Ricki Mudd was born in 1993 in China during the one-child policy era. She remembers her early childhood only in fragments, but has been told she had spent some of it hidden in a bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At age 5, she was adopted from a Chinese orphanage, one of the more than 150,000 children China sent overseas. Most were girls. In the West, they were one of the most visible consequences of the one-child policy, which ended in 2016. This month, Beijing put an end to foreign adoptions<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n China is grappling with a demographic crisis<\/a>, with dropping birthrates and a rapidly aging population. The policies to control the population have given way to new ones<\/a> in the opposite direction. But a legacy of the one-child policy is a dearth of women of childbearing age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because of a government decree that led to forced abortions and sterilizations, millions of girls were never born or were hidden from authorities. In the process, China\u2019s gender ratio became increasingly skewed, with 117 boys born for every 100 girls in 2004, compared with 106 in 1980, United Nations data showed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> The Missing Girls: How China\u2019s One-Child Policy Tore Families Apart\u2014A now-ended adoption program created the perception Chinese girls weren\u2019t valued. One adoptee, once hidden in a grocery bag, found more to her own story.@QiLiyan<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/hA715EWpXP<\/a>https:\/\/t.co\/hA715EWpXP<\/a><\/p>— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) September 18, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>