In a small shop hidden in the shadows of the gleaming, golden arches of the two-storey McDonald\u2019s next door, Liu Wenzheng has been developing photographs since 1995. Business in his north Beijing neighbourhood is slow but steady. Every now and then, a Western couple will come in to have a photograph taken of their newly adopted Chinese child. The child is nearly always \u201cimperfect\u201d in some way, whether it\u2019s something as minor as a cleft palate, or a more challenging disability.
\u201cWesterners have higher morals. They will adopt disabled children,\u201d Liu tells me over a glass of baijiu , the distilled Chinese rice spirit, at a nearby restaurant. His disappointment in his own people is personal: Liu has been disabled for all of his adult life, since a run-in with Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution left him so badly beaten that his left leg had to be amputated. He was 22 and had been arrested for reading banned American literature.
He spent six months in hospital. After being discharged with a rudimentary wooden limb, he returned to his old job on a Beijing factory floor. \u201cI was tough and people were scared of me,\u201d Liu says, his brusque manner and burly frame illustrating his point. \u201cNot every disabled person would have been allowed back to work with a full salary, to stand there and not do much.\u201d Throughout our conversation, he emphasises the rarity of his situation compared to that of other disabled people. He has worked all his life, is happily married and has an adult son. Most disabled people in China are not so lucky.
A few miles north of Liu\u2019s shop, on the outskirts of an eerily quiet retail park, Alenah\u2019s Home is a warm hub of activity. This private centre for disabled orphans has been looking after children since 2004. The children come from orphanages all around China, which don\u2019t have the funds or the facilities to provide disabled care. Many children, such as Furui, a one-year-old who was abandoned after a premature delivery, arrive with muscular atrophy \u2013 a result of months of neglect.
Alenah\u2019s Home is one of the few private centres of its kind in China that look after disabled orphans. They don\u2019t receive any government funding. Chris Hu, a full-time volunteer, tells me that children who are abandoned in China are nearly always female, disabled or both. This is in part a result of China\u2019s one-child policy, which made China\u2019s disabled population fall to 6 per cent of the country as a whole (the global average is 15 per cent) and also produced a gender imbalance of 120 boys for every 100 girls.
China\u2019s one-child policy was officially abolished in January 2016. But Hu agrees with experts who predict that this won\u2019t necessarily redress demographic imbalances. Cultural prejudices against disabled people are hard to shake. Confucian ideology emphasises the idea of the body as a point along an ancestral continuum. Thus, any defect is attributed to a spiritual flaw in the family, even for disabilities, such as Liu\u2019s, which are caused by injury. It is easy to dismiss this kind of abstraction as stereotyping, but when Yuan Xiaolu, a retired journalist who has been blind in one eye since birth, repeatedly tells me, \u201cI don\u2019t blame my mother,\u201d it suggests a genuine anxiety about the perception of her family\u2019s morals.
In wealthy cities, and especially in popular tourist areas, public facilities are becoming more accessible to disabled people. The Chinese government claimed to have invested 500 million yuan in the construction and renovation of 25,000 public toilets in 2015, most of them wheelchair-friendly. This follows changes in the law to encourage greater inclusivity: employers are required to reserve 1.5 per cent of jobs for people with disabilities, or pay a fee to the Disabled Persons\u2019 Employment Security Fund, which is managed by the China Disabled Persons\u2019 Federation (CDPF), a government body.
However, meaningful social change lags behind. Disabled children are more likely to be found \u2013 and often abandoned \u2013 in poorer rural areas, where women can\u2019t afford abortions and facilities don\u2019t exist to support disabled people. Liu describes the government\u2019s measures as \u201cbarely a cup of water when you need the sea\u201d, saying that most companies would rather pay the fine than employ a disabled person.
Even then, John Giszczak, a former China programmes manager for Save the Children, has said that the fees paid to the CDPF often end up being spent on overpriced \u201cpseudoscientific \u2018therapeutic\u2019 equipment\u201d.
The CDPF was founded in 1988 by Deng Pufang, the son of the then Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping. Like Liu, Deng Pufang was paralysed \u2013 left paraplegic after an assault by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Having such a high-profile disabled person in Chinese public life contributed to a more open attitude towards physical disabilities, but this didn\u2019t necessarily spread to all aspects of life.
Similarly, when the Hubei-based farmer Yu Xiuhua, who has cerebral palsy, published her poem \u201cCrossing Half of China to Sleep with You\u201d, which went viral on Chinese social media, she illustrated that her situation was an exception to the opportunities for disabled people, rather than the norm. Like most disabled people in China, Yu was unable to finish school and has spoken about how she has felt \u201cundermined. . [and] hated\u201d by her body. Still, she insists, \u201cMy disability really has nothing to do with my poetry.\u201d
\u201cIt\u2019s not the government that\u2019s the problem. It\u2019s the people,\u201d Liu says. China is often characterised as a country where the official Communist Party line is the only one that matters. But most Chinese people I speak to see their culture as running far deeper than political diktats. Policies may change behaviour or improve facilities for disabled people, but social rehabilitation seems a long way off.
Still, I suggest to Liu, he seems to have done quite well for himself. His family and his photography business aren\u2019t the future he foresaw when he first became disabled. \u201cNot really,\u201d he says glumly. \u201cDigital ruined everything.\u201d
After watching Donald Trump’s inaugural address, what better way to get rid of the last few dregs of hope than by comparing what he said with Barack Obama’s address from 2009?
Both thanked the previous President, with Trump calling the Obamas \u00ab\u00a0magnificent\u00a0\u00bb, and pledged to reform Washington, but the comparison ended there.
Here is what each of them said:
On American jobs
Obama:
The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift. And we will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We’ll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. Trump:
For many decades we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.
One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores with not even a thought about the millions and millions of American workers that were left behind.
Obama had a plan for growth. Trump just blames the rest of the world…
On global warming Obama:
With old friends and former foes, we’ll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. Trump:
The climate change section of the White House website has just gone offline pic.twitter.com\/oD27nImsPq
\u2014 Alex Bath (@Alex_SkyNews) January 20, 2017
On the Middle East: Obama:
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. Trump:
We will re-enforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.
On \u201cgreatness\u201d Obama:
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Trump:
America will start winning again, winning like never before.
On trade Obama:
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week, or last month, or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. Trump:
We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our product, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.
Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body, and I will never ever let you down.<\/p>\n

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