Luo said Shi underwent surgery for cancer four years ago and worries that the children will be left unattended after he dies.

Zifeng is not the only temple in the city that adopts orphans.

Abbot Shi Yaoyu of Shuangfeng Temple said it has more than 50 orphans.

In 2009, Gushan Temple accepted 11 trafficked babies who had been sent there by policemen.

Jieyang city has about 3,260 orphans with 91 living in welfare homes and 324 in temples and other private institutions. As many as 2,568 children are living by themselves or with their relatives, according to the director of the city's civil affair bureau Yuan Luewen.

Yue Jinglun, professor at Zhongshan University in Guangdong Province, said the incident of trying to borrow orphans reflects the negligence of governments of all levels.

Higher-level governments should have noticed Rongcheng's empty-shell welfare center and ordered it to change. The local government should have invested more in children's welfare, since it was obviously aware of the fact that the local temples were turning into orphanages, said Yue.

The issue of orphanages has been highlighted in China after a fire killed seven people at an unregistered private orphanage in Lankao County, Henan Province on January 4.

There is public anger over the fact that orphans live in hazardous conditions due to insufficient government support.

According to statistics provided by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China has some 615,000 orphans and around 109,000 of them live in government-funded agencies, with the rest being fostered by relatives or private orphanages.

The ministry said that only 64 out of 2,853 counties in the country have child welfare homes and it has pledged to help 500 counties to build child care homes by the end of 2015.

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