All language subtitles for BBC.Storyville.2019.One.Child.Nation.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org eng

This programme contains some
strong language and scenes which
some viewers may find disturbing

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I was born in China in 1985.

A time when China's population
crisis was making headlines

around the world.

There are more than
a billion Chinese.

That one, big statistic,
more than anything else,

is at the heart of that country's
huge economic problems.

By the middle of the next century,
if China's families have

an average of three children,
there will be starvation.

However, with one child per family,
the standard of living doubles.

So now there's a desperate effort
under way to control the population.

To limit families to just one child.

Chinese officials are using fines,
economic incentives and propaganda.

Billboards like this one are up
all over the country.

They have a long way to go.

Six years before I was born,
China launched its one-child policy.

I grew up seeing reminders of
the policy everywhere.

They were painted on the walls,
printed on playing cards...

..calendars,

matches,

snack boxes,

posters,

all of them blended into
the background of life in China.

I never thought much about what
it meant for me, or anyone,

until I learned that
I was going to be a mum.

HEARTBEAT

Our baby was born
seven weeks early.

I was not prepared.

Right after he was born,
the nurses took him away from me.

The separation and fear
for his health was traumatic.

12 days later, I was finally able
to take him home and hold him.

Becoming a mother felt like giving
birth to my memories.

A rush of images from
my early life came back to me.

I thought of my own parents
and the name they gave me.

They chose the name
Nanfu before I was born.

Nan means man,
and Fu means pillar.

They hoped for a boy who would grow
up to be the pillar of the family.

When I was born a girl,
they named me Nanfu anyway,

hoping that I would grow up strong,
like a man.

I remember the plaques
the government hung on all

the front doors in my village
every year,

signifying each family's commitment
to the Communist Party's values.

Each plaque was decorated
with stars,

indicating how well
a family performed.

Including a star for whether the
family had no more than one child.

Our family always missed that star.

I remembered being sent
to middle school in the city,

because our village only had
an elementary school.

Most of the city kids
came from one child families.

Whenever someone found out that
I had a brother, I felt embarrassed,

as if our family had done something
wrong by having a second child.

FIRECRACKERS EXPLODING

Bringing him back to my village
for the first time

showed me how traumatic it was
just to become a parent in China.

Visiting the village kindergarten
where my mum teaches,

I remembered that we had textbooks
about the one-child policy

since we were kids.

I used to think that I knew
everything there was to know

about the one-child policy.

But now, I wondered if the thoughts
I had were really my own,

or if they were simply learned?

I asked my neighbour to take me to
see the former head of my village,

who was in charge when
the one-child policy began.

He was one of the people
my grandpa argued with

about sterilising my mum.

NANFU LAUGHS

CYMBALS CLASH

SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

Men like Liu Xianwen worked
all over China to promote

the one-child policy.

Since before I could even speak,

I was surrounded by messages
praising the policy.

There was TV...

..theatrical performances...

..and even children's songs.

And just like everyone else,
I joined in the choir.

This was me performing
propaganda songs.

We all had the same make-up, the
same dresses and the same mentality.

As I was leaving, I asked
my neighbour, who went with me,

if he could take me to meet
some women

who were affected by the policy.

MUSIC PLAYS

That night, I decided it was best
to speak to someone I know.

So I went to see the local midwife,
who delivered all the babies

in the village, including myself.

She was happy to see me.

She showed me photos of my grandma,

who used to be in the same
propaganda band with her.

On the wall, there was a long list
of infertility disorders.

Next to it were flags people sent to
thank her

for helping them have babies.

NANFU GASPS

My village is one of many thousands
across the country...

..and every village had midwives
and family planning workers.

Each year, the government would
punish or reward them

depending on how many babies were
born in their territory.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

She was standing right behind
Wen Jiabao,

the country's premier at the time.

Received like a national hero,

Jiang's story was told again
and again by the state TV.

"We are fighting a population war"
was a common slogan

used by the government during
the one-child policy.

China started a war against
population growth,

but it became a real war against
its own people.

My grandpa is 83.

He lived through wars, famines
and revolutions.

My own parents weren't much
better off.

My father died of a brain
haemorrhage when he was 33...

..and his short life was more about
survival than finding fulfilment.

None of my family questioned
the policy

or how it was implemented.

The government used music and TV
to show people

a better life that they could
imagine themselves living,

as long as they followed the rules.

I wish I could say something to
my mum.

Like most people in China,
she believes the policy

was necessary for China's survival.

But I wondered if people like her
really thought

it was worth the sacrifices each
family made.

Coming back here, I realised that
I don't even have

a photo of my grandpa and me
as he only ever took photos

with his two grandsons.

GATE SQUEAKS

When my mum was born,
her parents named her Zaodi,

which means "bring me
a younger brother soon".

CHATTER

She later helped her younger brother
abandon his daughter in the market

so he could try again for a son.

I wish I could say that my uncle
was the only one in our family

who felt he had to abandon a child.

The large number of
abandoned babies created

opportunities for human traffickers
all over China.

In my village, we called them
matchmakers,

because they took unwanted babies
and found homes for them.

Talking with my aunt
about matchmakers triggered a memory

I had of a national news story
from a decade ago,

where an entire family was convicted
of selling babies to orphanages.

At the time, it seemed cruel
and evil that someone could

sell babies like that, but now I
wondered if the government's version

of their crime was true at all.

I tracked down the ex-trafficker
Duan Yueneng in Shenzhen.

Duan spent four years in prison
but now works as a security guard.

The day I was there,
he was on his break,

scavenging furniture from a company
that was going out of business.

The number 10,000 sounded high to
me, but I had no way to verify it.

I asked him to show me
exactly how he did it.

ANNOUNCEMENT OVER TANNOY

He used to take a train almost every
day between Guangdong province,

where he would find babies,
and Hunan province,

where he would sell the babies
to the orphanages.

1992 was the year that China began

its international adoption
programme,

allowing foreigners
to adopt Chinese orphans.

But demand from orphanages
grew so fast

that Duan's family had to find help.

YUENENG DUAN:

MEILIN DUAN:

YUENENG DUAN:

Until my aunt told me this story
about her abandoned daughter,

I never knew that I had a cousin.

Now I was filled with questions.
Where could she be?

And where are the children
Duan sold to orphanages?

One family in America has been
trying to answer these questions

for 18 years.

There are entries showing that
these kids either came from

the Duan family, from
Wuchuan or from, you know,

outside family planning,
and that's just...

It's astounding that of the hundreds
of kids that this orphanage

adopted internationally,
less than a handful of them

actually seem to have been
legitimately found.

The rest were brought in
by people. I know...

Long Lan and her husband Brian
co-founded Research China,

a paid service that tries
to connect adopted children

with their birth families in China.

Their search started
with their own children.

Why adopting from China
was so popular

among international families?

The main thing is that the China
programme from the beginning

was extremely predictable.

You knew, practically down to
the penny, how much money you were

going to need to bring to China,
you knew where you were going to be

on every day, you knew what forms
you were going to sign.

Everything was 100% orchestrated.

How much was the average total cost
to adopt from China?

Generally between, say,
$10,000 at the very least

to $20,000, $25,000.

So we did research,
submitted our dossier

and adopted Meikina in 1998,
April 4th.

And it was, in every sense of the
word, a life-changing experience.

And we said, "Boy, we need
to go on that ride again!"

Now, look at the camera! One...
Come on!

One, two, three...

For most of Meikina's life,

they thought they knew
exactly how she came to them.

I'd actually started researching
in China in about 2000

and interviewed this finder.

And the detail and the experience
that she painted for me

struck me as completely legitimate.

For ten years, I was convinced
that that story was accurate.

And then, finally, Long said,
"You know, maybe we should go back

"and I should meet this finder
and talk to her myself."

So she went back, found
the woman I had interviewed,

and the woman kind of got
a little bit nervous and she said,

"Have you spoken to the orphanage?

"I actually had nothing to do
with your daughter's finding.

"Our names were just put
on the paperwork for the adoption.

"We didn't find your daughter."

And when Long called me
and told me that, I was like,

"Wow, that is amazing,"

because now I recognised
that the orphanage had prepped

the finder before I'd even
got there in 2000 and said,

you, know, "Give them a good story,

"make something up,
just make them feel good."

And that's what happens
in the majority of cases

when Western families go to China,

and they give the same story
over and over and over again.

I can't find them...

Talking with Long Lan, I realised

I was following the path
she had already discovered.

She had reached out to Duan and
his family many years before I did.

She has a copy of all the records
from Duan's trial.

She also interviewed Duan's mum,
who passed away several years ago.

She was the first person
in the family

who sold babies to orphanages.

And so the orphanage will hire...

Not officially hire, but will create
a recruiting network of doctors,

midwives, foster families, whatever,

you know, anybody that can locate

and bring children
into the orphanage.

When those children
come into the orphanage,

then of course the orphanage
then needs to fabricate their

information, say, "Oh, yeah, let's
pick the third middle school today."

You know? And they'll tell
the adoptive family,

"Your child was found
at the third middle school,"

when, in fact, they were never
actually found at all.

So what the orphanages will do
is they'll make an agreement

with their local police station
and say, "OK, we're going to bring

"over these finding reports, and
we need you to stamp it and sign it,

"and we'll pay you 50 yuan or
whatever for each one that we do."

The finding ads are published in
newspapers that nobody ever reads,

you know? Basically, they're just
a photo with some information about

the child - their gender,
their health status,

where they were supposedly found,
how old, their birth date and so on.

And then, at the bottom
of the finding ad, it says,

"The birth family has 60 days
to retrieve the child

"or the child will be
submitted for adoption."

Looking at the finding ads
in the newspapers,

I wondered about each baby's story.

If they weren't orphans,

were they given to matchmakers
like my own cousin?

I found many sets of twins.

Most of them probably
were separated...

..and they don't even know that they
have a twin somewhere in the world.

When you take that information
from all the children

and you collate it together,
you can begin to see patterns.

This is the location
that the orphanage told

the adoptive families
where their child was found.

And so you can see orphanage gate,
civil affairs,

orphanage, civil affairs,
orphanage...

It's clear that, you know, they're
making up the information, because

they're using the same locations
over and over and over again.

It used to be that family planning
would come in

if you had an over-quota child
and they'd bash down your house

or they'd take a pig
or, you know, do something.

Once the orphanage joined the
international adoption programme,

that changed.

And so now they saw kind of
a win-win situation going,

where the family planning would
go in and take the child

that wasn't registered,
turn it in to the orphanage,

the orphanage would reward
the family planning officials

and then adopt that child
internationally.

I lived in China until I was 26,

but I'd never heard that government
officials were confiscating babies

during the one-child policy.

I was shocked when Brian said
the story was uncovered years ago

when I was still living in China.

This was me back then.

Throughout my life, I was taught
to believe the love of my country

was equal to love of
the government and the party.

Now, when I look back
at this time in my life,

I'm amazed at my ignorance.

The Chinese government exerted a lot
of influence to suppress the story,

threatened the newspaper,
threatened the reporter...

The reporter ended up
having to leave China, you know,

because of that kind of stuff.

I e-mailed the journalist,
who is in exile in Hong Kong,

and asked him if he could meet me.

He agreed, but only if
we meet in a hotel,

because he didn't want
to reveal his address.

Pang had extensive evidence.

He and a colleague had taken cameras
to Hunan province in 2010.

The government had targeted
families in Longhui county,

one of the poorest places
in all of China.

DOGS BARK

Growing up, I saw signs
like this everywhere.

Then he showed me
footage of Shuangjie Zeng.

He told me
that Zeng had a twin sister

who was taken away from the family.

In Hong Kong, Pang wrote a book
titled The Orphans Of Shao.

He used the twin girl's
picture on the cover.

It couldn't be published in China.

An English version was published

with the help of
a US non-profit organisation.

Since Pang's report
was published in 2011,

the situation of the families
in Shaoyang is basically the same.

There has been no accountability
for the people responsible.

DOG BARKS

I told Lan the story about
my aunt and my missing cousin.

She said she might be able to help.

After meeting with my aunt,
Lan kept travelling around China,

gathering DNA from families to test
for matches with children abroad.

One thing that struck me

was that everyone we spoke to said
the same things about the policy.

As I heard the answer again
and again - "I had no choice" -

I realised that you could ask
anyone in any part of China

about how the one-child policy
affected them,

and all of them
would say the same thing.

I was so angry,
even with my own family,

that there wasn't more
to be said or done.

There was such a shared
sense of helplessness.

It reminded me when every major life
decision is made for you,

for all your life, it's hard to feel
responsible for the consequences.

Long Lan and Brian started
testing the DNA samples

she brought back from China.

They didn't find my cousin,
but they did discover a match.

A girl in the United States who is
a DNA match to a family in China.

This is the list of all
the DNA that we've got.

All of it comes into
GEDmatch Genesis database.

So that, that's a free
database that allows us

then to compare our DNA
with all the DNA in the database.

I was going through,
Lan was doing some work

and I was just going through,
and I go through

each of the matches to see if there
was any that were close matches.

And we got to one of the birth
families, and it matched to a girl.

Of course I immediately
reached out to the adoptee,

sent her an e-mail
and let her know that

if she wanted more information,
she could write us.

And then she wrote back and said,
"Thank you for reaching out to me.

"At this moment
I do not want information

"regarding my birth family.

"I'm not really interested
at this time."

Lan told me that it's actually
very common that adoptees

do not want to contact
their birth families.

This also included the children
she located from Hunan province

who were kidnapped and sent
to orphanages by the government.

After leaving Utah, I decided
to take another trip to China

with my son.

I wanted to follow up with the twin
girl whose sister is in America.

I brought the book written
by the journalist in Hong Kong.

While there was no DNA match
for Zeng and her twin sister,

her story had already been
made public.

An American journalist located her
twin sister in the United States.

While the American family
did not want to be interviewed,

Zeng and her twin sister
connected through social media.

Many years ago, I felt embarrassed
for having a brother.

But now I feel lucky
that I had someone to grow up with.

I want my son to have
a sibling like I did.

But I want that decision
to be my own.

I'm struck by the irony

that I left a country where the
government forced women to abort

and I moved to another country where
governments restrict abortions.

On the surface
they seem like opposites,

but both are about taking away
women's control of their own bodies.

The one-child policy
lasted for 35 years.

Now there aren't enough
young people in China

to work and care for the elderly.

So China is introducing
a new family planning policy.

The signs painted all over
my village have been changed.

Every trace of the one-child
policy is being erased.

But the memory of what
the policy really was

survives in the minds
of the people who lived it.

If these memories of
the one-child policy fade away,

the only thing left
will be propaganda.