In August 2009, Demick traveled to Hunan Province, where the first reports of confiscated babies had surfaced. She hired as guide and interpreter Yuan Chaoren, the former teacher known as Old Yuan, who had been pushed into early retirement for activism. A younger activist drove them to Gaoping, steering clear of the nearby Family Planning office.

They first visited Yang Libing and his wife, Cao Zhimei, in Fengxing village. Through Brian and Longlan Stuy, Yang had learned his daughter now lived with an American family. He kept her photos in a red tin; his toddler son proudly identified the girl in the pictures as his sister. Cao wondered aloud whether her daughter looked American now. Yang knew recovery was unlikely but was intent on justice and joined Demick for subsequent interviews.

In another village, Liu Shuzhen, a gaunt woman in her early 60s, recounted how officials had arrived at night with headlights off and later forced her thumbprint onto documents she could not read to take her three-month-old granddaughter. By telephone, Demick interviewed Zhou Changqi, a migrant worker whose daughter Baishui was seized while his wife awaited a mandated tubal ligation. After months of escalating fines and stonewalling, Zhou was told at the Changsha orphanage that his daughter had already gone to America. He sold his house to fund lawsuits and was essentially homeless; his wife never returned.

On “a superstitious feeling that the last interview—the one you almost passed up—will be the most crucial” (105), Demick traveled a deteriorating road to reach Zanhua and her nine-year-old daughter, Shuangjie. Zanhua had secretly delivered twins, Shuangjie and Fangfang, in a bamboo grove to avoid detection. While the parents worked to earn money for fines, officials confiscated Fangfang. Unaware of international adoption, Zanhua feared organ trafficking and pleaded with Demick to bring her daughter back. Shuangjie softly imagined dressing alike and attending school with her twin.

Demick reasoned that finding a possibly identical twin had a realistic chance and resolved to try.

In September 2009, Demick’s article “Stolen Chinese Babies Supply Adoption Demand” appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times with a sidebar on the separated twins and a video of Shuangjie. The story was syndicated and widely shared, unsettling many adoptive parents who had believed China was the most ethically straightforward option. Some, like Wendy Mailman and Moya Smith, began to question their paperwork; Mary House, an adoption official and adoptive parent, acknowledged that most orphanage narratives given to families were fabricated. Brian and Longlan Stuy later estimated that roughly 10% of post-2000 adoptions involved confiscations, with many others occurring under coercion.

From Beijing, Demick searched for Fangfang online, using VPN access. She perused adoptive-parent photo albums and contacted Moya Smith, who ran a Yahoo! group for families who had adopted from Shaoyang. Leads pointed to a charity website, Adopt the World International, run by Marsha and Al Frederick, in Texas. Their second daughter, Esther—listed as adopted from Shaoyang 18 months old in December 2002—matched Fangfang’s likely timeline; orphanages often understated ages. Two photos showed a feverish toddler at adoption and a four-year-old with a broad, heart-shaped face. Uncertain, Demick created a photo lineup of eight similar-looking girls, embedding both Esther images, and mailed it to Yuan Chaoren. Youdong unhesitatingly selected both images as his daughter.

Demick then confronted an ethical barrier: She could not identify a minor publicly. Unable to reach Marsha directly, she found Al’s obituary and contacted his adult daughter and Marsha’s adult son, Sam Belanger. The website soon went dark, and Smith urged Demick to stop contacting the grieving family. Demick mailed her findings through the adult daughter and assured the family she would not publish the story; she told the Zengs only that their daughter appeared safe in America. The Zengs taped the lineup photos to the wall of their new house.

Demick’s reporting opened space for more coverage of China’s international adoption practices. In 2011, reporter Pang Jiaoming published a landmark investigation, prompting more parents to come forward. That September, Shaoyang and Longhui County authorities acknowledged 14 confiscations. In response, 14 officials, including current and former family-planning heads Zhou Xiaofang and Li Zijian, were expelled from the Communist Party, though none were imprisoned.

The demographic catastrophe predicted by Paul Ehrlich in 1968 never materialized (see Background); by the early 21st century, China faced the opposite problem. The working-age population peaked at nine hundred million in 2011 and then declined annually, straining an economy built on cheap labor. Demographer Wang Feng warned of low fertility and rapid aging. The one-child era also produced a skewed sex ratio—as high as seven males to five females in some areas—leaving millions of men without partners, known as guanggun, or “bare branches” (121). Many rural men sought imported brides, fueling trafficking and related abuses.

However, Communist leaders struggled to abandon a policy entwined with party legitimacy, bureaucratic interests, and lucrative fines. The 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which killed thousands of only children, exposed the policy’s cruelty. As Demick learns from demographer Gu Baochang of Fudan University, rural parents “are not covered by any social security program. They rely completely on their children for elderly support” (122). A grassroots “rights defense” movement also grew (123); the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng became a national figure after challenging abuses. After years of detention and house arrest, he made a nighttime escape in 2012 and received US asylum.

Weeks later, a viral photo showed 22-year-old factory worker Feng Jianmei lying beside her dead, late-term fetus after a forced termination, prompting nationwide outrage. Soon after, Demick reported from Shandong on Ma Jihong, who died following a forced late-term abortion; her five-year-old daughter recalled officials chasing her mother. In a nearby shop, Ji Shuqiang insisted on being named in Demick’s reporting, saying he was unafraid of Family Planning—suggesting the apparatus had lost authority among ordinary people.

Under China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, reforms proceeded gradually. In 2013, the Family Planning Commission was disempowered by being folded into the Health Ministry, and some couples were allowed a second child. On October 29, 2015, a universal two-child policy was announced. Riding a bus in New York’s Chinatown that day, Demick drafted a brief mock obituary marking the one-child policy’s end at 35 years.

Demick left China in 2014, assuming she was done reporting on this subject. Then, in January 2017, Marsha’s son, Sam Belanger, messaged her to say the family might now be ready to talk.