baby hatches

China has 25 facilities for the safe, anonymous transfer of unwanted babies, which in many cases are babies which parents want but are unable to keep:

 99%of babies left at hatches have illnesses or disabilities.
--Ji Gang, a staff member of China Center for Children's Welfare and Adoption 

Most of the parents left brief notes or cash along with the infants indicating that they had no choice but to abandon their children.

Their parents are afraid of becoming impoverished as they cannot afford the expensive medical bills and fees for special education. 

 The Shijiazhuang social welfare institution received 105 infants in 2009 and 83 in 2010. Since the baby hatch was set up in June 2011, it has received 181 abandoned children.

 Only one-third of abandoned babies in Shijiazhuang survived before, but now the death rate has fallen sharply with the help of the baby hatch.

On life chances for the disabled in China, see James' essay. But this is an example of why things just carry on in China. Despite massive dysfunction, Chinese governance is capable of doing the best thing in the circumstances. (update see here for a better explanation of what i mean)

Comments

[ajay]

That is a pretty constrained definition of "doing the best thing".

[dsquared]

Yes, when you're the ruler of a totalitarian state, the defence "we're doing the best we can under the circumstances" does invite the rejoinder "let's talk about those circumstances"

[ajay]

Maybe they could take some of those eight million people they have watching the dissidents 24 hours a day and get some of them on to childminding duties instead. Just a thought.

[jamie]

actually, yes: that should have read something like 'whole state failure mitigated by imaginative pragmatism at local level' which is actually a significant reason for why the system as a whole continues to work. Which was really what I meant.

I think the main structural factor here was a combination of the semi-privatisation of China's health and social security system in the 1980's, which saw funding from central government to locally based institutions drop and moves in the 90's to force local governments to kick up more tax income to the centre. That put the whole sector on a basis of frantic rent seeking.