SAVING THE ORPHANS

By Jill Smolowe

MY DAUGHTER'S NURSERY BEARS NO RESEMBLANCE to the Chinese orphanage where she spent four of the first seven months of her life. Upon awakening, she is greeted by the sweet scent of powder and fresh sheets, not the eyewatering stench of disinfectant. During the day, bright light filters through the two windows, stimulating her to explore, just as the darkened orphanage room, with its chipped blue paint, encouraged her to remain idle. And when she prepares for sleep, her cribmates are stuffed animals, not two other children.

It is, of course, impossible to defend the indefensible--and the brutalization of children, anytime, anywhere, is indefensible. So the starvation and abuse of Chinese orphans and foundlings documented in the recent highly publicized report from Human Rights Watch/Asia deserves--no, demands--our attention. But what will the nature of that attention be? Since the report's release, the Western press has largely accepted the blanket characterization of China's orphanages as "a secret world of starvation, disease and unnatural death." Never mind that the broad condemnation omits context: by Beijing's own conservative estimate, 70 million of China's 1.2 billion citizens live in poverty. No doubt many of those people too go wanting for food, medication and heat. More jolting is the report's liberal calculus. Presenting four-year-old information and focusing on a Shanghai institution--just one of China's hundreds of orphanages--it finds that "the pattern of cruelty, abuse and malign neglect...now constitutes one of the country's gravest human-rights problems."

As a journalist, I am disturbed by the report's sensationalist tone. As an adoptive parent, I am outraged by its categorical depiction of orphanages as "death camps." Far smaller political squalls recently caused the suspension of foreign adoptions in Paraguay and Ukraine. If China follows suit, some children will lose what at the moment is their best hope for a future.

Exactly a year ago, my husband and I traveled to Yangzhou to meet our daughter. Her orphanage resembled neither the "showcase" facility that Beijing opened to foreign journalists last week nor the horror institute described by Human Rights Watch/Asia. While the orphanage needed many things--more light, a paint job, toys--the facility was heated, the nurses were attentive, and the children were well fed, overbundled and bored. Several U.S. adoption experts tell me this description matches the conditions they routinely encounter.

Susan Cox of the Holt adoption agency stresses that since 1992 orphanages have used the $3,000 "donations" made by adoptive parents to improve facilities and staffing. Janice Neilson of the World Association for Children and Parents bridles at the Human Rights Watch claim that a high mortality rate persists at a facility identified as Henan province's sole orphanage. Neilson says that if this is the same institution she works with--who knows? the report claims the location is "unclear"--the mud-walled building has been razed and a new facility is being built. When it is completed, WACAP will help establish a rehabilitation unit for disabled kids. That pioneering effort has nothing to do with adoption, which admittedly benefits only the few. It is a self-sustaining project that speaks to China's determination to improve the lives of its least wanted citizens.