Heidi Snyder was overcome with emotion as she recalled the moment she learned that China had abruptly ended its three-decade-long international adoption programme.
“It felt like the death of a living child, honestly,” said the 39-year-old Illinois resident, her voice trembling with the weight of the memory from September last year.
At that point, the Snyder family had been waiting for five years to bring home a little girl with special care needs-whom they had been legally matched with and approved to adopt from China.
“It was a lot of gut-wrenching sobs, just grief from the last five years … all of the grief and all of the hope we had stored up just kind of came out all at once,” Snyder said.
Her face glowed with love and longing as she showed photos of the now six-year-old Willow. The Snyders have never met her in person but have exchanged letters, photos, videos, drawings and presents through their adoption agency over the years.
“She’s our daughter, she’s a niece, she’s a granddaughter, she’s a sister,” said Snyder, who has three sons with her husband, Kenton.
According to Snyder, her family was just weeks away from receiving a travel letter — the final step in the adoption process – to bring Willow to the US when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down international travel in 2020.
Hopes were briefly revived when China reopened in 2023, but the family received no updates until the Chinese government announced it would discontinue foreign adoptions altogether. People familiar with the situation, however, said that some waiting Italian and Spanish families were allowed by China to complete the adoption process in late 2024.

The Snyders’ story echoes the heartache of nearly 270 adoptive families across the US, all desperately trying to unite with the children they consider their own. Now, they are pinning their hopes on president-elect Donald Trump to help make it happen.
On November 1, more than 100 US lawmakers sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, urging him to press China “to fulfil and uphold the commitments the country has made”. Last month, 33 state governors wrote a similar letter to Biden about the pending adoptions.
The US Department of State and the departing American ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, have made consistent efforts to address the issue, but Beijing has largely been unresponsive.
It remains unclear whether Biden raised the matter during his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on November 16 in Peru. The White House and State Department did not respond to an inquiry about whether the issue was discussed. Press releases from both the US government and the Chinese side made no mention of it.
The waiting American families are now urging the incoming Trump administration and Beijing to view the stalled adoptions as an opportunity for goodwill and friendship.
Experts say that resolving the matter could be a win-win for both sides. China, seeking to improve US relations, could use a humanitarian resolution to create a positive atmosphere for tackling tougher issues like tariffs and tech competition. Additionally, many of these adoptions involve children with severe health issues, and as they age, their chances of finding homes in China grow increasingly slim.
Beijing began its international adoption programme in 1992, during the era of the one-child policy, which led to the abandonment of children, especially girls and those with disabilities. China’s declining birth rate, which led to the end of the one-child policy in 2015 and the introduction of incentives for larger families, is largely seen as the reason for ending international adoptions.
Data shows that since 1992, nearly 160,000 children have been adopted by foreigners, with more than 82,000 going to the US. This accounts for 11 per cent of all adoptions in China.

According to Yanzhong Huang of the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank in New York, this “number is too small to significantly impact China’s demographic landscape”.
Huang said the issue of pending adoptions was a “low-hanging fruit” for the incoming administration in terms of “claiming a diplomatic victory”
“For Trump, he could claim credit for bringing these 250 children into adoptive families, and for China, the implicit understanding would be that this could help sweeten a potential deal with the US, especially at a time when they were discussing US-China people-to-people relations,” he said.
For Denis Simon, a distinguished fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies, the resolution hinges on the “idea of goodwill”
He pointed to the example of pandas, noting that although Beijing removed the beloved bears from some US zoos amid escalating trade and technology tensions, “they brought them back” later.*
“That was a gesture of goodwill. Let’s see if something like this can be worked out on the principle of goodwill,” Simon said.
Biden’s transition team has briefed Trump’s team on the adoption issue, which the outgoing administration has termed a “top priority”, according to people familiar with the situation.
The US State Department said it had been engaging with China at “high levels” in both Washington and Beijing. “We are advocating for US families matched with a child from the [People’s Republic of China] to be able to complete their cases,” a State Department representative said.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said that “we are grateful for the desire and love of the governments and adoptive families of relevant countries to adopt Chinese children”
But it also underscored that Beijing’s policy remained unchanged, citing last year’s announcement, “Except for foreigners adopting children and stepchildren of collateral relatives within three generations in China,’ no more children will be sent abroad for adoption,” embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu stated on January 9.

Aimee and Stephen Welch of Kentucky, who adopted a child they named Grace from China in 2017, were in the process of finalising the adoption of a girl with special care needs in March 2020, but they are still waiting.
“We hope the level of concern and unity in Congress and among governors, as shown in these letters, will elevate this as a priority humanitarian and diplomatic issue for the next administration,” Aimee Welch said.
Welch, who now leads an organisation called Hope Leads Home, which advocates for completing the pending China adoptions, added, “Uniting children in need with loving families is a cause that transcends borders and politics.”
“I believe it would be a tremendous demonstration of goodwill between China and the US for these children to finally be allowed to join the families committed to giving them the lifelong love and care they need to reach their full potential,” she said.
Noting that the Lunar New Year was “a time of celebration and family togetherness”, Welch added: “As American families mark our fifth Chinese New Year apart from our children, we send them all our love and best wishes and prayers that, by next year, they will be celebrating with us.”
Huang of the Council on Foreign Relations pointed out that 98 per cent of children in Chinese state orphanages have severe illnesses or disabilities, according to Chinese government data.
While adoption of children with mild disabilities is increasing in China, he said, “it’s unlikely to address the needs of severely disabled children” “, leaving many without the chance for family life and “potentially condemning them to institutional care until they age out at 18, with uncertain prospects thereafter”.

Courtney Moore from Texas broke down in tears as she spoke about the prolonged wait to bring home a now nine-year-old boy with special needs whom she and her husband, Daniel, were approved to adopt in 2019.
Moore, who spent time as a student in China in 2008, said she decided to adopt from there owing to her “admiration for the culture and the people” of the country.
She has not received any updates or videos of the boy, whom they have named Milo, since January 2023.
“It’s been really hard watching him grow up through these photos and videos that we have gotten very sparingly, but just like, treasuring every single picture and video that we had,” she said.
Moore, a 40-year-old mother of three, one of whom was adopted from the US, added that “we’re just begging and pleading” that both sides “can use this opportunity to find goodwill between both of our countries to wrap up this”.
“Thousands of children have been given homes through the last 30 years,” she said. “And what a great way to finish that legacy of those 30 years on a high note, instead of dashing the hopes of these 300 kids.”