The roots of the circulation of minors in China: Practices during the Ming and Qing dynasties

Abstract

In order to understand the growth of the Chinese international adoption program, it is necessary to look to the past and understand how kinship and earlier patterns of circulation of minors may have influenced current national patterns and transnational adoption in the context of origin, something often overlooked in international adoption research. This paper presents a review of traditional patterns of circulation of minors during the Qing and Ming dynasties in China.