Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors influencing the scale and nature of intercountry adoption (ICA) between the People’s Republic of China and the USA, and to describe the significance and contribution of each to ICA processes.
Design/methodology/approach
A documentary data analysis approach based upon the quantitative grounded theory: first, interpreting available data, and second, conducting a thematic analysis of the literature to generate a theory of key factors.
Findings
The results showed that changes in policies, ethical narratives and ideological shifts (principally the rise of nationalism) were highly influential in determining the scale and type of ICAs in successive years.
Practical implications
This paper concluded that China: US ICA is likely to continue only in small numbers with older and special needs children. However, China: US adoptions provide some examples of “best practice”. Understanding the interplay of factors explored theoretically in this study may guide future ICA arrangements between other country pairs.
Originality/value
Although a range of data has been collected on China: US ICA over a number of years, no systematic attempt has been made to link changes in those data to changes in the legal, social or cultural climate in which such adoptions take place. As well as providing new insights into the dynamics of ICA, the paper develops an original method which could be applied to parallel arrangements between other countries.
