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Clerks working for family court Judge Amy Pellman were reviewing routine surrogacy
petitions when they spotted an unusual pattern: the same name, again and again.
When Pellman called Xu Bo in for a confidential hearing in the summer of 2023, he never entered the courtroom, according to people who attended the hearing. The maker of fantasy videogames lived in China and appeared via video, speaking through an interpreter. He said he hoped to have 20 or so U.S.-born children through surrogacy—boys, because they’re superior to girls—to one day take over his business.
Pellman was alarmed, according to the people who attended the hearing. Surrogacy was a tool to help people build families, but what Xu was describing didn’t seem like parenting, the people said. The judge denied his request for parentage—normally quickly approved for the intended parents of a baby born through surrogacy, experts say. The decision left the children he’d paid for to be born in legal limbo.
Pellman’s decision in the confidential case, which has never been reported, was a rare rebuke to a little-known trend in the largely unregulated U.S. surrogacy industry: Chinese elites and billionaires who are going outside of China, where domestic surrogacy is illegal, to quietly have large numbers of U.S.-born babies.
Since U.S. court proceedings for surrogacies are usually private, often taking place without even a mention on the court’s public docket, oversight is limited.
Some Chinese parents, inspired by Elon Musk’s 14 known children, pay millions in surrogacy fees to hire women in the U.S. to help them build families of jaw-dropping size. Xu calls himself “China’s first father” and is known in China as a vocal critic of feminism. On social media, his company said he has more than 100 children born through surrogacy in the U.S. Another wealthy Chinese executive, Wang Huiwu, hired U.S. models and others as egg donors to have 10 girls, with the aim of one day marrying them off to powerful men, according to people close to the executive’s education company.
The market has grown so sophisticated, experts say, that at times Chinese parents have had U.S.-born children without stepping foot in the country. A thriving mini-industry of American surrogacy agencies, law firms, clinics, delivery agencies and nanny services—even to pick up the newborns from hospitals—has risen to accommodate the demand, permitting parents to ship their genetic material abroad and get a baby delivered back, at a cost of up to $200,000 per child.
[Ed: These billionaires are purchasing children for less than they would pay for a luxury car. They attach such little value to the lives of women and children – and theirs are the genes that will dominate the world in future. Grim.] .
Source: The Chinese Billionaires Having Dozens of U.S.-Born Babies Via Surrogate – WSJ