China is easing its one-child policy as part of a blueprint of economic and social reforms drawn up by the Communist Party leadership. Professor and demographer Feng Wang tells Deborah Kan why the country needs more babies to support its aging population

THIS is the moment a parent gives up their child.

The heartbreaking photographs show the overwhelming emotion as mothers and fathers in China abandon their children in ‘baby hatches’.

The pure agony can be seen on a woman that collapses and reaches out to her child one last time, a father who plants a final kiss on a child wrapped in a blanket and the face of grief of a devastated mother as she lets go of her baby.

Parents in China take their offspring to the hatches as they can’t afford to keep them or they aren’t able to care for a child with disability or illness.

A mother who is giving up her child with Down syndrome sobs.

“My baby cannot take care of itself when it grows up,” she told the Information Times newspaper based in Guangzhou. “I just want my baby to survive.”

Parents hide their emotion behind surgical masks as they open a door, place their infant in a small room, ring a bell and leave.

Inside is an incubator, a cot and an alarm device so no baby is left inside for more than 10 minutes. The small building is attached to an orphanage, where the children are cared for.

There are 25 hatch facilities across mainland China, where children can be dumped anonymously and safely. Since their introduction two years ago, there has been heated debate regarding their usage.

The hatches originated in Europe in the 18th century and are also used in Japan, Italy, Germany and South Africa. They are believed to help save babies which would otherwise be dumped on the streets or at hospitals.

The first shelter in China was created in Shijiazhuang and in its first two years, 183 babies were left there. Critics believe it is relieving parents from guilt and assists with the preference for male heirs, but many also believe without the safe shelters the children would die.

Another hatch in Guangzhou, which opened in January, shut its doors after just two months after being inundated with 262 abandoned children, the South China Morning Post reported.

Whether the controversial baby hatches are saving children or an easy escape, the grief the parents feel at losing their love ones is raw and real.