In the thirty-five years since China instituted its One-Child Policy, 120,000 children—mostly girls—have left China through international adoption, including 85,000 to the United States. It’s generally assumed that this diaspora is the result of China’s approach to population control, but there is also the underlying belief that the majority of adoptees are daughters because the One-Child Policy often collides with the traditional preference for a son. While there is some truth to this, it does not tell the full story—a story with deep personal resonance to Kay Ann Johnson, a China scholar and mother to an adopted Chinese daughter. Johnson spent years talking with the Chinese parents driven to relinquish their daughters during the brutal birth-planning campaigns of the 1990s and early 2000s, and, with China’s Hidden Children, she paints a startlingly different picture. The decision to give up a daughter, she shows, is not a facile one, but one almost always fraught with grief and dictated by fear. Were it not for the constant threat of punishment for breaching the country’s stringent birth-planning policies, most Chinese parents would have raised their daughters despite the cultural preference for sons. With clear understanding and compassion for the families, Johnson describes their desperate efforts to conceal the birth of second or third daughters from the authorities. As the Chinese government cracked down on those caught concealing an out-of-plan child, strategies for surrendering children changed—from arranging adoptions or sending them to live with rural family to secret placement at carefully chosen doorsteps and, finally, abandonment in public places. In the twenty-first century, China’s so-called abandoned children have increasingly become “stolen” children, as declining fertility rates have left the dwindling number of children available for adoption more vulnerable to child trafficking. In addition, government seizures of locally—but illegally—adopted children and children hidden within their birth families mean that even legal adopters have unknowingly adopted children taken from parents and sent to orphanages. The image of the “unwanted daughter” remains commonplace in Western conceptions of China. With China’s Hidden Children, Johnson reveals the complex web of love, secrecy, and pain woven in the coerced decision to give one’s child up for adoption and the profound negative impact China’s birth-planning campaigns have on Chinese families.

BBC戰地女記者──蘇．勞伊德．羅伯茨是英國最傑出、知名度最高的電視記者之一，以勇敢揭發人權議題、挑戰女性記者限制著稱。她在2015年十月不幸病逝前，寫完最後也是唯一一本書，獻給世界各地的受難女性與她們堅強的反擊。 1973年，羅伯茨以實習生身分進入英國獨立電視新聞網，開啟她非凡的新聞記者生涯，往後成為英國第一位在蘇聯、中國、伊朗等環境嚴峻的新聞站獨立編採報導的女性記者。在長達三十年生涯中，她走遍全球，深入危機四伏的戰亂地區，目睹各種對女性最殘酷不仁的暴行。然而除了第一手見證這些苦難，她也記錄下這些女性不可思議的反抗決心。 《女性面對的戰爭》述說羅伯茨自己令人難以想像的危險經歷，也道出眾多令人心痛憤怒的女性故事。被囚禁在惡名昭彰的都柏林「抹大拉洗衣廠」的瑪麗．梅里特；被人口販賣到波士尼亞被迫從事性工作的莫妮卡；取代母親擔任村落割禮執行者，又因不忍殘割的不人道而逃亡的甘比亞女性麥穆娜；六歲稚齡便被迫嫁人十三歲又被莫名休妻的印度女孩曼內瑪。 從英國的性別薪資差距，到喀什米爾的強迫婚姻，從以強暴當作戰爭武器到「榮譽殺人」，羅伯茨帶領我們檢視人類的歷史，再分析女性今日的生存狀態。更重要的是，她不惜一切為那些勇於挑戰錯誤暴行，不論多害怕仍竭力反擊的女性發聲。羅伯茨寫完本書不久便不幸病逝，她被視為同世代最傑出的電視記者之一，因為她鞠躬盡瘁燃燒的非凡一生得以被聽見的女性聲音，也將持續迴盪！