Death by Default - A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's State Orphanages

Summary: China's claim to guarantee the "right
to subsistence" conceals a secret world
of starvation, disease, and unnatural
death.

China's claim to guarantee the "right to subsistence" conceals a
secret world of starvation, disease, and unnatural death. The
victims are orphans and abandoned children in custodial institutions
run by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs. This report documents the
pattern of cruelty, abuse, and malign neglect, which has dominated
child welfare work in China since the early 1950s. We have pieced
together a fragmentary picture of conditions for abandoned children
throughout China, including staggering mortality rates for infants in
state institutions and the failure of official statistics to track
the vast majority of orphans, whose whereabouts and status are
unknown. The Chinese government's own statistics reveal a situation
worse than even the most alarming Western media reports have
suggested. In 1989, the most recent year for which nationwide figures
are available, the majority of abandoned children admitted to China's
orphanages were dying in institutional care. China's demonstrated
ability to guarantee the lives and welfare of the vast majority of
its children renders the appalling death rates in these institutions
even more inexcusable and sinister.

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