My Beautiful Orchid

1. One of the best examples of this occurred in 1995 when the British watchdog group Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org) released a documentary titled “The Dying Rooms: China’s Darkest Secret”. The program, and a 1996 follow-up report titled “Death by Default: Fatal Neglect in China’s State Orphanages” alerted the world to what were then very real problems in many if not most Chinese orphanages: high mortality rates (some of which topped 80 percent), inadequate funding, and inadequate staffing and training. Yet despite their success at raising awareness, the reports raised many eyebrows because they accused Beijing of deliberately orchestrating these problems. It was even alleged that most, if not all state run orphanages had “dying rooms” where infants were deliberately being left to die. HRW’s investigation was based on; a) visits to a handful of child welfare institutes; b) documentation of problems at a single orphanage (the Shanghai Child Welfare Institute) prior to a 1993 overhaul of its operations, and 6 year old child mortality statistics for a few provinces from Civil Affairs authorities. Critics rightly charged that while this demonstrated problems with some Chinese orphanages, generalizing them to a Beijing authorized policy of deliberate nationwide neglect was a sensationalistic a leap of faith for which there was no evidence.
   
   
   In addition to being inflammatory, the accusations could not have come at a worse time. Beijing’s sensitivity to international scrutiny of what they perceive to be internal matters is well known. Years of effort is usually required before organizations like UNFPA, World Vision, or international adoption agencies establish enough trust with them to maintain effective programs in China. Many such organizations had done just this when HRW’s documentaries were released—all of which were jeopardized. Predictably, Beijing responded angrily, denying all charges. But when it was discovered that producer Kate Blewett and other HRW staff had gained access to orphanages by misrepresenting themselves as representatives of the American Children’s Fund, they were livid. International relief efforts were severely curtailed or blocked and access to orphanages and badly needed child welfare information was shut off. International adoption efforts got by relatively unscathed, but many international humanitarian programs were damaged almost irreparably.
   Since then China overhauled much of its social and child welfare apparatus and conditions have improved dramatically in many, if not most orphanages. Yet even today the fallout from HRW’s reports are still being felt, and many activist organizations (particularly extremist pro-life groups) still quote them uncritically even though most of the information they were based on is now one to two decades old. For more information on the issues surrounding the HRW reports and their impact, see Chap. 2 of Kay Anne Johnson’s book Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son (2004).
2. In 2001 humanitarian efforts in China suffered what may well have been the single most destructive act of activist negligence in recent history. In fall of that year a Virginia based pro-life extremist group called the Population Research Institute managed to convince the Bush administration and several Republican members of Congress that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) was assisting Chinese Civil Affairs officials with forced abortions and sterilizations. In response, the Bush administration blocked $34 million in U.S. funding for UNFPA. Later investigations revealed that PRI’s entire case amounted to nothing more than guilt-by-association arguments and a handful of uncorroborated anecdotal reports. Despite numerous investigations by NGO’s, the British Parliament, and three investigations by the U.S. State Department, not one of PRI’s accusations was ever independently verified and no UNFPA official was ever implicated in any incident of coercion (including those alleged by PRI’s witnesses).
   
   
   Had they been more careful, UNFPA’s antagonists might have been forewarned. PRI’s lack of objectivity is evident in their checkered history. The institute began as a spin-off of Human Life International, a fundamentalist catholic extremist group with anti-Semitic leanings. HLI’s founder, Rev. Paul Marx, believes that “jewish doctors control the abortion movement”. PRI President Steven Mosher was appointed by Marx to spearhead their formation and has been the organization’s inspiration and driving force ever since. A rabid anti-family planning activist, Mosher conducted anthropological research in China from 1979 to 1980, and in 1983 was denied a PhD by Stanford for “illegal and seriously unethical conduct” in the field. Details of the evidence for his expulsion were never made public by he or Stanford (due mainly to concern for the safety of witnesses still in China), but it appears that he’d had numerous run-ins with Chinese authorities, falsified records, and acquired and disseminated much of his data under questionable circumstances. Among other things, he published pictures in the Chinese media of women who had undergone late-term abortions, thereby putting them at risk for government retaliation. Since returning home he has tirelessly turned out inflammatory publications about China’s “evil empire”, “U.N. butchers”, the “myth” of overpopulation, and the importance of having as many children as possible to, among other things, “populate heaven with new souls”—the majority of which are circulated almost exclusively in Far-Right and pro-life extremist circles. While none of this bears directly on UNFPA, it raises serious concerns about the organization’s objectivity making the complete absence of any independent evidence of their accusations all the more telling.
   In June of 2002 the State Department released information about their third fact-finding mission to China regarding UNFPA’s activities. Shortly thereafter, Congress voted overwhelmingly to reinstate U.S. funding and requested increased funding for the following year. But Bush was under pressure from the Religious Right, and apparently as unconcerned with the lack of evidence and PRI’s credibility problems as they were. He refused to reconsider the matter and in July of that year vetoed the reinstated funds, which as of this writing have not been restored. Denied this funding, UNFPA had to scale back many reproductive health care, education, and medical efforts worldwide, including child welfare programs and access to safe contraception—all of which have been shown repeatedly to decrease abortion rates. Ironically, UNFPA has been one of the greater voices of restraint in China and done much to reduce the number of coercive abortions, sterilizations, and IUD implants and bring about increasing emphasis on contraception and reproductive health. By contrast, according to some estimates the U.S. defunding of UNFPA, engineered by so-called “pro-life” activists and the Religious Right, has resulted in more than 800,000 additional abortions annually around the world since 2001—a rate nearly equal to the total annual abortion rate in the U.S. For more on the U.S. defunding of UNFPA and its consequences, see my June 2001 research letter to Congress on the issue at www.scottchurchdirect.com/sustainability.aspx/us-funding-for-unfpa.
3. China’s TFR reached a peak of 7.4 in 1963 largely as a result of compensatory childbearing after severe population declines after 1958 due to Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”. China’s most dramatic reductions in TFR occurred during the 70’s when Beijing instituted the “Wan-Xi-Shao” national family planning program which emphasized later birth and fewer births with longer spacing between pregnancies. Under this policy, which was far less oppressive than its successor, TFR declined from 6.0 in 1970 to 2.8 in 1979. In fact, when the One-Child policy was first implemented TFR actually increased to a 1981 high of 2.9. From then on it continued to fall and based on official census tallies achieved replacement level during the 90’s, but these later declines were minimal compared to those of the Wan-Xi-Shao period. In fact, because these declines are based largely on census records that do not account for missing girls, it’s likely that they have been overestimated (Tien at al., 1992; Lavely and Freedman, 1990).
4. Thailand reduced TFR from 6.42 in 1960 to 2.6 in 1990, and 1.9 in 2004. Likewise, South Korea reduced TFR from 4.5 in 1970 to 1.2 in 2004. Japan, Singapore, and the Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu achieved similar results and are now below replacement levels. In each case these reductions were achieved without coercive government dictates and in spite of high poverty levels and low population/arable land ratios, and resulted from some combination of improved economic conditions, higher literacy rates, and access to contraception and family planning services (Eberstadt, 2004; Christophe and Rajan, 2002; Kim, 2005; UNICEF Online, 2005). Furthermore, abortion appears to have played at best a minor role in these changes, particularly since the 80’s (Guttmacher, 2005). In fact, it now appears that the decision in 1979 to implement the One-Child policy was based on flawed science and political motives rather than any clear evidence that the Wan-Xi-Shao program was not successful (Greenhalgh, 2003).
5. Roughly 75 to 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian (Catholic or Protestant) of which some 40 million are "born again" Evangelicals. Nearly all report that the Bible is an important moral and spiritual authority in their lives, if not the final one. At its most irreducible core, the Bible teaches love, forgiveness, charity, and freedom from all worldly idolatry, including materialism. Few if any professing Christians are unaware of the parable of the rich young ruler: "truly, truly I say unto you. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven…" (Luke 18:25), or the Apostle Paul’s insistence that “the love of money is the root of all evil, and by it some have made shipwreck of their faith and pierced their hearts with many sorrows” (1 Tim 6:10)—a poignant choice of words for a man who was himself twice shipwrecked and nearly killed as a result. Yet despite these and countless similar passages throughout the Old and New Testaments, it's revealing to drive by any Catholic or Protestant church in America on Sunday morning and note how many late-model luxury cars and trendy SUV's the parking lot holds, not to mention how many can be followed home to exclusive neighborhoods with large stylish homes after the service.
   
   
   Even fewer Christians are unaware of Jesus' commandment to love our enemies (Matt 5:44) and his insistence that "those who take up the sword will perish by the sword" (Matt 26:52). But once again, Conservative Evangelicals are among the nation's most strident supporters of unquestioned military spending, and are significantly more likely than their secular counterparts to advocate war and other forms of violence during international disputes. The year 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq is one case in point. A year 2002 national survey conducted by the International Fellowship of Jews and Christians (IFJC) found that of all major religious groups in America, Evangelicals were the strongest backers of war in Iraq. Over two-thirds of Evangelicals surveyed supported an invasion--10 percent more than the general U.S. adult population. In 2003 a Gallup poll of the general population reached similar conclusions.
   
   
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