John Prescott and the China Policy Institute

The Rt Hon John Prescott MP, who as Deputy Prime Minister played a major role in the forging of closer relations between the UK and China, is to become the new Honorary Patron of the China Policy Institute at The University of Nottingham.

Mr Prescott will be officially inaugurated into his new role when he visits Nottingham on Tuesday March 30 to talk on China and Climate Change as part of the University’s Energy and Climate Change Special Lecture Series.

Richard Pascoe, Director of the China Policy Institute in the University’s School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, said: “We are delighted that John has agreed to become our new Honorary Patron.

"Language is a part of culture," Hollingsworth said.

Cox said she keeps Chinese decorations around the house, encourages them (her children) to celebrate Chinese holidays and has them learning to speak Chinese.
"It's their heritage, it's where they are from and it's something they need to be proud of," she said.

The number of foreign Chinese children adopted by Americans has dropped for the third year in a row ...

..... a consequence of tougher policies in the two countries -- China and Russia -- that over the past decade have supplied the most children to U.S. families.

Figures for the 2007 fiscal year showed that adoptions from abroad have fallen to 19,411, down about 15 percent in just the past two years.

It's a dramatic change. The number of foreign adoptions had more than tripled since the early 1990s, reaching a peak of 22,884 in 2004 before dipping slightly in 2005, then falling to 20,679 in 2006.

"A drop in international adoptions is sad for children," said Thomas Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption. "National boundaries and national pride shouldn't get in the way of children having families."

Adoptions from China, the No. 1 source country since 2000, fell to 5,453. That's down by 1,040 from last year and well off the peak of 7,906 in 2005. Two main factors lie behind this: an increase in domestic adoptions as China prospers and tighter restrictions on foreign adoptions that give priority to stable married couples between 30 and 50 and exclude single people, the obese and others with financial or health problems.

One consequence, adoption agencies say, is that the waiting time to complete an adoption from China has more than doubled to 24 months or more.