Adopted Chinese children return to trace their origins

American college student born in China searches for biological parents, highlighting impact of China's one-child policy on adoptees.

At an empty concrete lot in southwest China, Loulee Wilson scoops a handful of stones into a bag — a memento from the site where she believes she was abandoned as a baby.

Ms. Wilson, an American college student, was born in China but given away by parents presumed fearful of violating the country’s one-child policy, under which families were punished for having additional children until the strategy was ended from 2016.

Soon after her birth, she was found outside a now-demolished factory in the town of Dianjiang, brought to an orphanage and later adopted by a couple in the U.S.

Now 19, she is among a growing number of Chinese adoptees returning to their birth country to trace their biological parents and understand where they came from.

“If I (find them), that would be incredible. But I don’t know if I’ll be able to,” she said.

Over 82,000 children born in China have been adopted by American families since 1999, according to State Department figures — mostly girls, owing to a Chinese cultural preference for boys.

Many were handed over in the 2000s when Beijing more tightly enforced birth restrictions and laws around overseas adoptions were comparatively lax.