China defends new adoption rules
China has defended its new adoption regulations for foreigners that favour middle-aged married couples without physical handicaps, saying that they were designed to help children and expedite adoptions, state media said today.
The rules have drawn criticism from US adoption agencies and their clients who say that they are discriminatory and overly restrictive.
Lu Ying, director of the China Centre for Adoption Affairs, was quoted as saying by the Xinhua News Agency that the rules were aimed at guaranteeing “optimal family conditions” for the adopted children.
“The new rules will help shorten waiting time for qualified foreigners and speed up the process for children, especially the disabled, so that they can go to their new families, where they can get better education and medical treatment, more quickly,” Lu told Xinhua.
The new rules, which take effect on May 1, make it more difficult for overweight, single and “economically precarious foreigners” to adopt, while giving priority to stable, well-off foreign couples between 30 and 50, Xinhua said.
According to US adoption agencies who were briefed on the new rules in December, the new rules also bar parents who are wheelchair dependent, take medication for psychiatric conditions including depression and anxiety or have a “severe facial deformity”.
The move comes amid a surge in foreign applications to adopt Chinese children. The United States is the No.1 destination for children adopted abroad, but the number going to Europe and elsewhere is rising.
Xing Kaimin, another official with the China Centre for Adoption Affairs, told the China Daily newspaper that the revised criteria were devised to “protect children’s interests and not to show prejudice against less qualified applicants, who can still apply”.
Xing said overweight people were more likely to suffer from disease and might have a shorter life expectancy, which would impact an adopted child.
