Ethics: Chinese Adoptee Birthparent Search Organizations 101 by an Adoptee

Introduction (Optional):

When I was little, I believed in what I and my parents were told at the time: that because of the One Child Policy in China, baby girls were abandoned due to traditional preferences for boys.* 

According to the adoption paperwork, all Chinese adoptees had been abandoned. Being abandoned on paper was, in fact, a requirement to submit a child into the international adoption program. Common findings spots included hospitals, orphanages, government offices, markets, streets, etc. This abandonment narrative created many emotional barriers to curiosity about my Chinese family. If they didn't want me, didn't love me, then why should I search for them? Indeed, how could I search even if I wanted to if they abandoned me without a note, name, or address?

Coming out of the fog:

It wasn't until after watching One Child Nation that I finally understood that what we were told was, by and large, inaccurate. Due to corruption and collusion between midwives, orphanages, hospitals, and police, adoptees were often kidnapped, deceived or coerced into being given up, or even stolen at birth. Names and birthdates were purposely changed to make family reunion near impossible later on, and notes left by birthparents were often thrown out and a generic one forged by the orphanages to appease foreign adopters.

It took me a while to absorb this information and then to turn my attention to birthfamily searching. For anyone who has been around as long as I have in the community, you'l know that things move fast, that it is important to note that I am writing this in September of 2026 and that what I say here today may not be representative of the organizations in a year or five years.

I realized as I was talking to my Chinese adoptee friend, who is not in this world of birthfamily searching, that it is not intuitive how the field has chosen to operate. The more intuitive way to search for birthparents would be to spend thousands of dollars to either go to China yourself or hire an in-country searcher in your stead, to investigate the area listed on your finding documents, visit the orphanage, and essentially go door-to-door asking if people remember you. While this works and is effective in a handful of cases, this method is costly to both the adoptee/adoptive family, as well as to the community at large. This method also will not be successful if you happened to be trafficked from one province to another or if your parents were migrant workers. It would be akin to searching in Florida when your parents live in New York!

Current Birthparent Search Organizations

Given these extenuating circumstances, birthparent search organizations, such as Nanchang Project (since 2018), DNAConnect.Org (since 2013), and Chongqing Roots of Love (since 2021) have all emerged with generally the same format, based in America. There are more similarities between Nanchang Project and Chongqing Roots of Love, but by scale, DNAConnect.Org has tested more birthfamilies with over 300 matches, followed by Nanchang Project with about half as many birthfamilies and half as many matches. I anticipate that this will not always be the case, and I want to emphasize that I think all organizations do great work, and wish everyone success.

I say they "generally" follow the same format because they let DNA lead them to the match.*** In other words, if one of these organizations found your birthfamily and uploaded their DNA profile to GEDmatch (a free DNA database), then any adoptee could use any autosomal** DNA kit (23andMe, Ancestry, MyHeritage, etc.) and match in the comfort of their own home. No costly search, hired searcher, or trip to China needed!

Practically, this means that if you're an adoptee who supports or donates to Nanchang Project, you could be matched by another organization such as DNAConnect.Org, and vice-versa. This would imply that all ships rise together on a rising ocean, but it is a little more complicated than that.

Birthfamily Searching may seem, on the surface, like a mission for adoptees to find their identity and roots, but that is only one half of the story. It is not just a coming of age journey or an adventure, it involves real ethical challenges with all-too-real impact. Decisions made by the search community, by Nanchang Project and DNAConnect.Org, affect many hundreds of birthfamilies in China who do not get a vote or representation.

Ethical Challenge 1: Whose voice and whose choice matters? As a community, the birthfamily search nonprofit world overwhelmingly caters to adoptees. It is very much an adoptee-first position. For example, if an adoptee takes a DNA test to learn about their ethnicity or health, with no intention of finding their birthfamily, they may not want to connect with their birthfamily if matched. For adoptees, we never chose to be born, to be abandoned/kidnapped, even trafficked. We never asked to be adopted, and so why shouldn't it be our choice to connect with our birthfamily or not? The community overwhelmingly uplifts the adoptee choice. 

But is this fair? 

For many birthfamilies, especially those who have gone through the trouble of contacting one of these international searching organizations, they never stopped missing us, loving us, or searching for us. Many times, we were stolen from them and they just desperately want to know we are okay. Chinese birthmothers went through so much trauma they did not ask for. Many women were forcibly sterilized or had forced abortions. Many women were terrorized by the country's policies and their babies ripped from them in the hospital. Now, at the cusp of a reunion, when all they want to know is if their child survived, we as a community say that their voice matters so much less, and that if the adoptee isn't ready, the entire reunion is called off. Is it fair? 

Maybe before I went to China on a birthfamily search and met so many birthfamilies haunted over the trauma of having their baby taken from them, I would have agreed it was. After seeing the other side of our stories, I have to say I do not think it is and I think we should have responsibility to honor the collective birthfamily community the best we can. 

Ethical Challenge 2a: Which autosomal** DNA tests should the community use for birthfamilies?

Here are some facts to baseline our situation: Most Chinese adoptees have historically used 23andMe, but there is a lot of variation. Because many adoptees are not actively searching for their birthfamilies, many matches are to those adoptees who have never put their DNA into GEDmatch, meaning that most matches happen within the database of the testing company. The search organizations that choose to use autosomal DNA tests all put their DNA into GEDmatch. 

Now, let's say you only have $10,000 donation dollars and for the sake of argument, say 23andMe kits are $100 each and Ancestry kits are $50 each. You run a searching organization and need to choose where to test birthfamilies. Do you buy just 100 23andMe DNA kits or 200 Ancestry DNA kits? One argument is that because matches tend to occur in the testing database, that 23andMe should be selected because we're optimizing for successful matches, not just testing for testing's sake. By testing with 23andMe where most adoptees also test, many matches will be made even with fewer overall kits. This is DNAConnect.Org's stance.

An alternative argument is that the autosomal DNA will get uploaded to GEDmatch anyway, so it shouldn't matter what company is chosen as long as it is an autosomal DNA test. This optimizes for the most birthfamilies in the system so no one is lost, and relies on adoptees knowing to put their DNA in GEDmatch. This is Nanchang Project's stance.

Ethical Challenge 2b: Pros and Cons of the National Chinese Police DNA Database

Now let's complicate things a little bit more. Let's say a new option is available to your searching organization, the National Chinese Police DNA Database. (Also, for completeness, if you work with Baobeihuijia/Baby Come Home, which is a part of the Chinese government that helps with kidnapping cases, they use the Chinese Police DNA Database.)

For the search organization's perspective, the Chinese Police DNA Database is an appealing option because the cost to both adoptees and birthfamilies is zero. Using China's own DNA testing cuts down on testing costs and travel/logistics to China since the police are already there and willing to help! However, there are a few ethical points one should consider to be fully informated.

(1) The Chinese Police DNA test is non-autosomal. This means that DNA tested here will not be able to match with DNA tested by 23andMe and cannot be uploaded to GEDmatch. It also means there will be near misses, where you and your aunt can both be in the database, but since it only matches you to your biological parents, you will not know how close you came, or be able to work up through the family tree.

Since the birthfamily will be incredibly unlikely to test again with another method, some in the search community view non-autosomal DNA testing as a "lost match" for any adoptee who is in 23andMe/Ancestry/GEDmatch. However, others in the search community simply advocate for adoptees to also put their DNA into China's Police database, and since it is free, this is fairly easy to do. Nanchang Project has resources to facilitate adoptee DNA collection for the Chinese Police DNA database.

(2) There is also another layer of ethics. The National Police DNA Database is run by the Chinese government, the same government which is using their DNA Database for targeted genetic surveillance of Uighurs, Tibetans, and other ethnic minorities. It is also (obviously) the same government which facilitated and then covered up human trafficking in the international adoption program. Recently, the Chinese government has been using heartwarming stories of birthfamily reunions as a recruitment tool to encourage more Chinese citizens to test their DNA with them, even taking credit for matches made by other organizations. Maybe the ends justify the means and a successful birthfamily reunion in this lifetime is worth it, whatever the consequences. From one point of view, adoptees are being used as bait, dangled in front of hopeful birthfamilies already hurt by the government's policies. From another point of view, cash and resource-strapped adoptees and search organizations, and birthfamilies, should use every tool and resource available to them. 

(3) Then there is another layer of ethics. Due to the human trafficking and corruption within the international adoption program, there is a chance that some reunions will bring unwelcome international scrutiny and unearth another Hunan scandal. Two things have so far been true: The Chinese police have helped to make successful birthfamily matches. The Chinese police have also worked to prevent birthfamily reunions by lying about matches made on their database and making false match claims to non-family to prevent the adoptee from digging further. This recently occurred where the real birthfamily was discouraged from reuniting with their actual child (the adoptee) and a decoy birthfamily was suggested in their place. This creates emotional distress for all involved.

By working with the Chinese police who have their own best interests at heart, not the Chinese adoptee community's best interest, there is a risk of unknown scale. For organizations short on funding, time, and resources, is it worth giving the Chinese police full power over the matching process through their DNA database when the tradeoff is an unknown number of prevented matches? Is it ethical to work with the police and use the Chinese DNA database if they make 4 matches and prevent 1 match? What if they make 2 matches and prevent 2 matches? What number of prevented matches becomes acceptable? 

Ethical Challenge 3: Who pays and how much?

One way to avoid the ethical challenges of using the National Chinese Police DNA database in challenge 2 is to simply avoid using it. This is DNAConnect.Org's approach. By testing in 23andMe and other autosomal DNA databases, matches are not compromised by another government's agenda. The trade off is cost, and this leads to the question of: who pays?

The search community has generally erred on the side of the adoptive parent/adoptee side paying the donations and the birthfamilies receiving DNA kits for free. This has made the most sense since, in general, the adoptee/adoptive parent side has more money and resources than the Chinese side of the equation. But this also means that most of the money raised will be from adoptees and their parents who never get a match at all. To democratize the burden of the donations, DNAConnect.Org has implemented the Matching Fee system.

The match fee, defended by DNAConnect.Org, is likened to the admission fee to a National Park. Even though the park belongs to the public, the upkeep of the park is directly funded in part by visitors to the park. If an adoptee/adoptive family donates $50 to DNAConnect.Org without any guarantee of a match, if there is a match later, then the information is given without additional cost. In this way, it rewards or encourages giving selflessly. However, many adoptees don't know about DNAConnect.Org or their cost structure, and the match fee jumps to $299 if no prior donation was made in the event of a successful match.

From the adoptee perspective, I cannot tell you how much this frustrates me. For adoptees who have had everything taken from them, to be told that, not only was their origin story a lie and their birthparents never abandoned them but love them very much, the last thing you want is to be slapped with a $299 paywall to access your own birthparents. 

From a logistical perspective, I do see that matching fees fund a third of DNAConnect.Org's operating budget and go directly to DNA kits for future matches. The success they have had is due in large part to this built-in pay-it-forward mandate. A match, on average, costs close to $1000 for DNAConnect.Org, so $299 is about a third of what the match cost to make. $299 for a 100% chance of success is incredibly small on the scale of what this collective search community spends on personalized, targeted searches.

So I see both sides. I see that the relative costs are direct consequences of these search organization's methodologies. By outsourcing part of the matching process and power to the Chinese government, and using the most affordable autosomal DNA kits, Nanchang Project is able to make real, wonderful progress without charging a match fee. On the other hand, the Chinese government cares very much about controlling the narrative and will interfere, prevent, and suppress matches they deem undesirable. It also feeds into a larger question of biometric surveillance and if adoptees are understanding they are contributing to the Chinese government's DNA recruitment strategy.

The implementation of the match fee and their dedication to testing birthfamilies with 23andMe has enabled DNAConnect.Org to test more than double the number of birthfamilies and make twice as many matches as any other organization, especially in difficult regions affected by human trafficking. Their negative experiences with Chinese government interference has led to a more secure system that is independent of China's official approval, but the flip side is that the cost per match is higher than other organizations. The match fee also damages the organization's reputation among adoptees who feel taken advantage of, rather than grateful, for the countless time and effort by unpaid volunteers who self-fund trips to China to make these matches for others.

As an adoptee, I support both organizations. 

I think that, despite all the methodological differences,  real good is happening due to the dedicated and selfless people who volunteer for any of the organizations. There are also many generous people who want to help in China and both organizations have volunteers on the ground, usually birthparents who have been matched by these search groups who want to pay it forward! I think that it is important to understand the full scope of the birthparent searching landscape and the implicit ethical choices we are agreeing to when we search. Again, this is 2026. Had I written this in 2018, it would have been very different as both organizations have changed a lot and evolved since then. Other search organizations have also closed and in another five years, who knows? Maybe everything will change again.

Sources for China Police DNA database:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/05/china-new-evidence-mass-dna-collection-tibet

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/business/china-dna-uighurs-xinjiang.html

*Later, after 2005, the demographic changed to be more 50:50 boy/girl and included more special needs children, but I can only speak for the "First" wave.

**autosomal DNA tests mean you can be linked to more than just your kids or parents. You can match with a sibling, cousin, aunt, or grandparent. In contrast, some DNA tests are paternity tests, like the ones used by the Chinese Police DNA database.

***When DNA leads to a match, this is called a random match. However, if relationship is all but known and confirmed with DNA, this is called a target match. There has been much drama and debate about whether an organization ought to publish both numbers or only publish the random matches. DNAConnect.Org counts target and random matches separately and only announces the random matches in their counter. Their position is that other organizations should follow suit so that the community can compare searching strategies/methodologies. However, no one put DNAConnect.Org in charge and even if they feel this way, it doesn't mean it is the right or only way to do things. Nanchang Project seems to combine both random and target matches in their tally, with the stance that we should be happy for all matches, regardless of source.