Thoughts After Watching "One Child Nation"

One Child Nation directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang came out in January of 2019. I was a junior in undergraduate college and didn't have the luxury of time and effort to afford to delving into yet another Dark Side of China documentaries. It was shared and marketed online within the Chinese adoptee community, mainly on Facebook, as an adoptee-friendly movie. Indeed, many adoptive families took their preteen Chinese adoptee daughters to the movie theater, adoptee groups got together to see the premier, and even my own mom got together with other adoptive parents for a movie night of their own when it was on Amazon Prime Videos.

Spoiler: This is not a children's movie.

Overall Impressions

As a Chinese adoptee, I think I have a unique perspective. Yet, we are very often not asked what our opinions are. Vanity Fair, The New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, and Rolling Stone, amongst others, have all written articles about One Child Nation, but not once were Chinese adoptees consulted. I mean, why would we be? It's not like we're relevant to the story or anything. Which is one of my complaints about the documentary: the sheer number of international adoptions seemed to be avoided, because I think it weakens the argument that this entire thing was terrible...if it has a happy ending. We'll get to that later.

The documentary was: heavy, deep, painful...I cried a lot, so bring a box of tissues per person. The first half of the documentary was my least favorite. I felt nauseous when they talked about the forced sterilizations and abortions. All that footage made me feel sick to my stomach and I was going to vomit my breakfast, despite the fact I already knew in theory that both forced sterilizations and abortions were going on.

This documentary is definitely not for children. It is not a feel-good movie. It is not something you should bring your 10-year-old adoptee to for family bonding night.

I was most interested in the part about Brian and Lan Stuy's work in China and America. In the Chinese adoptee community, their work in uncovering the truth can sometimes disrupt the happy fairytale story of adoption, so there is a very real split of pro- and anti-Stuy sentiment on Facebook especially. Yet, I believe he and his wife are singularly the most important people in the entire Chinese adoption world. So, yes, I was very eager to see what part they would play in the documentary since they were at the premier with their children and heavily endorsed it online to the Chinese adoptee community.

Before watching the documentary, I was already very much aware of the forgery, the baby buying programs, and the police confiscations. I keep a running list of everything I have ever heard here. But I know it was a somewhat rude awakening for many adoptive parents and adoptees who still clung to the whole "the finding spot story is the one and only true story."

There is so much on the Chinese side of things, you could drown in it. It really was like a war zone and there was much Chinese-on-Chinese crime. Policy was policy. This seems to be in direct opposition to how many westerners outside the community think of transracial adoption as an experiment in race. While it is a very rare opinion, it comes up often enough that I get annoyed: Your parents bought you. Your parents are human traffickers. White people stole Asian babies. White people shouldn't be allowed to adopt non-white babies. I've addressed this issue more thoroughly here. Still, this documentary shows that people are very much traumatized by what happened to them or what they were forced to do. They don't view it as a part of western imperialism/white people stealing babies nonsense. Chinese birthparents want to make sure their babies are safe. They feel like maybe, the baby is better off where they are now, even though they miss them very, very much. I think, in some ways, it is rather elitist or ethnocentric of certain Americans to believe that everything revolves around the whole white-race story. Believe it or not, other countries have cultures that have nothing to do with you. 

For adoptees, there is also a whole lot to deal with on the adoptee (in my case, American) side of things. Ironically, it is easier to prove (read easy as monumentally difficult) the atrocities of the One Child Policy, yet it is still nearly impossible to prove that adoptees have trauma. Most psychologists don’t even had adequate adoptee/adoption training, and those who do boil it down to formulaic procedures without really listening to our individual stories. Adoptive parents are sometimes faster to believe that the entire finding spot story told to them by the orphanage was a lie, than they are to believe adoptees suffer with pain and trauma. There’s enough on the adoptee side of things to drown in too. Just check out my blog.

These two halves: the historical events in China leading up to the adoption, and the adoptee experience after the adoption are both related, but some people expect adoptees to be magically Asian because of their genetics or something, when really we’re just human beings. Just as American as our neighbors. Some adoptees are interested in finding their birthfamilies and learning about their origins, like me. I am desperate for the truth. Yet, I know that some adoptees are not as interested or may not be able to think about it at the current moment. Adoptees, like all people, change and grow. Many adoptees are still in the fog too, which typically changes with time.

That’s why it’s very challenging, because when adoptees want to search for the birthparents, fighting a lot of adoptive parent and societal pressure to not search because doing so is being ungrateful, they are also fighting against the fantasies and fairytales of adoption community lore. But searching requires reality. Real solutions to real problems. You can’t operate in a fiction story, so when people want to search for birthparents, understanding of the actual issues is quintessential.

Cons of One Child Nation

It felt like the purpose of the documentary was to condemn the Chinese government. It did feel biased. It failed to show a well-rounded picture of all the possibilities for Chinese babies (I have compiled a list here). It implied that most babies entered the international adoption system via kidnapping and trafficking without mentioning that true forced abandonments actually did happen, among other possibilities. In other words, many people unfamiliar with the subject matter might take this documentary at face value, thinking they've heard the entire story. 

They did not mention the Hunan Scandal by that name, which is what haunts most western adoptive families. The Hunan Scandal, which I've talked about extensively, here, was the story of the Duan Family. Since this documentary seemed to be aiming to "set the story straight," it would have been clearer to make that connection by clearly saying, this is the Hunan Scandal.

I would have preferred less of a focus on the fetus artwork.

Adoptee Representation

I felt that mentions of international adoptees were kept to a minimum. I think because the average person may believe the end justifies the means, so if the adoptee ends up living happily in America, then all this bad stuff was worth it, right? But from 1991-2018, about 110,000 babies were adopted internationally, about 81,000 to America alone. The documentary focuses on the baby because that’s the story of the baby in China, but many of us are grown adults living in the United States now, no different from Kelly or Mike or Michelle. Yes, we adoptees have our own culture, struggles, and issues,  but it’s more of a diaspora more than a community. We are not helpless babies, we are grown adults now. The narrative keeps us as babies and also leaves our voices out of the conversation: both on screen and in the resulting articles afterwards.

I think the audience might judge the Chinese adoptees (the one who was the confiscated twin, and the one who had a DNA match) too harshly. Much of what we adoptees go through is unknown even to psychologists because there are strong social pressures about how adoptees should act. A lot of "either-or" thinking when it comes to loving one family more than the other is one such factor at play (read more here). There’s a whole thing about the adoptee fog, plus we are developing humans too. We endure racial identity issues, bullying, etc. Some adoptive parents aren’t exactly the most understanding either and may even prove a challenge for adoptees wanting to express their feelings. Some adoptive families/church/religion/friends/family shut the adoptee down when they want to learn more about their origins for fear of losing their child or because of ancient ideas of adoptees being saved or adoptees needing to be grateful all the time. 

The documentary focuses heavily on sterilizations and abortions the first half of the show, again, not exactly getting too deep into international adoptions or even hidden daughters raised without being properly counted on the census. Not all babies were aborted, clearly, because of all of us adoptees are still here. One might watch this documentary though and come away with a false impression of that. There is also no mention of the many adoptees who were connected to their birthparents. To date, DNA Connect by the Stuys has managed to match 69 adoptees to their birthfamilies.

Harmful responses by adoptive parents after watching this film

1. "If I had known, I would never have adopted you." This makes the adoptee feel rejected.

2. "Thank god I adopted you. Just think of how terrible life would have been in China." This is both ethnocentric, extremely obnoxious, and very cruel. Adoptees own their own lives and don't owe their lives to anyone. The savior complex has got to go. Making adoptees scared about being tortured in China is not exactly kind. Did you know adoptee suicide rates are higher than other demographics? Mainly due to people not understanding what they go through and comments like these.

Not the full picture

This movie is a part of a greater picture. I don’t particularly think it’s great for adoptees who have not looked at other avenues for reliable information. It certainly isn’t the full story. I think Nanfu is especially frustrated with her family who seem more accepting of the policy than some of the other people featured in the video. Because she interviews them so extensively, it creates the illusion that most families think like hers. While some older generations did believe in the "boys are better" thing, it fails to mention hidden daughters and also families who wanted daughters, or families who domestically adopted a daughter after having a biological son already. They also fail to mention how law makers, movie stars, government officials, and the well-connected/wealthy got away with multiple children too. Many adoptees already suffer from feeling like they were willingly abandoned because of their gender, and leaving the stories out that contradict this and only including the stories that support this, can have a negative impact on how adoptees view themselves.

It is very difficult to paint China and its One Child Policy with one brush, and I do have serious fears that this is what will happen.

Pros: I do think the documentary had net positive effects on the Chinese adoption community

1. It shatters the fairytale story. It makes people wonder if their documents are lies (spoiler alert: they probably are)

2. More adoptees believe they were wanted and not just thrown out like trash. This makes them want to find their birthfamilies and support overall efforts for other adoptees to find their birthfamilies too.

3. The media is also forced to write more stories about how adoptees, yes, even adoptee girls were very much wanted and loved by their birthparents, the same outlets who wrote just a few years ago that Chinese orphanages were filling up with “unwanted baby girls.”

4. Brian and Lan Stuy at Research-China.org and DNAConnect.org are on the map for more people as a resource

5. More donations for people wanting to find their birthfamilies to DNA Connect and more matches with birthparents!

6. The Western media is forced to write stories saying that Duan family was helping save lives, instead of the typical clickbait/sensationalized HUMAN TRAFFICKING headline their same organizations wrote a mere few years ago. Set that record straight!

Reservations About the Impact of One Child Nation

It misleads people into believing that all Chinese adoptees are just cast off from this Chinese story, instead of allowing them to forge their own narratives. Some people come up to me and think I should be up-to-date on Chinese news or that I should concern myself with Chinese politics, when I’m very much an Asian American, thank you very much. I support the Hong Kong protests, but no, don’t just assume I will be interested in talking about it. As an American, I think more about slavery, racial injustice, and Native American rights than I do about China’s taking of Tibet. I care more about Asian representation in the media more than I do about whatever China’s communist party decides for its future.

I think that adoptees have a lot on their plates without even thinking about the Chinese side of things. This documentary makes Chinese adoptees out to be these ignorant blobs, escapees of a war, and unconcerned with their birthfamilies, when in reality, many adoptees suffer from so many mental health issues and cry themselves to sleep each night wishing for their birthmoms. So it is extremely unfair to judge adoptees for their willingness or unwillingness, or ability to engage with difficult concepts. We’re going through middle school, high school, college, maybe getting married, having babies, getting jobs…when is the right time to whisk off to China? With what little false information we have? With no language skills? Good luck.

Last Words

Overall, it was a documentary that wanted to condemn the Chinese government and pull the curtain off of the propaganda. It was not made with Chinese adoptee feelings in mind, though the Stuys were a nice addition to the documentary. I would not recommend this documentary if you are an adoptee who is under the age of 18. Bring a box of tissues, and be prepared to vomit if needed. I think also, this should not be taken alone as the only resource for what happened in China. A lot of the story was left out in lieu of generating the largest impact, and I think much of the Chinese adoptee story got lost with it. 

Unfortunately, Chinese adoptees may not have the luxury of not watching this as friends or peers might decide to talk with you about it because you're a Chinese adoptee. You might need to know what you're up against, what misunderstandings or assumptions they made about your life after watching a single documentary. You could always refuse, but I know I faced an increase of hatred towards me and my family due to this documentary because people only took away from it that I was "kidnapped and sold." Despite the other possibilities out there this documentary did not highlight. Remember, even a case study is a sample size of one. Take this with a grain of salt. Don't let it unravel your sense of self-worth.