As surrogacy remains illegal in China, demand is growing for overseas-born babies.
An “industry of agencies, consultancies and fertility clinics” has sprung up to help Chinese people connect with potential surrogate mothers overseas, said the Financial Times. Many are attracted by the US’s “advanced medical facilities, strong legal protections for the parents and the prospect of an American passport for their child”.
The motherhood penalty
Between 2014 and 2020, nearly a third of surrogate babies in the US were intended for international parents, a survey published in 2024 suggests. More than 40% of those were from China.
There’s a “growing interest” from women who aren’t struggling with infertility, but who fear the impact of pregnancy on their bodies and careers, said the Financial Times. That fear is “well founded”, said Lu Pin, a Chinese women’s rights activist. The so-called “motherhood penalty” is “a product of how the environment works against women” in China.
“If I remain unmarried, I will have to bear all the costs of pregnancy and post-partum recovery myself,” a 25-year-old entrepreneur told the paper. That “really isn’t very different from the cost of having a child through surrogacy”.
Last year, China registered its lowest number of births since records began: the fourth consecutive year of population decline. There has been a “very clear increase among patients who are fearful of getting pregnant and giving birth”, said a Chinese medicine doctor and fertility specialist. “Chinese women worry about how it will impact their appearance and whether they can return to their normal weight and womb health.”
Extreme surrogacy?
But there is a darker side: “a little-known trend in the largely unregulated US surrogacy industry”, said The Wall Street Journal. Chinese elites and billionaires are paying to “quietly have large numbers of US-born babies”.Some, “inspired by Elon Musk’s 14 known children”, shell out millions to hire women in America to “help them build families of jaw-dropping size”.
In the US, there is a “thriving mini-industry” of surrogacy agencies, law firms and clinics, even services to collect newborns from hospitals. Chinese people can “ship their genetic material abroad and get a baby delivered back”, for up to $200,000. The market is now “so sophisticated” that some Chinese elites have had US-born children – who automatically become US citizens under the 14th Amendment – “without stepping foot in the country”.
One billionaire, Xu Bo, an “online megaposter” and “vocal critic of feminism”, calls himself “China’s first father”. The maker of fantasy video games claims to have 100 children. He told a US court in 2023 that he hoped to have 20 US-born children through surrogacy, preferably boys, to one day take over his business. Another wealthy Chinese executive, Wang Huiwu, hired US models as egg donors to have 10 girls, allegedly “with the aim of one day marrying them off to powerful men”.
He ultimately plans to father 100 “high net-worth babies”, according to The Times. And although the practice is “arousing concern” in both the US and China, there is no US law stopping multiple surrogacy births for the same family. This “extreme surrogacy” is “a perfect mix of liberal Californian attitudes and Chinese productivity”.