关注社会:收养中国女孩难了

28 March is the 11th birthday of my daughter Fu Xinke, whom I adopted 10 years ago from China. Many babies like her, these days, are either not born at all or certainly not adopted. What a difference a decade makes.

今年3月28日是我养女付新科（音译）的11岁生日。10年前，我从中国收养了她。放到现在，许多像她这样的孩子根本没有机会出世，更别提被收养了。十年时间，变化竟然如此之大。

Last week I returned to her home town of Chuzhou, in China's eastern Anhui province, to see just how the one-child policy – quite likely to be the reason she became my daughter – is getting on these days in a province that was once a significant exporter of babies for overseas adoption.

上周，我回到我养女的家乡——中国东部省份安徽省滁州市，去看看如今计划生育政策在这个曾为海外输送了大量领养儿童的省份的执行情况。这项政策很有可能也是这个孩子当初成为我养女的原因。

When Xinke was born, many Chinese adoptions involved Anhui babies; but by 2010, international adoptions there had fallen to zero. Has Anhui outgrown foreign adoption – or has it outgrown having surplus babies at all?

在我养女出生的年代，人们从中国收养的孩子许多都来自安徽省。但到2010年，安徽儿童被海外人士收养的数量已为零。安徽究竟是已不再有可供海外人士收养的孩子，还是根本已不再有"多余"的孩子需要别人收养？

The answer could affect much more than adoption statistics: China's attitude to childbirth is changing in ways that, according to demographers, could even affect the mainland's economic miracle. I went for answers to the local family planning office of an outlying district of her city – to find that all its civil servants had gone for a long lunch. But at a hostelry nearby, I found one answer to my questions: 30-odd people setting off fireworks and consuming a 24-inch birthday cake to celebrate the birthday of a one-year-old girl.

这个问题的答案影响的远不止收养方面的统计数字：中国对计划生育政策的态度正在发生转变，人口统计学家们认为，这种转变甚至可能影响中国大陆的经济奇迹。我来到位于滁州偏远地段的一个计划生育办公室，想找寻答案，却发现办公室的人都去吃午饭了，迟迟未归。但在附近的一家餐馆，我找到了解答我的问题的一条线索：有30多人聚在一起，放鞭炮，围着一个24英寸的生日蛋糕，为一名刚满1岁的小姑娘庆生。

It was the kind of place where, 10 years ago, the birth of a girl would seldom merit a birthday cake two feet wide. In traditional areas like this, boys were needed to carry on the family name and support parents in old age; the birth of a first girl was tolerated (because in rural areas peasants can try again if their first is female); but the second child absolutely had to be a boy. If it was a girl instead, abandonment (or worse) was often seen as the only option.

10年前，在这样的地区，人们很少会为女孩买两英尺见方的蛋糕庆生。在这样的传统地区，人们需要生男孩，来延续香火、为自己养老送终。如果头胎是女孩，还可以接受（因为在农村，如果头胎是女孩，可以生第二胎），但第二胎就必须生个男孩了。如果第二胎是个女孩，人们往往就只能选择遗弃（甚至更糟）。

Today there are more options: in the words of one Chuzhou government official, "once you have enough to eat, you do not throw away your child". Put simply, people can afford to raise girls these days rather than abandon them. Some may pay a fine of Rmb2,000-5,000 ($320-$790) for an excess child; and the really rich may go overseas to deliver. If she were born today, Xinke might not have been abandoned.

如今，人们有了更多的选择。用滁州一位政府官员的话来说："只要吃得饱肚子，谁都不会不要自己的孩子。"简单说，如今人们养得起女孩了，用不着遗弃她们。有的父母可能会为超生的孩子支付2000至5000元人民币（合320至790美元）的罚款，还有些真正有钱的人可能会赴海外生产。如果我养女生在现在，她可能不会被遗弃。

But there is also a more sinister option: in the clinic next door to the restaurant where the baby girl was being feted, "midterm abortion" is advertised for a mere Rmb360 ($60). Sex-selective abortion is illegal – but widely practised. Government statistics tell all: among Chuzhou children born in 2009, the ratio of boys to girls among first children is 105:100 – but it rises to nearly 300:100 for third and fourth births. My Xinke may well have been a second or third daughter; if conceived today, she might not have been born at all.

但如今还有一种更见不得人的选择：在那个为小姑娘举办庆生宴的餐馆隔壁，一家诊所打出"人流"的广告，手术费用仅360元（合60美元）。性别选择性堕胎是非法的，但许多人这么做。官方统计数据说明了一切：2009年，滁州头胎新生儿男女性别比为105:100，但第三胎和第四胎的这一比率就升到了近300:100。我的养女很可能是她生母怀的第二个或第三个女儿，放在今天，她可能根本就不会出生。

These days it seems that ultrasound machines and the market are doing the work of the birth planners. So the vast family planning bureaucracy has turned to cleaning up its image, with a national "face washing" campaign aimed at eradicating the brutal slogans of the past (including one that offered a noose to any forcibly sterilised woman who contemplates suicide, and another urging people to raise pigs, not kids).

如今，超声波仪器和市场似乎充当起了计生员。于是，庞大的计生机构开始美化自己的形象，展开了全国性的"洗脸"运动，旨在彻底清除过去那些野蛮的计生工作宣传画和标语（包括为因被迫绝育而意图自杀的妇女提供绳索上吊的宣传画，和"少生孩子多养猪"的标语）。

In Xinke's home town, and all over China, the one-child policy seems to be getting a "hearts and minds" makeover – at exactly the time when many Chinese argue that it is no longer necessary or even wise. For as Xinke enters her tween years, the simple truth that made her my daughter – that China had too many babies – has undergone a stunning reversal. China has, or soon will have, too many elderly and too few kids.

在我养女的家乡乃至整个中国，计划生育政策似乎正在进行彻底的改头换面——与此同时，许多中国人也开始主张，计划生育政策已变得没有必要、甚至不明智。随着新科即将步入青春期，当初导致她成为我养女的一个简单事实——中国的孩子太多了——已发生了彻底的逆转。中国已经或很快将面临的情况是，老人太多而孩子太少。

One recent opinion poll showed that only 16 per cent of urban women thought the main reason for marriage was procreation. In Shanghai, where residents can have two kids (if both parents are only children), few want to do so.

最近的一份调查显示，只有16%的城市女性认为结婚的主要目的是繁衍后代。上海允许夫妻生二胎（如果夫妻双方都是独生子女的话），但没有多少夫妻愿意这样做。

Many are delaying childbearing so long that China now has 50m infertile couples – fuelling an underground "rent-a-womb" industry of surrogacy, which recently yielded a highly controversial case of in-vitro octuplets.

许多夫妻因错过了适宜怀孕的年龄而无法生育，中国如今有5000万对不孕不育的夫妇。这令一个地下产业——代孕——兴旺了起来。最近，一对夫妇通过试管婴儿技术产下了八胞胎，引起许多争议。

Ironically, the number of Chinese babies born in the US each year because their rich parents went there for "birth tourism" is now roughly the same as the number of abandoned Chinese infants imported to America through adoption, when Fu Xinke was born. What a difference a decade makes.

具有讽刺意味的是，如今每年中国富裕产妇赴美产子产下的宝宝数量，约等于我养女出生时每年美国人收养中国弃婴的数量。十年时间，变化竟然如此之大。