The Dying Rooms

As many as one million babies are abandoned in China each year. Nearly all are girls. Most are taken to state institutions in which they are shown no human care or love, often alongside the mentally handicapped, the senile and the disabled. Filmed undercover in five different Chinese provinces, 'The Dying Rooms' presents a searing indictment of how the country´s orphanages are run – and how some of its unwanted children are left to die horrendous deaths. So many female babies are abandoned in China because of the collision between the state´s desire to limit population growth and the long-held and strongly-felt Chinese tradition of having a male child to continue the family name and support parents in their old age. Chinese law permits only one child per family and women ca be severely punished for exceeding their family quota. The Chinese refuses to acknowledge the scandal of its state orphanages or the problems caused by its family limitation policy. None of its representatives would agree to be interviewed for this programme. If the true purpose of the production team´s visit to China had been discovered, they would have been deported or even imprisoned. The filmmakers only succeeded in entering the orphanages by using an alibi and much of their filming was surreptitious.