Secrets and Siblings

What has happened to the secret babies born under China's one child policy, so many of whom are now adults?

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Thirty-two years ago Mr Li and Mrs Wu from Zhejiang abandoned their second baby daughter at a marketplace. Mrs Wang Maochen from Beijing has seven children, but six of them are illegal so they cannot go to school, they cannot take a job, go to the doctor, or marry, or even buy a train ticket. Zhao Min from Guangzhou first learned about the concept of a sibling at university, in her town there were no sisters or brothers.

With the Chinese government now seeking to phase out its one child policy, Secrets and Siblings reveals the scale of its tragic consequences, showing how Chinese family and society has been forever changed. In doing so it also overturns many of our misconceptions about family life in China, bravely arguing that it is the state, rather than popular prejudice, that has hindered the adoption of girls within China.


At once brutal and beautifully hopeful, Secrets and Siblings asks what the one child state and its children will do now that they are becoming adults.