The adopters are a couple of one male and one female with a stable marital relationship. In case that both the husband and wife do not have any ex-marriage, the length of marriage has to reach two years. In case that either the husband or wife has ex-marriages (not more than 2), the length of the current marriage has to reach 5 years. [ed: applicants must be a couple who have been formally married for at least two years in the case of first marriages for each, and five years if either applicant has been previously married; if there have been more than two divorces, the applicants are not eligible to adopt a child].

Both the husband and wife have reached the age of 30 years and are under 50.  For adoption of special needs child, both of them should have reached the age of 30 and are under 55.

Both the husband and wife are fully healthy physically and mentally, and do not have the following conditions:

1. AIDS,
2. mental handicap;
3. infectious disease within infective stage;
4. binocular blind or binocular parallax or monocular blind and with no ocular prosthesis; [ed: … . without artificial eye],
5. binaural hearing loss or language function loss; adoption of special needs children who have identical conditions will be exempt from this limitation;
6. afunction or dysfunction of limbs or trunk caused by impairment, incompleteness, numbness or deformation; severe facial deformation,,
7. severe diseases which requires long term treatment and which affect life expectancy, like malignant tumor, lupus erythematosus, nephrosis, epilepsy, and etc.;
8. post-surgery of major organs transplantation, not yet 10 years [ed: … within past 10 years];
9. schizophrenia,
10. medication for severe mental disorders, like depression, mania, or anxiety neurosis, and etc, stopped not more than 2 years
11. BMI (BMI=weight (kg)/ height(m) 2 ) >=  40

Either the husband or wife holds a stable occupation. The family annual income reaches $10,000 for each family member, including the prospective adoptee and the family net assets value should reach $80,000.
The family annual income does not include welfare income, like relief fund, pension, unemployment insurance, or government subsidy, and etc. [ed: amounts are expressed in US currency]

Both the husband and wife have received education of or above the level of senior high school, or vocational skills training of the same level.

The number of children in family under the age of 18 years does not reach 5, and the youngest one should have reached the age of 1 year.
Adoption of special needs children will be exempt from the limitation of ”the number of children in family under the age of 18 years does not reach 5”.

Both the husband and wife have never come under any criminal sanction. And they behave honourably with good moral characters, and abide by regulations and laws. Both of them do not accord with the following situations:

• have a history of domestic violence, sex abuse, abandonment or abuse of children (even if they are not consequently arrested or criminated);
• have a history of taking narcotics like opium, morphine, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and etc, and medication for mental diseases, which are able to arouse addiction among human beings;
• have a history of alcohol abuse and have given up drinking not more than 10 years ago [ed: 10 years free of alcohol abuse related incidents].

Adoption application will be given consideration on a case by case basis when either the husband or the wife has less than 3 criminal records of slight severity with no severe outcomes, and the time for correction of wrong has reached 10 years, or has less than 5 records of traffic law violation with no severe outcomes

The adopters are able to have a correct cognition of adoption, and expect to provide a warm family for the orphaned children (or children with handicap and disability) via adoption and to meet the needs of the children adopted for the sake of a good development of them. They have a correct cognition of inter-country adoption as well, and are fully mentally-prepared for the potential risks within inter-country adoption and for the situations of children adopted as potential diseases, developmental delay, post-placement maladjustment, and etc.
The adopters make in the adoption application letter [ed: “Letter of Request to Adopt”, see Family Dossier booklet] clear promises of being able to accept post-placement follow-ups and offer post-placement reports as required.
The fixed number of year or age that appears in this letter shall be dated from the day when the adoption application documents are logged in at the CCAA.

Applicants must present a document from a Canadian province Inter-country Adoption Authority stating that the Authority approves the adoption of a child from China.

Children are generally anonymously abandoned at birth. The result is that other than twins, sibling pairs are virtually impossible to identify and are thus extremely rare.

There are very few sets of twins available. Because of this, CCAA has additional requirements for families seeking twins. Such families must be childless. CCAA also prefers to place twins with younger couples who have a somewhat higher than typical family income.

CCAA may consider families who do not meet certain requirements for a child from the Waiting Child program (special needs children) that is difficult to place.

Families who have previously adopted from China cannot submit an application to adopt a second child until 12 months after the formal adoption of the previous child.

CCAA matches an available child to the prospective parents’ dossier. Prospective families cannot adopt a pre-identified child.

China requires that the adoption be finalized in China. At least one parent must travel to China. If only one of a couple travels to China for the adoption, the parent travelling must carry a Power of Attorney enabling the travelling parent to make decisions with regard to the adoption on behalf of the non-travelling parent.