ABSTRACT
As theorists of development have long argued, social stability is a key variable in development, and as we know from other transition experiences, the success of political and economic transition is closely tied to social stability. The literature on economic transition and on the problems of political transition in China is vast. As the transition literature generally suggests, the state delegates to market-like forces, semi-official organizations, and local government the responsibility for certain policy areas such as social welfare. Studies of what the retreat of the state means for social welfare and the emergence of NGOs look at areas such as social security, health care, labor issues, poverty alleviation, urban housing issues, and vulnerable groups such as women, children, people with disabilities, and those affected by HIV/AIDS. But of the many social issues to emerge in the past decade, the one concerning the most fragile part of the population – abandoned, homeless, and/or abused children – has received less attention. Part of the reason is that the nature of child abandonment itself has changed, and is also a function of birth control policies and the scaling back of welfare provision for old age. Kay Johnson (1996, 1998) has done important foundational work on the question of why people would choose to abandon children in the first place, and what the logic is concerning why and when a family chooses not to keep a child. However, this research, done in the 1980s and 1990s, looks mainly at the abandonment of baby girls as a result of the one-child policy. The dynamics by the early years of the twenty-first century had changed somewhat as the success of the birth control plan (or the ability to hide children) resulted in somewhat fewer healthy girls being abandoned, while at the same time more children are being abandoned because there is something wrong with them, or there is fear that there might be. As the incidence of birth defects rises, so does abandonment, as is further discussed in the next section. The provision of social welfare for this group, however, has been little studied. Child welfare is unusual in that unlike some areas of social welfare that can be understood at least partially in market terms, the area of child welfare and protection cannot be privatized in the same way that, say, pension reform or health care can be privatized. Serving the vulnerable child involves a more complex arrangement between state and non-state actors, in part because they
themselves cannot participate in the acquisition of welfare, but also because welfare for an orphan, for example, involves multiple agencies. In China, there is no child welfare and protection agency in which questions concerning child protection and welfare can be addressed across disciplines – say, medical and educational issues. Moreover, orphans are kept behind closed doors – and the general public cannot see the problem in the way that unemployment, pollution, or villages of HIV-positive people can be seen. In short, the child is not able to participate in the same way as, say, a worker with an advocacy framework as discussed in Chapter 4. Indeed, the growth of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) for child welfare, and the continued effort on the part of non-state actors such as Catholic-run orphanages in particular, are due in part either to an absence by the state altogether, or to the very limited role the state is playing with regard to increasingly complex child welfare issues, or orphaned and abandoned children. After outlining who at-risk children are, I then review the historical and legal framework for child welfare in China. Following the review, I survey state and non-state activity in the area of orphan care.
