Youqine Lefèvre | The Land of Promises

Youqine Lefèvre

The Land of Promises

Breda, The Netherlands: The Eriskay Connection, 2022

244 pp., 23 x 29 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

Shortlisted for the Aperture Foundation First Photobook Award, The Land of Promises tells the intimate and personal stories of those living under the restrictions of China’s one-child policy. 

Anxious that rapid population growth would strain the country's welfare systems and economy, the Chinese government initiated a policy restricting families to a single child. A near-universal one-child limit was imposed in 1980 and two years later was written into the country's constitution. The policy remained in place and enforced until 2015. 

The program had wide-ranging social, cultural, economic, and demographic repercussions, particularly for Chinese girls. A widespread cultural preference for sons led to the abandonment of unwanted infant girls, many of whom did not survive. 

Chen Guangcheng, a lawyer who interviewed hundreds of women about their experiences, told NPR in 2021 that "doctors would inject poison directly into the baby's skull to kill it. Other doctors would artificially induce labor. But some babies were alive when they were born and began crying. The doctors strangled or drowned those babies."

Countless others were separated from their families and registered for adoption. 

In The Land of Promises, photographer Youqine Lefèvre sets out to portray the journey of her own adoption through the story of six Belgian families who traveled to China in 1994 to adopt girls. In doing so, she relates it to a broader context of international and transracial adoptions and other stories told by those she has met in the course of her travels. The changes in their lives resonate to this day and will continue in the future.