Obese foreigners are to be banned from adopting Chinese children, according to US adoption agencies.
US-based Children's Hope International said the new regulations were announced after a meeting this month in Beijing between the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) and international adoption agencies. Children's Hope said a range of restrictions would be introduced to reduce the number of foreigners applying to adopt.
"The CCAA says there are twice as many dossiers to adopt from China as there are orphans available for adoption," it said on its Web site.
"With the new requirements, the CCAA hopes to lessen the number of applicants so that the wait time to adopt will eventually become shorter than the current 15 months," it added.
Another US-based agency, Harrah's Adoption International Mission, said the CCAA also planned to increase the number of children available for adoption, although there was no explanation of how this would be achieved.
Single people will be ruled out and only couples who have been married for more than two years will qualify. The age range for would-be parents will be limited to between 30 and 50.
"The number of people applying for adoptions is soaring, but following the development of China's economy and society, the number of abandoned and orphaned children is less and less," a CCAA official said.
He denied that the new rules were partly designed to stop gay couples from adopting babies.
"We hope that these children can grow up in even better conditions which benefit their healthy growth and so we are putting in place stricter conditions," said the official, who declined to give his name. "We had a meeting with representatives of the adoption agencies last week and explained the gist of the new rules to them."
The new conditions set a bar on parents who have a body mass index of more than 40, according to Harrah's. If either parent is taking medication for anxiety or depression, they will be disqualified, and no family can have more than five children in the home, including the child to be adopted, it said.
The new rules come into effect on May 1, the agencies said.
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