Chinese Adoption and Adaption: The Effects of Globalization on Adoption in China

Written in Collaboration with Abrams, DeCillis, Redman, Van Wigerden.

Introduction

Since China first allowed foreigners to adopt Chinese children in 1992, adoption in China has changed significantly.[i] Many of these changes are the result of China’s increased participation in global affairs. China’s rapidly changing economy and growing role in international relations and commerce have given rise to numerous transitions within the country. The progression from an agricultural to an industrial economy, population growth barely kept in check by government policies, and Chinese-owned businesses beginning to compete in foreign countries with Western corporations are just a few of the changes that face China today, leaving some Chinese struggling with a sense of dislocation in a society that can sometimes appear unfamiliar to them.

These noticeable and large-scale developments have caused less easily perceived “ripple effects” throughout all aspects of Chinese society, including within the adoption system. This paper considers these trends and their connection to globalization in China. Our thesis is as follows: “Globalization has caused certain trends in the rates of abandonment and adoption of children in China and abroad, including a rise in the percentage of special needs adoptions to the U.S. compared with total adoptions, increased rates of child trafficking and corruption in the adoption process, and a shift from mainly international to predominantly domestic adoption”.

China’s “Waiting Children”: Special Needs Adoption

Introduction

A little over a decade ago, the China-U.S. adoption program allowed American families to bring home a healthy young child or baby, usually a girl, just twelve to twenty-four months after starting the adoption process. It was fast, efficient, and widespread. In 2005, the peak year for China-U.S. adoptions, 7,903 Chinese children found homes with adoptive families in the United States. Shortly thereafter, however, this rate began to decline. In 2011, just 2,589 Chinese children were adopted by American families, a 67 percent decline from the peak of six years earlier. [ii] An all-time low of 2,306 children were adopted from China in 2013, and waiting times are still at a record high.[iii]

In the face of a declining number of healthy Chinese children available for adoption, demand increased for a group of legal orphans who had previously been overlooked: those with special needs, often referred to as “waiting children” under China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption (CCCWA) policy.[iv] These children, for whom the waiting time can be as short as a year, currently form the majority of all Chinese children being adopted annually by American families.

In this section, we will discuss what “special needs” entails in the adoption world, how the special needs adoption process differs from standard procedure, and current trends in international special needs adoptions.

“Special Needs”: What Does It Mean?

“Special needs” is an umbrella term that covers a wide range of physical and cognitive differences. Congenital conditions that would cause a ward of the state to be designated as a special needs child include a cleft lip or palate, limb difference, heart conditions, and cerebral palsy, among others.[v] Medical conditions range from mild and correctable to severe and life-threatening. Those children whose disabilities require intensive long-term care that many families might be unwilling or unable to provide are classified as “special focus”, a subcategory within the group of special needs children. The two groups are collectively referred to as “waiting children”.[vi]

In the world of adoption, “special needs” refers not only to children with congenital abnormalities, but also to those who have outgrown the age range in which most children are adopted (usually 0–36 months). Because Chinese children can no longer be adopted after they turn fourteen, and because most prospective parents apply to adopt very young children, those above three years old are automatically placed on the Waiting Child List to increase their chances of being adopted.[vii]

Many people incorrectly assume that a special needs child must have an uncorrectable medical, physical or emotional disability that will require intensive treatment for the rest of the child’s life. In fact, many special needs either are correctable or can be easily managed with the right treatment. Most special needs children, particularly when benefiting from the nurturing environment of an adoptive family as opposed to remaining in institutions, are able to live completely independent lives as adults (2015 May 17, interview with Teresa Woodland, Amy DeCillis, Hannah Archer, Nacole Abram and Fi van Wingerden).

Regulations

China’s requirements for international prospective adoptive parents seeking to make a special needs adoption are less strict than the normal regulations.[viii] The reasoning for this is that special needs children often require medical care that is unaffordable for their orphanages and welfare institutions. For many of these children, adoption is the only way to receive the treatment or surgical procedures they need. In addition, since some parts of Chinese society still regard a special need as a mark of inferiority, it is more difficult to place these children domestically. For these reasons, the Chinese government encourages international special needs adoption by imposing less stringent requirements on prospective parents of special needs children. To further facilitate the process, the government streamlines the necessary paperwork to reduce the average duration of the process from more than four or five years to just twelve to eighteen months. The files of “waiting children” are also available for viewing in a centralized database run by the CCCWA.[ix] This allows prospective parents to request additional information on a particular child while they are still in the process of filing their dossier with the CCCWA, further expediting the process.

The standard requirements for China-U.S. non-special needs adoptions are as follows:

· singles may not adopt;

· neither parent may suffer from a condition that affects life expectancy or perceived parenting ability, including an intellectual disability, HIV/AIDS, schizophrenia, blindness, and a BMI of 40 or greater;

· neither parent may suffer from mania, anxiety, depression and similar conditions, unless one parent is in good mental health and the affected parent’s condition is well-controlled by medication;

· neither parent may suffer from a condition that requires long-term treatment, including malignant tumors, lupus, nephrosis, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and an organ transplant within the last ten years, unless one parent is in good health and the affected parent’s condition is well-controlled after treatment

· neither parent may have a history of domestic violence, sexual abuse, abuse or abandonment of children, drug use, or alcohol abuse within the last ten years;

· families with five or more children may not adopt;

· neither parent may be above the age of fifty. [x]

Exceptions to the policies regarding mental and physical health are common on a case-by-case basis, especially if a family is seeking to adopt a special needs or special focus child, while the requirements pertaining to criminal records are less flexible.[xi]

While these requirements bar many population groups from adopting non-special needs children, the CCCWA’s policy for special needs adoptions is less strict. The requirements for prospective parents filing for a special needs adoption differ from standard protocol in the following respects:

· single women may adopt a special needs child, provided they fulfill the following criteria:

o is no more than forty-five years older than the child ;

o has net assets of at least USD 100,000;

o has an income of at least USD 10,000 per year per family member, including the child to be adopted;

o has medical insurance for herself and the child to be adopted;

o has no more than two children already in the home, with the youngest over the age of five;

· families with five or more children may still adopt a special needs child;

· one parent may be over the age of fifty, provided the other parent is under that age.[xii]

These slightly relaxed criteria are designed to allow people to adopt who would otherwise be barred from doing so, thereby encouraging special needs adoptions.

Trends

Over time, there has been a shift in the types of children available for adoption in China. While previously the majority of children were healthy girls, almost all children available for international adoption are now special needs children of both sexes. This is due both to the fact that fewer healthy girls are now abandoned and to government influence on international adoptions.

Birth parents who abandoned their babies a decade or two ago would often do so because the child was not the desired sex. Due to the government’s one child policy, an attempt to check the rapid population growth that had once threatened the country’s ability to provide for itself, these parents had to choose between giving up hope for a son and abandoning their daughters. This led to a surplus of baby girls who, for the most part, had no special needs. Over the last two decades, however, globalization has brought new jobs and economic opportunity to China, resulting in an average increase in the standard of living (2015 May 19, interview with Professor Shang of Beijing Normal University, Nacole Abram, Hannah Archer, Amy DeCillis, and Jing Redman). While families would previously abandon babies that they could not care for, many can now afford to raise extra children despite government fines for having more than one child (2015 May 17, interview with anonymous orphanage employee in Hunan province, Amy DeCillis, Hannah Archer, Nacole Abram and Fi van Wingerden). In addition, the traditional view that boys are superior is less pronounced than it was when China-U.S. adoption became possible in 1992. Finally, in places where sex selection is still prevalent, sex-selective abortion has all but replaced sex-selective abandonment in the past ten years (2015 May 18, interview with Brent Johnson, Amy DeCillis, Jing Redman and Fi van Wingerden). These three factors combine to produce a much smaller number of healthy babies being abandoned each year. In contrast, many children born with a disability are still abandoned, sometimes because their parents are unable or unwilling to provide them with the care they need, other times because having a child with a special need is seen as a curse or a judgment on the parents in some parts of China (2015 May 18, interview with Brent Johnson, Amy DeCillis, Jing Redman and Fi van Wingerden). As a result, waiting times to adopt a healthy Chinese baby is often up to seven years, while the waiting time for a special needs child can be as short as twelve to eighteen months. The lengthy waiting period often prompts those few prospective adoptive parents who have filed dossiers for a non-special needs child to switch mid-process to the “Waiting Child” procedure (2015 May 17, interview with Teresa Woodland, Amy DeCillis, Hannah Archer, Nacole Abram and Fi van Wingerden).

The second reason for the switch to predominantly special needs adoptions lies in the government’s influence on the adoption system. As mentioned under the heading “Regulations”, the requirements for prospective adoptive parents of special needs children are less stringent than those applied to parents adopting through the non-special needs process. Furthermore, the Hague Convention, a multinational agreement on abandonment and adoption ratified by China in 2005, emphasizes the importance of raising abandoned children in their country of birth in order to avoid the possibility of alienating them from their birth nationality and culture (2015 May 17, interview with Teresa Woodland, Amy DeCillis, Hannah Archer, Nacole Abram and Fi van Wingerden).[xiii] Chinese prospective adoptive parents who apply to adopt domestically are therefore given precedence in the adoption of non-special needs children.

Combined, these developments have inevitably led to a percentual increase in international special needs adoptions (2015 May 18, interview with Brent Johnson, Amy DeCillis, Jing Redman and Fi van Wingerden).

Summary

The most notable change that the U.S.-China adoption system has undergone in the past decade lies in the demographic from which most children are adopted. While CCCWA programs of the past existed mainly to find foreign homes for the large number of baby girls abandoned due to the government’s one child policy and the sex discrimination prevalent in Chinese society at the time, the dwindling supply of these children became insufficient to meet demand from the United States. This led to long waiting times that often discouraged American families from beginning the adoption process at all.

In the face of declining adoption rates, special needs and special focus children, who had previously formed a small percentage of overseas adoptions, became the largest group of legal orphans available for adoption. The Chinese government’s expedition of the adoption process for these children now makes special needs adoption the only viable way to adopt a child within a time span that seems reasonable to most American families. Over the past decade, “waiting child” adoptions have therefore come to represent the majority of all U.S. adoptions from China.

The Baby Market: Trafficking in Chinese Adoption

Introduction

In the early 1990s, it became possible for Americans to adopt from China, and they began to do so in increasing numbers. Some chose to adopt out of a sense of humanitarian compassion, others based on religious convictions, and still others because adoption was their only opportunity to have a child. Despite how innocent prospective parents’ intentions might have been, however, the system gradually developed a lucrative side market. As the number of Americans willing to adopt increased, some Chinese familiar with the adoption process came to realize that the market for children could be a “shengcai zhidao” — a road to riches. In the words of a social worker familiar with the issue: “If there’s a need, there’s a market” (2015 May 17, interview with anonymous orphanage employee in Hunan province, Amy DeCillis, Hannah Archer, Nacole Abram and Fi van Wingerden). As the demand for Chinese babies grew, those in key positions within the adoption system sought new ways of supplying them. This led to an increase in the abduction and trafficking of children whose parents never intended to abandon them. This section discusses the origins of China’s trafficking problem, its organization, and the reasons that make it difficult to eradicate.

Origins of Child Trafficking For Adoption

With China’s modernization came the emergence of the middle class and a general increase in welfare and affluence across all social strata. Foreigners, formerly vilified as symbols of anti-China, pro-capitalist sentiment, were now seen as sources of profit. Since each international adoption included a significant “forced donation” to the orphanage involved, such institutions unsurprisingly became keen to provide as many children as possible to foreign parents. Child trafficking for adoption started on a large scale in 1995, when the number of foreign parents began to rise.[xiv] However, it was not until 2005 that the first major scandal exposing adoption-related child trafficking came to light in Chinese and foreign media. In this case, an orphanage in Hunan was discovered to have been buying babies that had been taken forcibly from their parents in Guangdong province. In that year, foreign adoptions from China peaked at 7,903.[xv] Since then, they have declined annually.

Sold into the Adoption System

Adoption-related traffickers in China have several ways of obtaining children to sell to orphanages. The first of these is kidnapping. For example, in 2011, American Rose Candis visited China in an attempt to find her adopted daughter’s birth parents. She managed to arrange a meeting with the man who, according to the local police office’s records, had found the girl abandoned by the roadside. To her shock and dismay, the man admitted frankly that the records had been fabricated. Her daughter had not been abandoned, but rather bought by an orphanage tempted by the forced donation it would earn if she were adopted by foreigners. The same year, a Chinese laborer, Liu Liqin, came home from work to discover his son missing. After calling all his local relatives and friends, none of whom had any information, he thought to watch his apartment building’s security camera footage, which showed a stranger carrying his son away. “Watching the man in the footage taking him away…” Liu said in an interview with The Atlantic. “There’s just no way to describe that feeling.”[xvi] In some cases, kidnapping is carried out by government officials who have arranged to share in orphanage profits. These officials abuse their power over people in rural areas who are often not aware of their rights.

Kidnapping is not the only way that traffickers in China’s adoption system obtain children. In fact, some parents sell their own children, often because they already have another child and will suffer legal repercussions for having a second, or else simply because it is a girl. Rather than abandon the baby, they send it directly to an orphanage while earning a profit at the same time. A recent study by the Chinese People’s Public Security University found that 67 of the 133 trafficking cases reported by the media since 2000 involved the child’s biological parents selling the child to traffickers.[xvii]

Although the 2005 scandal in Hunan occurred within the international adoption system, trafficking occurs much more frequently in domestic rather than in international adoption (2015 May 17, interview with Teresa Woodland, Amy DeCillis, Hannah Archer, Nacole Abram and Fi van Wingerden). In most cases where a child has been kidnapped or sold by its parents, it is not taken to an orphanage, but instead sold directly to a family in a different part of the country (2015 May 17, interview with anonymous orphanage employee in Hunan province, Amy DeCillis, Hannah Archer, Nacole Abram and Fi van Wingerden). This is done to circumvent bureaucratic regulation in the international and official domestic adoption systems, thereby maximizing traffickers’ profits and reducing the chance that a kidnapped child will be traced by police.

Approaching the Issue

Before the scandal of 2005, many Americans saw China’s adoption system as corruption-free, assuming that the strict one child policy was responsible for most of the children who were abandoned. For Americans, China offered a wealth of healthy children in need of homes. As more and more trafficking circles are exposed, however, this reputation is increasingly challenged. Child trafficking in international adoption is a serious problem that the Chinese government and adoptive families in the United States seem unable to solve. For the government, acknowledging the problem would mean a loss of face (2015 May 17, interview with anonymous orphanage employee in Hunan province, Amy DeCillis, Hannah Archer, Nacole Abram and Fi van Wingerden). Although men and women found guilty of selling children can face heavy penalties, ranging from five years in prison to death, under current Chinese law the buyers in a trafficking situation are not subject to legal repercussions. This means that even if an orphanage is exposed as having bought babies in the past, it cannot be prosecuted, making it difficult to approach the issue of trafficking from the Chinese side. American law defines trafficking as “a modern-day form of slavery involving the illegal trade of people for exploitation or commercial gain”, but elaborates that this commercial gain must be related to forcing victims into “labor or commercial sexual exploitation”.[xviii]

This definition excludes most adoption-related trafficking cases in China, which are engineered for commercial gain only. Because adoption-related trafficking cannot be prosecuted as such under American law, and the buyers in trafficking cases cannot be prosecuted within China, it is difficult for either government to address this issue (2015 May 19, interview with Professor Shang of Beijing Normal University, Nacole Abram, Hannah Archer, Amy DeCillis, and Jing Redman).

Summary

While many factors have affected the increase of child trafficking in the Chinese adoption system, the main cause is the lucrativeness of international adoption. China’s adoption program was, for many years, seen as reliable and “clean”, which explains why it was so popular among American families seeking to adopt. However, the money that this brought to the country was cause for traffickers to turn to international adoption as an industry worth exploiting. The Hunan scandal of 2005 called attention to the significant problem that trafficking poses in China. Although multiple instances of corruption have since been exposed, many people still prefer to ignore the issue. Unfortunately, unless the Chinese government takes the initiative in combating child trafficking, its country’s transition from developing to developed will continue to have an adverse effect on the adoption process and on the children and parents involved.

The Internal Market: A Shift from International to Domestic Adoption

Introduction

When China issued its first laws regulating foreign adoption in 1992, international interest in the adoption of Chinese children quickly outpaced concern for the issue domestically. In-country adoptions were a taboo subject in Chinese society both before and after these laws were passed (see “Social Developments”), and many domestic adoptions in the 1990s occurred behind closed doors and without government regulation.[xix] By contrast, once the adoption process was opened to foreigners, China quickly became popular in the American adoption community for the simplicity and efficiency of its adoption procedures compared with those of other countries. For instance, the CCCWA required only one trip to China by prospective adoptive parents, while some countries, such as Russia, required multiple trips.[xx] Over the last decade, however, China has restricted international adoption in favor of finding homes for abandoned children domestically (2015 May 19, interview with Professor Shang of Beijing Normal University, Nacole Abram, Hannah Archer, Amy DeCillis, and Jing Redman).[xxi] This section investigates how globalization caused the social developments that gave rise to these restrictions and the legal changes that made them possible.

Social Developments

Based on thousands of years of history that had survived centuries of turmoil, Chinese traditional values nevertheless found a worthy opponent in globalization. Before the internationalization of the adoption process in 1992, domestic adoptions in China were few, and government involvement was often minimal. Passing on one’s bloodline and family name was seen as critical to honoring one’s ancestors. Accordingly, adopting a child often caused loss of face, and the topic was taboo in Chinese society (2015 May 18, interview with Brent Johnson, Amy DeCillis, Jing Redman and Fi van Wingerden).[xxii]

Chinese citizens born during the Reform and Opening era, however, have increasingly been exposed to Western culture and values since birth. As this generation reached childbearing age, its more modern worldview was expressed in the way it approached many social issues, adoption among them. Adoption is now far less commonly seen as shameful, instead being perceived as a humanitarian response to the plight of abandoned children (2015 May 19, interview with Professor Shang of Beijing Normal University, Nacole Abram, Hannah Archer, Amy DeCillis, and Jing Redman). As a result, domestic adoptions have become, if not commonplace, then at least more frequent than they were before the turn of the millennium (2015 May 18, interview with Brent Johnson, Amy DeCillis, Jing Redman and Fi van Wingerden).

Legal changes

The Chinese government initially reacted to growing foreign interest by expanding its foreign adoption program. However, demand eventually began to outpace supply, as the one child policy was relaxed and sex-selective abandonment declined. A revival of nationalistic pride in the years leading up to the Beijing Olympics of 2008 led many Chinese to resent any suggestion of Western social or economic supremacy, and the government, in a 2007 attempt to encourage domestic adoption, imposed new regulations that made it more difficult for foreigners to adopt non-special needs children.[xxiii] For example, the new laws stated that prospective parents could not be obese, must not have taken antidepressants within the past two years, and could not suffer from any mental disorders, among other requirements. Couples were forced to wait until they had been married for at least two years to adopt, and if one of the two had previously been divorced, the waiting time was increased to five years. Single parents, who had formerly been obligated to sign an affidavit confirming that they were heterosexual as part of their adoption dossier, were now banned completely from adopting from China. These legal changes and the Hague Convention, which China ratified in 2005 and which emphasized the importance of prioritizing domestic adoptions, greatly diminished the pool of potential adoptive parents from foreign countries, reducing the number of non-special needs children adopted overseas.[xxiv]

Summary

A variety of factors caused a shift from international to domestic adoption of non-special needs children in China. As Chinese society was exposed to foreign influence through increasing globalization, the younger generation began to abandon strict traditional values in favor of a more Western outlook on their country and the world. This new worldview removed the taboo on adoption that had previously prevented large numbers of children from being placed domestically. Additionally, a growing sense of national unity, along with the Hague Convention, prompted the government to begin discouraging international adoptions. This led to the passage in 2007 of new regulations that greatly reduced the number of foreigners who could apply to adopt a Chinese child. Currently, international adoptions of non-special needs children have essentially ceased in favor of domestic placements.

Conclusion

The adoption program that China started in 1992 has since undergone significant changes, particularly over the last decade. Firstly, whereas most children adopted internationally before 2005 were healthy, a combination of a decrease in sex-selective abandonment and government regulations designed to encourage domestic adoption have led to a sharp increase of special needs adoptions, which have come to represent almost all China-U.S. adoptions. Furthermore, as the adoption sphere grew in scale, a lucrative side market of child trafficking developed. Although some traffickers sell children to orphanages that hope to make a profit off international adoption fees, most trafficking takes place domestically, through non-official channels. Finally, recent years have seen a shift from international to domestic adoption. Driven by government influence, growing societal acceptance of adoption, and an average rise in living standard, domestic adoption is increasingly common, while annual international adoption rates have fallen fairly consistently over the last ten years.

Our thesis, as mentioned in the introduction to this paper, was as follows: “Globalization has caused certain trends in the rates of abandonment and adoption of children in China and abroad, including a rise in the percentage of special needs adoptions to the U.S. compared with total adoptions, increased rates of child trafficking and corruption in the adoption process, and a shift from mainly international to predominantly domestic adoption”. Based on the information acquired during our research and interviews, we believe that our thesis has been upheld: although the causes for these trends are manifold, all may be traced back to the common source of globalization. For example, the rise in the percentage of annual adoptions to the U.S. that are special needs is due in part to the relaxation of the one child policy, showing that China is taking a step away from the strict government regulation of the past. Child traffickers and parents who sell children to orphanages are taking advantage of the lucrativeness of international adoption, which is made possible by increased communication and cooperation between countries. The shift that occurred from international to domestic adoption of non-special needs children was caused largely by the internationally recognized Hague Convention. It was also due in part to a general rise in the standard of living of Chinese people, made possible by the jobs available with growing Chinese businesses and with foreign companies that moved their factories and offices to China. Finally, this development reflects how exposure to Western ideas and values lessened the degree to which adoption is taboo in China.

China’s adoption system has seen a plethora of changes in the last ten to twenty years, but these are only a small part of the change and sense of dislocation that have overcome the country on a much larger scale. As China continues to find its place in a globalizing world, further change, though sometimes unwelcome, is inevitable. One thing is certain: developments within China will not remain merely domestic concerns, but will influence the country’s relations with other world powers as well. As the new century progresses, it remains to be seen what developments will occur within the Chinese adoption system and beyond.

Written 20 May 2015

[i] Sweeney J. 2013 Apr 6. “Making Mulan Mine: Adopting a Baby from China”. The Guardian. [Internet] [cited 2015 Apr 27] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/06/adopting-baby-from-china-julia-sweeney

[ii] 2014 Jul 14. “Intercountry Adoption”. U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs. [Internet] [cited 2015 May 20] Available from: http://travel.state.gov/content/adoptionsabroad/en/country-information/learn-about-a-country/china.html

[iii] [Ibid].

[iv] 2014 Dec 9. “China Adoption Eligibility Changes for Adoptive Parents”. RainbowKids Adoption & Child Welfare Advocacy. [Internet] [cited 2015 May 7] Available from: http://www.rainbowkids.com/adoption-stories/china-adoption-eligibility-changes-for-adoptive-parents-1013

[v] Eldridge A. 2014 Jan 13. “The Changing Face of China’s Orphans”. Love Without Boundaries Foundation. [Internet] [cited 2015 May 20] Available from: http://www.lwbcommunity.org/the-changing-face-of-chinas-orphans

[vi] Munro R. 2012 Mar 7. “‘Special Needs’ Adoptions from China — Top 5 Misconceptions”. HoltInternational Blog. [Internet] [cited 2015 Apr 27] Available from: http://holtinternational.org/blog/2012/03/special-needs-adoptions-from-china-top-5-misconceptions/

[vii] [Ibid].

[viii] “China Adoption Eligibility Changes for Adoptive Parents”. RainbowKids Adoption & Child Welfare Advocacy.

[ix] Schoborg D. 2013 Sep 12. “Top 10 Special Needs in China Adoption”. Rainbow Kids Adoption and Child Welfare Advocacy. [Internet] [cited 2015 Apr 27] Available from: http://www.rainbowkids.com/adoption-stories/top-10-special-needs-in-china-adoption-838

[x] Alderman A. 2012 Feb 1. “Program Pairs Couples with Special Needs Children in China”. Chicago Tribune. [Internet] [cited 2015 Apr 29] Available from:http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-02-01/news/ct-x-0201-china-adoptions-20120201_1_adoption-program-domestic-adoptions-sunny-ridge-family-center

[xi] “China Adoption Eligibility Changes for Adoptive Parents”. RainbowKids Adoption & Child Welfare Advocacy.

[xii] Alderman A. “Program Pairs Couples with Special Needs Children in China”. Chicago Tribune.

[xiii] 2012 Oct. 23. “Service of Process in China”. Legal Language Services. [Internet] [cited 2015 May 10] Available from: http://www.legallanguage.com/services/service-of-process/china/

[xiv] 2004 Apr. 6. “Numbers and Trends”. Adoption.com. [Internet] [cited on 2015 May 10] Available from: http://statistics.adoption.com/information/adoption-statistics-numbers-trends.html

[xv] Goodman P. 2006 Mar 12. “Stealing Babies for Adoption”. The Washington Post. [Internet] [cited 2015 Apr 27] Available from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/11/AR2006031100942.html

[xvi] Custer C. 2013 Jul 25. “Kidnapped and Sold: Inside the Dark World of Child Trafficking in China”. The Atlantic. [Internet] [cited 2015 Apr 27] Available from: http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/07/kidnapped-and-sold-inside-the-dark-world-of-child-trafficking-in-china/278107/

[xvii] Xin Y. 2015 Jan. 20. “Latest Trafficking Scandal a Wake-up Call for Adoption Reform”. Beijing Today. [Internet] [cited 2015 May 10] Available from: http://beijingtoday.com.cn/2015/01/latest-trafficking-scandal-wake-call-adoption-reform/

[xviii] 2014 Dec 22. “Definition of Human Trafficking”. U.S Department of Homeland Security. [Internet] [cited 2015 May 18] Available from: http://www.dhs.gov/definition-human-trafficking

[xix] Cote S. 2013 Feb 27. “International and Domestic Adoption in China”. CriEnglish. [Internet] [cited 2015 Apr 27] Available from: http://english.cri.cn/8706/2013/02/27/1942s750864.htm

[xx] 2010 Aug. 14. “Adoption Process for Russia”. International Adoption Help. [Internet] [cited 2015 May 10] Available from: http://www.internationaladoptionhelp.com/international_adoption/international_adoption_russia_process.htm

[xxi] Zhong J. 2002 Mar. “China Domestic Adoption”. Chinese Children Newsletter. [Internet] [cited 2015 May 11] Available from: http://chinesechildren.org/Newsletter/Window%20To%20China/WTC_03_2002.pdf

[xxii] Serrano S. 2012 Mar 20. “Trends in International Adoption”. Buckner. [Internet] [cited 2015 May 11] Available from: http://www.buckner.org/intl-adoption-trends/

[xxiii] 2013 Jan 13. “Domestic Adoption on the Rise”. Love Without Boundaries Community. [Internet] [cited 2015 Apr 27] Available from: http://www.lwbcommunity.org/domestic-adoption-on-the-rise

[xxiv] [Ibid].