Using connections

Finding it almost impossible to adopt from orphanages, many Chinese have turned to "agents" or people they know to find children up for adoption.

Lu, 37, adopted her son from a migrant family in 2011. The Chongming native had been waiting for a healthy child from the county's orphanages for four years before she opted for an alternative method.

"My father knows people in the orphanages. They simply haven't had any healthy children for years," Lu told the Global Times, refusing to reveal her full name.

Like most adoptive families who search for a prospective child on their own, Lu's family didn't accompany the migrant family to register with the civil affairs authority to legalize the adoption. Instead she purchased the baby a birth certificate to get him a hukou. "We're worried that since the baby is the migrant family's second child, it might be troublesome to get him a hukou in the official way," she said, adding that her family totally meets the criteria to be adopters.

China's adoption law says that parents who are unable to rear them due to unusual difficulties can put their children up for adoption. "But the law doesn't specifically define the unusual difficulties. Legally speaking, it's basically blank regarding who can put their children up for adoption and how," Chen said.

In practice, Shanghai requires families who want to give away their children to provide papers to prove their income and health status, their marriage certificate and the confirmation documents from the neighborhood committee where the families live. "If a family relies completely on the minimum living allowance, then it basically qualifies," Chen said.

In reality, many who put children up for adoption are single mothers or families who have given birth outside the family planning policy. "We can categorize these single mothers as people with unusual difficulties. But what if she gets married later on and has another child, that's against the family planning policy?" Chen asked, adding that another important factor is that it is regarded as indecent to have a child outside of marriage. "Unlike in the West, single mothers feel embarrassed to officially put their child up for adoption in these circumstances."