CHINA:China is introducing a raft of new rules which will restrict the number of foreigners who can adopt Chinese children, and which rule out the obese, the unmarried and the disabled from adopting.
"Foreign couples planning to adopt Chinese children need to have stable marriages, sound physical and mental health and comfortable finances and must not be overweight," Xing Kaimin, director of the Ministry of Civil Affairs' China Centre of Adoption Affairs, told the China Daily.
China's growing wealth means the steady stream of infants from the country's orphanages to families in the West may not last forever. There are fewer abandoned babies, orphans and children given up for adoption; with 20,000 applications made for adoption this year, there are more people looking for babies than there are children to be adopted.
"We want to pick the most qualified so that our children can grow up in even better conditions," Mr Xing said, adding that they had told more than 100 adoption agencies in 16 countries of the new rules.
Overweight people need not apply - one of the new criteria is that applicants should have a healthy body mass index - a measure of body fat based on height and weight.
"Obese people are more likely to suffer from diseases and might have a shorter life expectancy," Mr Xing said.
Adopting couples must be aged between 30 and 50 years, with people up to age 55 considered for special-needs children. And no singletons - under the new rules, only people who have been married for at least two years will be eligible to adopt.
Divorcees must have been remarried for at least five years.
The new rules will also rule out prospective parents who take antidepressants and no family can have more than five children in the home, including the child to be adopted. Homosexuals are already not allowed to adopt.
The new rules which come into effect on May 1st, 2007, are designed to "give preference to more suitable applicants".
"The priority criteria are meant to protect children's interests and shorten the waiting time for more qualified applicants," Mr Xing said. "It does not mean we are prejudiced against less qualified applicants, who can still apply."