Chinese elites are reportedly building "mega-families" by commissioning U.S. surrogates to produce for them scores of American-born children. This practice, which has apparently encouraged the growth of a secondary industry of accommodation, has prompted concerns about underregulation of the surrogacy industry as well as about birthright citizenship.

A recent Wall Street Journal report detailed multiple cases where affluent individuals in communist China — where surrogacy is illegal — have shelled out millions for U.S.-based surrogates to "help them build families of jaw-dropping size."

At a cost of up to $200,000 per child, they can reportedly send their genetic material abroad, have their babies carried to term, delivered, cared for, and ultimately shipped back.

Xu Bo, an anti-feminist billionaire in the gaming industry, reportedly told an American family court judge in 2023 that he hoped to have 20 boys born in the U.S. through surrogacy, with the hope that they could one day take over his business. At the time, several of his surrogate-born children — whom he had yet to meet — were being raised by nannies in California.

A social media account operated by Xu noted in a message reviewed by the Journal that he hoped to have "50 high-quality sons," and Xu's company has since bragged that Xu has supposedly paid to sire over 100 children through surrogacy in the United States.

Wang Huiwu, the CEO of Sichuan-based education group XJ International Holdings, has fathered 10 girls through American surrogates using the eggs he purchased for at least $6,000 a pop from models, a musician, and others, the Journal reported. Wang apparently wants girls, as he figures they could one day marry world leaders.

Xu, Wang, and other elites in the adversarial nation who are similarly motivated to commission armies of children with American citizenship apparently don't have to step foot in the United States to start or complete the process.

At a cost of up to $200,000 per child, they can reportedly send their genetic material abroad, have their babies carried to term, delivered, cared for, and ultimately shipped back. Agencies, law firms, and nanny services have emerged to help accommodate the growing foreign demand.

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Photo by: BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Nathan Zhang, the CEO of IVF USA, told the Journal that whereas his clientele were historically parents trying to bypass China's one-child policy, he has begun to see an increasing number of "crazy rich" clients who are paying for dozens or even hundreds of U.S.-born babies with the aim of "forging an unstoppable family dynasty."

Zhang indicated that he rejected one Chinese businessman as a client who sought over 200 children via surrogates after he proved unable to account for how he might raise them all. Not all such requests, however, are turned down.

The Journal cited, for instance, the case of a California surrogacy agency whose owner confirmed the fulfillment of an order for a Chinese individual seeking 100 children in recent years.

While industry groups apparently recommend that agencies and IVF clinics refrain from working with parents seeking more than two simultaneous surrogacies, such recommendations often go unheeded, fueling concerns among critics over the industry's lack of oversight.

A study published last year in the peer-reviewed journal Fertility and Sterility noted that international gestational surrogacy has grown greatly over the past two decades — of the 40,177 embryo transfers to a prospective mother in the U.S. from 2014 to 2020, 32% were for foreigners.

Foreign intended parents "were more likely to be male sex (41.3% vs. 19.6%), older than 42 years (33.9% vs. 26.2%), and identify as Asian race (65.6% vs. 16.5%)," the study said.

Of all the international parents siring children in the U.S. through surrogacy during the six-year window, 41.7% were from China.

The study stressed that "given that individuals are increasingly traveling to the U.S. for this care, it is imperative to understand the trends and outcomes of international gestational surrogacy in the U.S."

According to Emma Waters, a policy analyst for the Center for Technology and the Human Person at the Heritage Foundation, international commercial surrogacy is a "situation of immigration fraud as well as a national security risk."

After all, Chinese men — the cohort most commonly exploiting the system — can deploy their U.S.-born, China-raised, and Chinese Communist Party-influenced children to advance Beijing's interests in the United States.

Last month, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced the Stopping Adversarial Foreign Exploitation of Kids in Domestic Surrogacy Act with the aim of preventing adversarial nations, including China, from using American surrogates to obtain U.S. citizenship for their children.

"America's surrogacy system is meant to help individuals build families — it should never be the avenue to allow abuse, neglect, or deceit of innocent women and babies," Scott said. "And it's terrifying that this might be at the hands of foreign adversaries with the sole intent of having a child that is a U.S. citizen."

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed earlier this month to hear arguments for and against President Donald Trump's order to end birthright citizenship. Success on the part of the president may serve to devalue Chinese elites' breeding scheme.

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