Why is China taking so long?

A lot of people have asked me why we are having to wait so long for the referral of our China baby. This question seems to have a lot of answers, and nobody's sure exactly which ones ones are right, partly right, or totally wrong. Here are some possible reasons given to me by my agency.

Background: Every year between 2002 and 2006, 10,000-14,000 Chinese children were adopted in the international adoption program (mostly going to the US). If numbers had stayed the same for 2007, we would have received our referral in about a year, I believe. However, in 2007 only about 6,000 were adopted....a big drop! And things seem to be slowing down even more. So now the wait time is getting longer and longer.

Here are some of the possible reasons why:

1. Because the China adoption process is becoming well-known for being stable, ethical, and reasonably affordable, many more parents are choosing to adopt from China. In fact, I think I read that the amount of applications doubled from 2006 to 2007 (all while fewer babies seem to be available for reasons mentioned below).
2. A 2005 baby-trafficking incident left many orphanage directors unwilling to even continue participating in international adoption, because it now takes more time to get the children "paper-ready" and they're afraid that if they report available children it might bring international scruitiny to their orphanage and possible complications. Lots of babies are just sitting in orphanages because of this.
3. International adoption is "too much trouble" for already overworked Chinese officials in certain provinces.
4. Some orphanages actually want to keep a certain number of children or they will lose funding, so they don't report to the government that they have babies available.
5. Abandonment is slowly decreasing, and more domestic adoptions are occurring.

There is one more thing that I've been hearing alot, but not sure if it's true at all. The 2008 Summer Olympics will be taking place in China. People from all over the world will be focusing on China and the newsmedia will write thousands of articles about China. China is doing much to get ready for the Olympics and to show its best face to the world. For example, they've begun extreme measures to lower pollution in and around Beijing so the air will be safe for the athletes and that the sky will be blue (closing factories, allowing only cars with even-numbered license plates to drive on certain days, etc).

Because they're focusing so much on looking great during the Olympics (as would any other nation), maybe they've decided to slow down the international adoption program so that they aren't looked upon unfavorably. (This apparently happened to South Korea when it held the Olympics in 1998, and ever since then they've drastically reduced their adoption program). I'm hopeful that if this is the case, they will slowly start increasing adoptions after the Olympics are over.

One final note: As I read over my post above, I realized that it comes across as somewhat negative. I don't mean for it it to--I have great respect for China, and it's amazing culture and people, and I'm very happy that they're allowing me to adopt one of their children! It's just this unexpected slow process that's frustrating me.