s orphanage were entrusted to the care of foster parents (Cheng, 2004: 9). Meanwhile, the successive establishment of foster-care services in Kunming, Nanjing, and Wuhan in the year 2000 was reshaping the structure of orphan support in these cities. By the end of that year, just over two-thirds of children at Kunming’s facility had been placed in foster families (Xun Yongxiang and Duan Xiqi, “Kunming shi ertong fuliyuan,” Zhongguo shehui bao, Feb. 22, 2003). The Wuhan case, in particular, points up the degree of flexibility in shaping foster-care policies during this wave of decentralized expansion. While Wuhan’s program followed the Shanghai model of implementing a three-month trial phase, it developed a notably more rigorous set of provisions for monitoring the conditions and development of children who face special challenges thereafter. These included dispatching agents to make home visits at a more frequent rate of one time per month, conducting physical exams at fixed intervals determined by the child’s age, and sending medical specialists to foster homes on a regular basis to provide assessments and guidance for putting rehabilitative training schemes for disabled children into action. 28 During its first two years of existence, Wuhan’s program placed a total of 240 children—three-quarters of whom were disabled and thus prime candidates for physical or mental rehabilitation—from the municipal orphanage with foster families (Hu Xianzhen, “Wei gucan ertong goujian ‘huijia zhi lu’,” Zhongguo shehui bao, May 18, 2002).
After half a decade of initiative by local administrators, central-level authorities began championing foster care as preferable to group-care arrangements and adopted a standard set of regulations and policies for broader implementation. This change marked a bottom-up pattern of expansion at variance with the top-down formation of the county’s child-welfare system in the Mao and early Reform periods. As a harbinger of changes in the official position, Shanghai’s Civil Affairs Bureau organized a conference on the city’s foster-care services that brought together a mix of foreign specialists, upper-tier Civil Affairs officials, and orphanage administrators from other Chinese cities in July 2002. 29 Conference participant Wang Suying, Director of the Civil Affairs Ministry’s Department of Social Welfare, expressed her unequivocal support for foster-care initiatives, which, she insisted, were emblematic of a necessary shift in Chinese orphan care from “placing emphasis on institutional development” 重机构发展 to “focusing on human resources” 以人为本 (“Rang gucan ertong zoujin,” 2002: 32). A little over a year later, in late October 2003, the Civil Affairs Ministry underscored its growing commitment to this transition by issuing a set of “Provisional Methods for Managing Foster Care” 家庭寄养管理暂行办法 for the nation. The text specified basic requirements for foster parent and child eligibility and affirmed that the local Civil Affairs organ (county level or above) retained custodial rights and bore full responsibility for assuming the expenses associated with the child’s upbringing for the duration of the placement period. 30 The circulation of these regulations, along with renewed endorsements made by ministry officers, was designed to serve as a push for the wider adoption of family-care alternatives in the provinces and cities. 31
The foster-care movement was built upon a framework of joint government, community, and family participation that was novel to China’s system of public assistance for the young. 32 According to the layout of this scheme, the government, in particular the municipal-level Bureau of Finance 财政局, was responsible for allocating the funds necessary for meeting the everyday needs of the fostered child. 33 Support from the community, the second leg of the program, included the capacity of local kindergartens and public schools to admit children from foster homes, to reduce or simply waive their tuition, and to educate those among them with special learning needs. Community support also encompassed the appointment of various specialists, such as psychologists, physical therapists, and social workers, to help children cope with particular challenges in their daily lives. Other elements of community assistance included the provision of free medical care by doctors and local hospitals as well as donations from private individuals and groups (“Rang gucan ertong zoujin,” 2002: 32; Huang Jiachun, interview, May 24, 2006). The third component of the model, the foster family, was essential to creating the loving and nurturing environment that officials had come to see as indispensable to the vulnerable child’s healthy development. The newly touted tripartite formula was part and parcel of the Civil Affairs Ministry’s campaign to ”societalize” social welfare, an effort clearly centered on the formation of partnerships among state and non-state actors rather than simply the relegation of responsibility for social services to private players. Civil Affairs authorities referred to the three-way partnership as “政府主导, 社会支持, 家庭寄养, 统一监护”.
The proponents of foster care framed their support for the enterprise by stressing how family-centered rearing could shore up many of the glaring insufficiencies of an institutional upbringing. As an alternative to the long-standing collective ideal of 养治教, foster care “enabled orphaned and disabled children to have the warmth of family” and to “feel the love of a mother and father” (Zhou and Lu, 1998: 23). The smaller setting helped to facilitate children’s socialization, particularly the formation of emotional bonds, to build self-confidence, and to further their intellectual development in ways that the facility could not (Feng, 1999: 7; Chen Guang, “Guangzhou tuichu jiating jiyang shequ shidian,” Zhongguo shehui bao, Jan. 1, 2005). Li Hao, an official in the Ministry’s Social Welfare Division, pointed out that his agency’s support for foster care reflected a newfound emphasis on the child’s “spiritual needs, psychological needs, character development along with their physical needs” (Zhu Yan, “Jiating jiyang: guanzhu gucan er de jingshen xuqiu,” Zhongguo funü bao, Nov. 19, 2003). In a radical departure from the Mao period and early Reform era, Li Hao’s colleague, Li Baoku, the Vice Director of the Ministry, emphasized the ways the mainstream approach to orphan care in China fell short of global standards. The Vice Director noted that internationally recognized research and the record of social work make clear that the child welfare institute’s “collective model is severely inadequate to meet the needs for child’s emotional development, and furthermore that foster care can provide a supplement to these deficiencies” (Li Baoku, “Jiji kaizhan gucan ertong jiating jiyang gongzuo,” Zhongguo shehui bao, Oct. 29, 2003). At the same time, official acknowledgment of the advantages of family care began to inspire alternative approaches to supporting homeless children as well.
Early Signs of Family-Style Support for Homeless Children
Disillusioned by high rates of recidivism among homeless youths, beginning in the late 1990s, Civil Affairs authorities sought to resurrect the juvenile reform facilities that had been shuttered by the close of China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The revived Youth Correction Centers, reaching a total of 130 by the end of 2003, were designed to provide shelter and reform education for the adolescents who had been pouring into the nation’s urban centers in droves since the late 1980s. They were set up to tackle the problem of youth homelessness in ways that the detention stations 收容遣送站 had seemingly failed to do. Whereas the latter served as mere collection points from which street urchins were returned to their native communities, the revival of Youth Correction Centers was predicated on the notion that the adolescent’s inner makeup—a sense of discipline, the ability to discern right from wrong, an outlook on the law, and so forth—had to be recalibrated. Simply shuttling them back to their hometowns without undertaking this transformation, officials concluded, neither struck at the root of the problem nor did much to thwart the reappearance of runaway youths on the city streets. The child’s family and, to a lesser extent, educational environment were to blame for setting him or her on the wrong path. Placement in a highly structured institutional setting was upheld as an antidote to deviance, a pivotal step toward course correction.
In a seemingly paradoxical twist of developments, the proliferation of state-run institutions for street children was occurring at the very time that operators of China’s orphanages were increasingly turning away from the collective-care model. The new line-up of Youth Correction Centers functioned as full-service, round-the-clock facilities, but they were not meant to become permanent or even long-term homes for those admitted. 34 The idea was to extract wayward children from the unforgiving conditions of the urban netherworld and provide them with a protected space and the tools necessary to make a fresh start. Indeed, the state’s recent acknowledgement of its responsibility to protect the well-being of uprooted minors was written into the official name for these institutions. While each facility adopted its own particular policies, the centers typically took in street children along with petty criminals and delinquents between the ages of 7 and 16 sui, for a maximum stay of six months to one year (Sun Jibin, “Liulang ertong jia zai he fang,” Fazhi ribao, Dec. 19, 2002). It was determined that by the end of this term, the children could be sent home with the confidence that they would not be compelled to rejoin the ranks of urban street dwellers.
In addition to establishing a refuge from the negative influences of the city, each facility developed a highly regimented schedule of activities designed to serve as a bridge from the impulsive rhythms of street living to the stability of a student’s existence (see Table 3 for a typical schedule). Subject to a detailed body of regulations, the formerly homeless child learned to live a collective life in a uniform manner from the waking hour to bedtime. The rigid structure of daily life at the center was, however, somewhat counterbalanced by the softer approaches of moral suasion, participation in cultural activities, and meditation sessions aimed at molding healthy sentiments, identifying individual strengths, and engaging in self-reflection (Luo Jirong, “Wei liulang ertong zhangqi yipian lantian,” Hebei ribao, Dec. 15, 2002; Yang Huimin, interview, May 29, 2006). A central component of the children’s daily agenda was the Centers’ nonstandard educational curriculum, specially tailored to the social and psychological needs of young drifters. Typical subjects of study included education in the legal system 法制教育 to help them accurately recognize their past transgressions; education in ethics 道德教育 to teach them how to become morally upstanding persons; and education for daily life 生活常识教育 to cultivate proper habits, speech, and behavior (“Wo sheng jiji jiuzhu he baohu liulang ertong,” Liaoning ribao, July 25, 2004). Given the background of their charges, Youth Correction Centers hired instructors specially trained in psychological education to teach and provide psychological counseling 心里咨讯 (Luo Jirong, “Wei liulang ertong zhangqi yipian lantian,” Hebei ribao, Dec. 15, 2002). The impact of these programs on a national scale remains to be seen, but anecdotal evidence from the northeastern city of Dalian, in March 2005, suggests their potential positive effect: less than 10 percent of those who undertook a two-month session of psychological consultation and education at the municipal Youth Correction Center relapsed into a state of homelessness on the port city’s streets (Li Zhiyou, “Liulang ertong: jia zai he fang,” Dalian ribao, Mar. 17, 2005).
Weekday Schedule for Shanghai Youth Correction Center (2005).
Source. This daily schedule for minors at Shanghai Youth Correction Center was presented to the author during an interview with the facility’s director, Yang Huimin, on May 29, 2006.
While Reform-era programs for street children were still in their infancy, some correction centers began to experiment with family-support schemes that were taking root in orphan care. Their introduction signified an unprecedented development in the country’s history of organized assistance for street urchins that stretched back to the late 1930s. From the late Republican years through the mid-1960s, organizers extolled the benefits of institutionalized rearing for placing the lives of homeless youths back on a proper track. This model, they contended, was particularly well suited to promoting disciplined habits, a spirit of self-sacrifice, and a set of skills that would help restore stability in urban communities and contribute to the nation’s productivity. In their discussions of corrective measures, the family was considered an afterthought at best, an incubator of private interests and maladjusted tendencies at worst. As noted above, their Reform-era successors also championed the corrective powers of a routinized, rule-laden mode of life at the institution, but center directors harbored a simmering recognition that a strictly collective approach was inadequate for treating the emotional scarring that beset a runaway child. Naturally, the hiring of specialists in psychology and social work to help street children work through individual loss spoke to a burgeoning opinion that minors’ emotional health was crucial to their overall development. But beyond this level of engagement, directors also began to solicit the participation of families in new programs devised to help their charges establish bonds of affection and trust that either never existed or had been sundered long ago.
The addition of family-care programs to the operations of Youth Correction Centers is particularly noteworthy, given the current policy of limiting a child’s stay to a year or less. The leaders of the center in Shijiazhuang city wanted not only to provide a family for runaways but in particular to “find a ‘mom’ for kids who were bereft of love and affection” 为缺少疼爱的孩字找个‘妈’. On June 1, 2002, marking Children’s Day in China, the organization used local media outlets to launch a drive to “recruit parents” 寻亲聘父母, prompting nearly 200 people from the community to sign up to become “weekend fathers and mothers” 周末父母 (Luo Jirong, “Wei liulang ertong zhangqi yipian lantian,” Hebei ribao, Dec. 15, 2002). Among them, an initial group of 16 couples were selected to take home and care for one of the center’s children on weekends. The initiative was formalized and branded the “temporary mothers” 临时妈妈 program, a title that underscored a view of maternal affection as indispensable to healthy childhood development (Wang Hongwen, “Zhongguo ying jianli liulang ertong jiuzhu zhidu,” Beijing fazhi ribao, Nov. 19, 2003). Those enrolled in Shijiazhuang’s program continued to reside at the center during the week, but spending weekends in a caring home allowed them, in the words of Tong Lihua, a lawyer and advocate for systemizing care for street children, to “feel the warmth of family” 感受家庭的温暖 (Wang Hongwen, “Zhongguo ying jianli liulang ertong jiuzhu zhidu,” Beijing fazhi ribao, Nov. 19, 2003).
Meanwhile, Youth Correction Centers based in the cities of Lanzhou and Changsha launched foster-care programs closer in format to those of Chinese orphanages (Chen Lumin, “Quanguo jijian 128 ge liulang ertong jiuzhu baohu zhongxin,” Zhongguo shehui bao, Oct. 23, 2003). 35 The mock family” 类家庭 projects established at these institutes were designed expressly to assist children who had run away from home multiple times or whose parents could not be identified. They represented a divergence from the standard policy of late Republican and Mao-era reform institutes, where young vagabonds remained under institutional care until they reached the age of 16 and were deemed capable of earning a living, irrespective of whether their guardians could be tracked down. Eligibility for participation in Lanzhou’s program required that the youth must be between the ages of 8 and 14 sui, of “normal” mental capacity and without physical disabilities, and personally willing to be placed in a home (Liu Jianping and Zhang Shuishen, “Lanzhou shi yunzuo ‘lei jiating’ jiuzhu moshi,” Zhongguo shehui bao, Oct. 16, 2003). Based on individual proclivities and interests, the child could decide whether to pursue studies at a nearby school or alternately undertake a training program to acquire occupational skills. Youngsters bereft of a nurturing environment in their birth families would now have a support structure to help them grow up in a healthy manner, to fit into society in the future, and to establish an acceptable path to self-sufficiency. The development of foster-care programs in Shijiazhuang, Lanzhou, and Changsha ought to be seen as the early sprouts of a family-centered approach for today’s homeless youngsters and part of a broader movement that has been gaining traction in the area of Chinese child welfare.
Conclusion
Beijing’s pursuit of a reformist agenda geared toward rapid modernization, along with its opening to the outside world beginning in 1980, has had crucial implications for marginalized children and the types of support they receive. The implementation of the nation’s family-planning program led to a dramatic resurgence in the numbers of abandoned infants, especially baby girls, in the 1980s and 1990s. Given the leveling off or even steady decline in such numbers from the mid-1960s through the 1970s, this trend was particularly disturbing to Civil Affairs workers, scholars, and voices in the Chinese media. While some of these commentators locate the source of the problem in a breakdown in family morality and responsibility that came with the disintegration of the collectivist model of the Mao years, lengthier studies by Kay Johnson and a number of Western demographers stress a strong correlation between times when the one-child policy was enforced rigidly and times in which we can observe a notable rise in the numbers of China’s “missing daughters,” many of whom end up in the nation’s increasingly overburdened orphanage system. More recently, scholars such as Catherine Keyser (2009) have drawn a link between infant abandonment and environmental hazards. The national drive to modernize, with little concern for the environment, has resulted in dangerous levels of water and air pollution that, in turn, have given rise to growing numbers of babies born with birth defects and congenital diseases. Unable to afford medical treatment, growing numbers of parents of these children have also been resorting to abandonment.
There has also been a sharp rise in the number of homeless youths in Chinese cities since the mid-1980s. We have seen that three social forces have contributed to the resurgence in youth vagrancy. First, the breakdown of the Chinese family unit and abuse at home has left a growing number of adolescents with a desire to strike out on their own. In many cases, this impulse has been linked to higher divorce rates since the beginning of the Reform Period and suffering of physical or psychological abuse at the hands of stepparents. Second, the pressures springing from crushing competition in the field of education have generated a sense of alienation in youngsters who perform less well, compelling them to leave the schoolhouse behind. Third, the growing gap between living standards in the urban and rural sectors has galvanized children to leave the countryside to relocate to the city. After settling in the city, though, street children have found themselves lacking the necessary skills and training to make a legitimate living. Like generations of homeless youths before them, they rely on begging or illicit activities such as picking pockets, scalping, or thieving to meet their subsistence needs.
The Civil Affairs bureaucracy has responded vigorously and creatively to the elevated numbers of dependent children. On the one hand, it greatly expanded the number of state-run orphanages over the quarter century stretching from 1980 to 2004; the number of facilities more than tripled during these years, from 59 to 208. But the government has also sought to replace the standard of “nurturing, treating, and educating” 养治教 in the realm of orphan care with a “multi-approachism” framework. This endorsement has paved the way for state-run orphanages to partner with international organizations in staking out new paths to treatment and developing ways to address the single child’s individual psychological and emotional needs. The most significant component of the “multi-approachism” model has involved a shift from institution-based care to family-centered rearing. The codification of China’s National Adoption Law in 1992, in response to a continuously growing demand for international placements, and the spread of foster-care programs throughout the nation from the mid-1990s to the present underscore the state’s embrace of the new family ideal. The warmth and emotional bonds formed with adoptive and foster parents are now seen as a preferable alternative to the collective existence and rearing regimen within the walls of the facility. While orphan care remains in a transitional state, all indicators suggest that family-based care initiatives will become the standard that supplants group rearing in the decades to come.
The structure of support for homeless children in Reform-Period China has undergone a transformation as radical as that seen in the system of care for foundlings. Virtually all the Youth Correction Institutes established during the Mao years were shuttered by 1980, due to the shrinking number of street urchins in the 1970s. After officials and scholars began reporting on an escalation in the numbers in the late 1980s, the state came to treat homeless minors the same way they treated adult vagrants: the youngsters were simply rounded up and placed in detention centers before being shipped back to their native villages or towns in short order. Since the late 1990s, however, the problem of recidivism, along with an overall increasing population of homeless youngsters, has prompted the pursuit of new approaches. The state has revived the Youth Correction Institutes of the early PRC under the new name, Liulang ertong baohu jiuju zhongxin 流浪儿童保护救助中心, drawing on a set of new techniques for rehabilitating the young vagabonds before sending them back home. Whereas learning production methods and receiving instruction grounded in Communist ideology formed the cornerstone of these institutes’ agenda in the Mao years, the street urchin of today is enrolled in a special curriculum that includes courses on the law, correct speech and behavior, and meditation and quiet reflection. The goal is not to transform the child into a patriotic worker-citizen, as before, but rather to enable all individuals to come to terms with their transgressions and ways in which they can rectify their behavior. Moreover, a small but growing number of directors of these institutes have begun experimenting with family foster-care programs, underscoring a recognition that children’s rehabilitation cannot be complete until they are able to form strong bonds within a kin group, be it a surrogate or birth family.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Kathryn Bernhardt and Philip Huang for providing helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. I would also like to thank Ruth Hein for her meticulous copyediting.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.