Few reports touched on the failures of the local adoption system or questioned whether Yuan was qualified to "adopt" so many children, many of whom were disabled, a few of whom were albino and a couple others who were, in fact, over the age of 18.
Believing that Yuan's heart was in the right place and that her story was a touching one, media failed to distinguish where great maternal love ends and where the law begins.
According to China's Adoption Law, adoptive parents should be "capable of raising and educating the adopted." But the vague article is not further elaborated upon or enforced by specific measures such as an established system to evaluate potential adoptive parents.
When Yuan insisted she could single-handedly care for the 34 children simply through hard work, there was no effective way to assess whether this could be true.
On Friday, the same day the fire occurred, Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, told a meeting in Beijing, "Problems are the voice of the times."
Problems like unregistered welfare homes across the country require acknowledgement and action, not the blind eye of authorities and the public.
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