Death by Default: A Policy of Fatal Neglect in China's State Orphanages

8vo, br. ed. few pencil underlinings ow very good. 394pp. China's claim to guarantee the "Right to Subsistence" conceals a secret world of starvation, disease, and unnatural death. A world into which thousands of Chinese citizens disappear each year. The victims are not the political and religious dissidents, they are orphans and abandoned children in custodial institutions run by China's Ministry of Civil Affairs. Death By Default: A Policy Of Fatal Neglect In China's State Orphanages documents the pattern of cruelty, abuse, and malign neglect which has dominated child welfare work in China since the early 1950s, and which now constitutes one of the country's gravest human rights problems. Many institutions (including some in major cities) appear to be operating as little more than assembly lines for the elimination of unwanted orphans, with an annual turnover of admissions and deaths far exceeding the number of beds available. Death By Default is a long needed expose on a severe humanitarian crisis afflicting the Chinese populace. -- Midwest Book Review