I first became aware of Jim Garrow’s story in March 2008, after an  article was published in a Canadian magazine giving the basic elements  of his story.   In June 2008, I decided to speak to the man personally  and called him at his home in Ontario and asked him to go into the  details of his work in more depth.

My intent was to publish the  interviews in June 2008, but I was asked  to hold off, because there was  a Canadian investigation into Garrow’s claims of infant smuggling, and  did not wish him to become cautious.

I finally decided to post the  interviews to my blog after the GuelphMercury article was published in August 2010 confirming the investigation.  One can listen to our Garrow interviews here.

One  is struck upon opening Jim Garrow’s new book, “The Pink Pagoda”, by the  statements of support found in the first section of the book, entitled  “Endorsements”.  These written statements of support for Jim and his  work come from such people as “Dr. Parry, Assistant to the CEO for the  International Internet Alliance”, a person and organization on whom I  could find no information; Ross McKitrick, an outspoken critic of Global Warming; Robin W. Pifer, a Pastor of the Cedar Alliance Church; Walter Baker, executive director of the Fairhaven Bible Conference; William D. Gairdner,  a former Olympic athlete and author of such books as “The Trouble with  Canada,” and “The War Against the Family”; a mysterious and  unidentifiable “Dr. A.B.”, allegedly of the Unesco-World Health  Organization; Dr. Jim Garlow, a pastor and adoptive parent; and Jerome Corsi, author of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?“, about . . .  well you know what that is about.

All  of Garrow’s “Endorsement” authors are qualified by Garrow as  “best-selling”, “world-renowned”, etc.  I will let the reader use Google  to determine the accuracy of Garrow’s claims about these individuals.   Garrow’s book is published by WND Books, described by an editorial in  the UK’s Guardian as “”a niche producer of rightwing conspiracy theories, religious books and ‘family values’ tracts.”  WND Books describes itself  as “’fiercely independent’, telling the stories that other publishers  won’t.” The point is that the reader should get an idea of the religious  and  political circles Jim Garrow associates with — the birds of a  feather  thing — which may prove useful as one begins reading his  book.

Jim introduces us to his story by describing  his great success in all things financial, and how this success brought  him to China.  The book, he writes, is the story of how he came to save  over 40,000 babies between 2000 and 2012.  When I interviewed  him in 2008, Garrow claimed to have saved 24,000.  By 2009 it had  apparently risen to 31,000 (p. 149), 2010 the number had climbed to  34,000 and now, in 2012, it stands at 40,000 (Pink Pagoda  “Introduction”).  In his introduction he also admits that many might  call him a “human trafficker”, an accusation he freely and  enthusiastically embraces.

Thus begins the exciting  story of Jim Garrow’s start and work in baby trafficking inside China.   In the first chapter, he describes saving the baby niece of his Chinese  employee, “Xinyi”, whose husband wanted to “put aside” the child because  she was a girl.  Jim sets the stage for the conflict that will run  through the entire book — the family was forced to take these actions  because of Chinese laws — evil laws — which practically forced a  family to have a boy.

“As Chinese law dictates, only a male heir can  inherit family property and also provide for the parents’ elder years.”   One is left to question why the upper-middle class birth family of this  child would worry about these issues, given their employment at a large  U.S. firm and their patently upscale urban lifestyle.

It would also  belabor the point to discuss whether this assessment of Chinese law is  even accurate, but Jim uses this statement to set the stage for why  China had “become a nation awash in grief over having to make such  unthinkable choices.”  Jim contrasts this evil with the work that he  feels called to do, which he explains using Bible scripture uttered by  Jesus himself.

Jim goes on to recount how he met with  the father of the unwanted baby, who had a plan to bring the baby to the  area Buddhist monks who were willing to dispatch the child for him.   They were willing to do this, it was explained to the incredulous  Garrow, because the monks believed in reincarnation and thus believed  the child would have a better life in the next cycle.

The  only solution the father would accept was for the child to find a new  home outside China, a promise Jim made without knowing how he would  fulfill it.  As I read this event that set Garrow on his mission, I  found myself wondering if any stereotype of Chinese society had not been  employed: the powerful husband and the submissive wife; the low  societal and religious value placed on a girl’s life; the smells and  noises in the couple’s apartment, the endless fear that neighbors would  hear the conversation and report them to the authorities.

I of course  can’t say that what Jim describes is impossible, but I can just say that  my experience in observing my wife’s urban family and thousands of  couples through my own travels in China gives me the feeling that I am  watching a “predictable” movie.  Having located and interviewed many  birth families of unregistered children, I have found the neighbors  aware and accepting of the situation, even protective.

I have found  wives of urban couples to be assertive and active participants in  matters of family business.  I read Jim’s account, and while possibly  true, I find the lens through which he sees the event as Western,  simplified, and largely unfamiliar.

I got the same  feeling while reading Jim’s account of how he found a home for the  unwanted baby.  He met an American expat living in China whose wife  lived in the United States.  The man explained that they wanted to  adopt, but that it seemed to take a long time to do the paperwork, etc.   Jim told him he could adopt right away.  Now, I’m sure that most  readers familiar with  the adoption might at this point be wondering how  in the world this adoption could be completed.  I will let Jim describe  the process:

At this point, there were no documents  to accompany the baby and her new parents back to the United States.  Those I would discover in one of the best libraries in the world for  doing such research—the local beer house, where expats hang out.

It was  in one of those pubs that I met my “librarians,” who even went so far as  to share copies of the documents from their own Chinese adoption  process. Paperwork aside, I also learned valuable information about the  entire process and what pitfalls to hopefully avoid.

I had moved at  God’s bidding into the adoption business, and I planned to run that  business as efficiently as I did my schools. God bless the fool with a  big heart. (pp. 11-12)

No mention of the need for  an I-600 (Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative); no  consulate interview; it seems that all Jim had to do was produce some  forged adoption documents and the U.S. government would issue the infant  a visa.  The reader can decide how authentic Jim’s account feels.

Jim  also spends a lot of time reminding his readers of his stature, both  financial and otherwise, in China.  He writes about his fancy car, his  lush apartment, his ability to lavish financial gifts on those around  him.  Two examples will serve to illustrate, but such examples could be  multiplied many, many times.  In chapter 5 (“Walkabout”) Jim recounts  how he left his protective hotel to take a walk in the “other China”.   He abandoned his “car and driver” to walk around Chongqing’s poorer  neighborhoods.  He gets lost, asks some kids where the nearest McDonalds  was, and was escorted by fifteen street children there.  Jim then  describes his arrival at the eatery:

The  white-gloved gatekeeper greeted us at the door, and as she stared  suspiciously at the boisterous group of children surrounding me, she  asked in perfect English, “How can I help you?” I responded with the universal language: money. In China the currency is  called renminbi. The slang expression is kwai. Think dollars and bucks. 

I handed her the equivalent of $140.00 to cover the cost of whatever  the children wanted to eat. That $140.00 was equivalent to one month’s  salary for the manager, and she knew that she could expect a very large  tip for putting up with this ragtag group.

Another  example of Jim’s larges is recounted in chapter 7 (“The Pink Pagoda is  Born”), where Jim describes what allowed him to be successful (and  protected) inside China:

Back in China, I cut a  major figure with my posh penthouse, Mercedes sedan, chauffeur, and  money that I could spend as I chose. That ability to spend and transfer  money was tied to my special red-and-gold foreign experts license, a  document rarely accorded someone who wasn’t Chinese. Not only does that  gold-embossed “passport” allow one to move money about without  restrictions; it also protects the bearer from any kind of harassment at  airports and the like.

That document was always tucked into one of the  pockets in my signature Tilley vest; that is still true here in Canada. I  never leave home without it. One might be curious how I managed to get  such a document. Think back to 2000, and that special student in my  class at Shaw College in Canada. That special student is the one who  invited me to come to China the first time, and who introduced me to the  inner circles of connected, powerful people, including her uncle, Hu  Jintao. No more needs to be said. (p.37)

Jim also  recounts in nearly every chapter how much respect and reverence he  experienced from the Chinese people themselves.  When a stranger  mysteriously shows up in a Chongqing coffee house, he inexplicably says  that Jim would make Dr. Bethune proud.  Jim continues:

Yoda’s  reference to Dr. Bethune was not the first time I had heard that  comparison. Since my first trip to China, people had told me outright  that they believed I was the reincarnation of the revered doctor who  revolutionized medical procedures during the Second Sino-Japanese War. 

For Americans who might not recognize his name, the term MASH is  certainly a famous acronym, and it was Dr. Bethune, a Canadian by birth,  who developed the mobile medical units that were precursors of the MASH  (mobile army surgical hospital) units instituted in 1945, after his  death. Bethune’s mobile units, along with the MASH units that followed,  were responsible for saving so many lives during the wars of his  century, worldwide.

The Bethune Institute was and is a paean to his  legacy, which in some nearly inexplicable way, I have inherited. Using  his name wasn’t so much a strategic move on my part as it was a dynamic,  spiritual one. (p.53)

Earlier, Jim recounts this statement by one of his employees:

  “I  personally believe that Dr. Jim is the reincarnation of a saint, maybe  Dr. Bethune, and I’m not alone in that belief. The Chinese people who  come in contact with him believe that too. Even people who haven’t met  him but who have heard about him speak his name with genuine reverence.”  (p. 29) 

It should be noted that Jim Garrow is not a “Dr.” in any real  sense, but the recipient of an honorary degree from a religious  college.  He received that degree in 2008, long after the events recounted here, so this statement by his employee contains an anachronistic problem.

This  idea constitutes the second over-arching motif one sees in the the  book: First, that Jim makes, and always has made, large amounts of  money, and dispenses it like water.  Second, that he is comparable to  the spiritual giants — New Testament passages can be applied to him,  others recognize his spiritual greatness as he walks down the street.   The couple that adopted Jim’s first rescue, for example, observed:

“But  clearly, and I saw that for myself in China, everybody seemed to know  who you were. Even walking down the street, Chinese people, even monks,  just looked at you, and tried not to crowd you. I don’t know exactly  what that was all about, but you definitely had presence and respect.”

By  chapter 13 (“The Great Wailing Wall”) the feeling that I was reading a  work of fiction became overpowering.  The accumulation of the bravado,  the implausible episodes of meeting “Yoda”, who would literally appear  and disappear at will, and who was supposed to be a member of China’s  “KGB”, left me believing that Jim was weaving a fantasy tale that  incorporated every Western impression of China and her people.  Too much  of what I read contradicted what I had myself experienced on my trips  to China.  But, I kept thinking, “Perhaps I don’t walk in the same  circles as Jim.  Perhaps what he describes could have happened.”  That possibility was shattered in chapter 13 of Jim’s book, “The Great Wailing Wall”.

Jim  starts this chapter with “Yoda”, his secret Chinese army intelligence  benefactor, telling Jim he had arranged a trip for him to learn an  important lesson.  “Dr. Garrow,” explained Yoda’s two associates, “we  are going to show you something which may shock you, but it will give  you an understanding of what we Chinese think and where we come from.”   Jim goes on to matter-of-factually state that “We headed for Yunnan  province, about two hours from the city of Kunming.”

Jim presents this  as a “day trip”, which struck me as odd given that Kunming is over a  thousand kilometers from Chongqing.  Distance aside, Jim recounts how he  was brought to a Buddhist temple outside Kunming, and given over to two  monks who escorted Jim on a walk.

More stairs, but  this time leading down toward a small valley. These stairs were made of  wood, and not nearly so wide as their marble counterparts.   More stairs to the right, then to the left; then we  reached a steep, rough terrain, which we proceeded to climb. At the top,  I was looking across a valley about five hundred yards wide. It wasn’t a  deep valley, and I could see across to a meandering wall that looked  something like a miniature version of the Great Wall.   I felt sure that this part of the temple grounds was not  part of the usual tour, and I could not imagine why I was being brought  here.  

At this point, the monks motioned me to move ahead on my  own, so I walked toward the wall. From a distance, I thought I was  looking at bundles of wood stacked neatly up to the point of a narrow  pagoda-style roof, presumably to keep the wood safe from rain. Overall, I  took the wall to be about one hundred feet long and about five feet  high. As I got closer still, it looked as though the bundles had been  wrapped in very elaborately embroidered brocade, mostly red backgrounds  with brightly colored embellishments. The bundles at the top were still  vividly colored, but as my eyes moved toward the bottom of the wall, the  bundles were more faded and tattered.  

I was now directly in front of the wall, and close enough to touch the packages if I wanted to. I didn’t; I couldn’t.   My arms hung limply at my sides, and it felt as if all  the air in my lungs had been sucked out of me. I don’t remember for  certain if I said anything. If I did, it would have been, “Oh, my God.”

Jim  discloses that he was looking at a wall comprised of hundreds upon  hundreds of infant bodies, all wrapped in Buddhist ceremonial fabrics,  stacked one upon another.  Again, Garrow provides no clues with which to  test the veracity of this statement, and its purpose seems designed to  re-enforce the Western view that the Chinese kill their unwanted  daughter’s wholesale, against all verifiable evidence to the contrary.  (For a short overview of different “Blood Libel” accusations in history, read “Fetus Food: Another Urban Legend Busted”, eSkeptic, March 21, 2012).

Adoptive  families from China will no doubt be interested in knowing what his  book says about his work to bring unwanted babies into China’s  orphanages in order for them to be adopted internationally.  While he is  quite outspoken in private conversations and correspondence about the  destination of most of the children he has supposedly rescued, the book  is almost completely silent about his interactions with China’s  orphanages.

He does recount one story involving Yoda, his protective  intelligence officer, and an orphanage in Chongqing Municipality. Yoda  learned that this unnamed orphanage had been accepting infant girls,  only to turn around and sell them to sex traders, who would apparently  raise the children for 15 years before using them in the sex trade.  One  can of course question the financial and logistical logic behind such  scheme, but what is interesting to read in Jim’s book is how Yoda  handled it (remembering that Yoda is all powerful):

“Of  course, I heard about it later; and once again, I did not ask for   particulars. In one day, the entire orphanage was closed, and all of its   people gone. When I say gone, I mean they permanently disappeared. An   angry Yoda was like the sword of the Lord, smiting all who were  sinners.  These people were the worst of sinners, and no one, including  me, ever  asked what happened to them. The babies and children were  saved. That  was the only justice to focus on.” (p. 82)

Another  episode ends similarly, when one of Garrow’s infants is kidnapped (I am  not making this up) by Chinese gangs.  Three days later, Yoda, using  his extensive network of the Chinese underworld, retrieves the child.

“First,  [Yoda] brought in the proverbial big guns to squelch any grumblings  in  the town. Along with the big guns came lots of cash to everyone who   might pose a problem, including the parents, both adoptive and birth.  Then Yoda put out the word through everyone who at any level had any   dealings with our operation.  “If you ever do such a thing again, if you  steal one of our children or  cause the death of anyone in our  organization, you will be dead. Not  just you, but everyone in your  family and everyone you know.” 

Those were not idle words. And to our  staff: “If they use a knife on you, use a gun on them. If  they use a  gun . . .” And the escalation would have no limits.  Nor did Yoda’s  controlled and focused rage have any limits. Various  newspapers picked  up the story, and certainly helped to spread Yoda’s  “good word.” (p. 110-111)

As  I stated, Garrow mentions no particulars about this orphanage, or any  of his other stories.  But being familiar with all of the orphanages in  Chongqing, I can attest that none of them have “disappeared”.   Orphanages have closed, but we are still in contact with the directors  and other employees.

Garrow does recount a few  adoptions into the U.S. (but not Canada), but even these experiences  lack the “ring of truth” for those who have personally walked through  the paperwork and logistical maze of U.S. Immigration procedures.  As I  pointed out above, Garrow seems to maintain that all one needs to do to  obtain a Chinese infant is to procure some forged adoption documents and  show up at the U.S. border with child in hand.  He seems ignorant of,  or completely ignores, the pre-adoption approvals required (I-600, CCAA  approvals, etc.) to obtain an entry visa for the child to enter the  U.S.

What struck me as odd, however, was the nearly  complete absence of any mention of Jim working with any of China’s  orphanages.  In fact, a reader of “The Pink Pagoda” would finish with  the impression that nearly all of the unwanted children had been adopted  inside China.  This impression runs completely contrary to what Jim  told me and others in his interviews, in which he proudly boasted of  working with four internationally adopting orphanages in Chongqing, from  which he claimed that 80% of the children adopted came as a result of  his work, and with hundreds of other such orphanages across China.

His website continues  to encourage U.S. adoptive families to “ascertain if we have been part  of the process of saving your babies in China.”  Although in his book he  claims that his first “save” was in 2000 (which he also confirmed in  other interviews, including mine), he recently responded to a family  with children adopted in the late 1990s from Anhui and Jiangxi   Provinces thusly:  “To be quite frank our work encompassed so many of  the children rescued in the late 90’s and up until recent days that  there is a real possibility that your daughters were handled by our  folks.”  He continued to contradict previous interviews and his own book  by stating: “We never placed any children in orphanages after 2000. All  the babies from then on with only a few exceptions were adopted  internally by barren Chinese couples.”  It seems that Jim’s story  constantly changes depending on whom he is addressing.

The  overall issue with Jim’s book is that he provides no specific names,  places, or events with which to confirm his story, from the “Xinyi”  episode at the start, to his nomination for a Noble Peace Prize in 2009  at the end.  In that episode an anonymous Chinese official asks Jim for  permission to nominate him for the Peace Prize.  There is no name of  this official to research.  Garrow goes on to say he was beaten for the  Prize by President Obama, a man Garrow openly despises, and goes so far  as to publish his letter of congratulations to the President.  Readers  familiar with the nomination process  will realize that thousands of members are on the nomination committee,  and the winner is nominated by literally thousands of those members.

Nominees are not made known for 50 years, so we can’t even determine if  his nomination occurred.  However, one can see that even if Garrow’s  nomination by the nameless Chinese official were actual, Garrow  would not have received anywhere near the votes to present any  competition for President Obama or the other top contenders.  Thus,  chapter 30 of his book, “The Nobel Peace Prize Scandal”, in which he  writes President Obama and states “We may have lost the Nobel Peace  Prize to you, President Obama, but I believe that there is a higher  purpose to every event in our lives” (p.149)  is without doubt one of  the most brazen and unprovable assertions in the book.  And that is  saying a lot.

In the end Garrow’s story will be like  those of other religious “prophets” to whom God has supposedly spoken:   Outsiders will be able to point out inconsistencies, attack the veracity  of the details, and question the validity of the events recounted.  But  believers in Jim’s story will discount such problems, and insist that  since such issues can’t be totally disproved, they could be true.  Thus,  Garrow’s story will be viewed as “a story told from a dream” by those  who see it skeptically, but as the work of God by those who share Garrow’s faith in “saving” children from China.

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