Baby Farming
The most bizarre report I've seen in some time.
WSJ (“The Chinese Billionaires Having Dozens of U.S.-Born Babies Via Surrogate“):
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.
A Chinese billionaire was seeking parental rights to at least four unborn children, and the court’s additional research showed that he had already fathered or was in the process of fathering at least eight more—all through surrogates.
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.
One wonders what happens when the fetus is determined to be female. Does he demand the mother abort it? Abandon the child?
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.
One would hope. Alas, Xu isn’t an isolated case.
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.
[…]
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.
Other Chinese clients, usually seeking more typical numbers of babies, are high-powered executives lacking the time and inclination to bear their own children, older parents or same-sex couples, according to people who arrange surrogacy deals and work in surrogacy law. All have the wealth to go outside China while maintaining the privacy needed to manage potential logistical, publicity and legal issues back home. Some have the political clout to avoid censure.
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.
The growing Asian market for international fertility services has drawn the attention of American investors, including Peter Thiel, whose family office has backed a chain of IVF clinics across Southeast Asia and a recently opened branch in Los Angeles.
This is, to say the least, all rather sleazy. It amounts to human trafficking.
In 2020, the State Department moved to curb so-called birth tourism, tightening visa rules for women suspected of visiting the U.S. to give birth. In January, Donald Trump issued an executive order denying citizenship to children born in the U.S. unless one of their parents was a citizen or permanent legal resident, which is being reviewed by the Supreme Court. It’s unclear if either regulation would apply to foreigners working with surrogates who are Americans.
While the order is almost certainly unconstitutional, it does seem perfectly reasonable to deny citizenship in cases where the sole purpose was to create an American citizen baby.
Last month, Sen. Rick Scott, the Florida Republican, introduced a bill in the Senate to ban the use of surrogacy in the U.S. by people from some foreign countries, including China. He cited an ongoing federal human trafficking investigation into a Chinese-American couple in Los Angeles who have more than two dozen children, nearly all born through surrogacy within the past four years, as reported by the Journal.
It’s honestly just such a bizarre notion. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of women renting out their womb to begin with, in that it’s so wildly exploitative. Doing it to stroke the egos of foreign plutocrats even more so.
Nathan Zhang, the founder and CEO of IVF USA, a network of fertility clinics in the U.S. and Mexico that cater to wealthy Chinese and partner with surrogacy agencies, said his clientele in the past were largely parents trying to bypass China’s one-child policy. Babies brought back to China, as U.S. citizens instead of Chinese citizens, fell outside the country’s penalty system. The one-child policy was abolished in 2015.
More recently, a new clientele has emerged. “Elon Musk is becoming a role model now,” said Zhang. An increasing number of “crazy rich” clients are commissioning dozens, or even hundreds, of U.S.-born babies with the goal of “forging an unstoppable family dynasty,” he said.
One wealthy businessman in China, who like Wang is also in the education business, wanted more than 200 children at once using surrogates, envisioning a family enterprise, Zhang said. “I asked him directly, ‘How do you plan to raise all these children?’ He was speechless,” said Zhang, who said he refused him as a client.
Other surrogacy professionals described similarly head-spinning numbers. The owner of one agency in California said he had helped fill an order for a Chinese parent seeking 100 children in the past few years, a request spread over several agencies.
A Los Angeles surrogacy attorney said he had helped his client, a Chinese billionaire, have 20 children through surrogacy in recent years.
This is farming, not parenting.
It’s not clear from the report why these men are targeting the United States. Granting that we have a lot of poor women desperate for money, one would imagine it would be considerably cheaper to exploit women in the developing world. Are our surrogacy laws friendlier? Is the American citizenship of the children being exploited in some way?
It appears that there’s very little regulation, with only the conscience of the service providers themselves constraining those seeking large numbers of surrogate births. And, even then, there are workarounds.
Oversight of the industry is so scant that it’s almost impossible to figure out whether parents are working with multiple surrogates, across different agencies and law firms, people in the industry said.
[…]
Industry groups recommend that agencies and IVF clinics not work with parents seeking more than two simultaneous surrogacies, because of the logistical and emotional challenges, and the risk that it will increase the perception that surrogacy commodifies pregnancy. But Millan said the suggestion lacks teeth. The harshest penalty for failing to follow the groups’ recommendations is to be removed as a member.
Lisa Stark Hughes, a surrogacy agency owner and board member of the Society for Ethics for Egg Donation and Surrogacy, acknowledged the difficulty of ensuring those recommendations are followed. The group has been discussing ways to more proactively detect when parents are pursuing multiple simultaneous surrogacies across different agencies without violating patient privacy laws, she said.
Some agencies don’t hesitate. Hu Yihan, the CEO of New York IVF clinic Global Fertility & Genetics, who helps connect Chinese parents with surrogacy agencies, said that when one of her clients wants three or four simultaneous surrogacies, the reaction is often enthusiastic. “I’m getting positive feedback from the surrogacy agencies, they’re like, ‘This is a big one! I want to do this!’” she said.
Agencies typically receive $40,000 to $50,000 per surrogacy, separately from payments made to the surrogate carriers.
Truly sickening.
Sweet Jesus.
I am really unclear on why someone might think that having 20 sons that you don’t actually know all that well is a good idea.
I expect this relates to something anthropologists call historical China’s system of patrilineal kinship, which was smashed to bits by Mao Tse Tung, and this political act (with many parts) was singularly popular amongst the non-elite of China.
And the billionaires want to bring it back. Xi probably is a closet patrilinealist (or whatever it is that anthropologists call it. My anthropology is very weak.)
And the depravity of the ‘fathers.’ Including Musk, who seems to routinely ignore all his children except for the one that he totes around.
That line about boy superiority sounds awfully like a Nick Fuentes style incel.
@Jay L. Gischer:
Maybe.
But there are at least a few of these people who appear to think it’s their duty to propagate their ‘superior genes.’
It is all grotesque and yet another data point in my ever-developing view that there is something morally problematic about allowing people to have billions of dollars.
This kind of thing is only possible if you have so much money that the cost literally doesn’t matter to whatever you want to do. It allows the perversion of processes that otherwise would be constrained by cost.
@Kurtz: Agreed on both counts.
America is a most appropriate choice for this modern day commodification of offspring. It’s the country where one of its most prominent founders, one Thomas Jefferson, kept his own children enslaved.
Given that there are, what 20-30 years between birth and when an offspring could theoretically take over the family business, who’s raising these kids and where? What happens if none of them want to go into the family biz?
Sick.
Elon and the horse he rode in on.
There is “gestational surrogacy” in which a couples IVF egg is carried in a contracted womb and “traditional surrogacy” in which the contract carrier also provides the egg. The Cleveland Clinic notes this is legally constrained in most U. S. states. Obviously the guy with the models is traditional. Who’s providing the egg in the other cases? Seems a detail that should have been mentioned.
Be fruitful and multiply.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Amen to this, though “morally problematic” is pulling your punch.
Wealth redistribution from the obscenely rich is a societal imperative. It’s why historically we have pitchforks and guillotines put to use in targeted ways.
@Jay L. Gischer:
Eugenics. It’s all in the genes.
And a belief that since they have money they must be superior.
I assume the US is preferred because of a mixture of laws and White Supremacy. (Just because a person isn’t White(tm) doesn’t mean they haven’t bought into White Supremacy)
@gVOR10:
I’m assuming this is an intentional reference to Elon and the horse. If not, you should look it up.
It’s only moderately icky. Way less icky than this, IMHO.
Definitely icky, but a more “of course, but also, really?” rather than “there’s something wrong with people that I never thought of before” icky.
@Steven L. Taylor: every day Elon Musk wakes up and does not solve homelessness in his adopted country, or end a famine somewhere, or…
That honestly seems like a greater perversion than his countless children.
@Scott F.:
I think early in our history we pissed off Zeus or Hera or Athena, or all three and more, and they cursed humanity thus: Thou shall return to the mean always.
The kind of maldistribution we have now is pretty normal throughout much of history. However, spending money on public works and improvements was also normal in the better run societies, too. things like dams and canals in Egypt, or aqueducts and roads in Rome. So was welfare spending, and even public entertainments (festivals, games, etc.)
One thing that distinguishes the modern American oligarchy from the Roman one, is the strong determination to do away with spending in infrastructure and welfare.
The periods when a middle class grows and gets wealthier are exceptions, and don’t tend to last long.
Around the time that Hong Kong was being returned to China, I met a Hong Kong man who had three sons and a fair amount of money. He had one son establish a family in Vancouver, BC, one in the US, and one in Australia. He was concerned about safeguarding the family money from political unrest. This seemed like a reasonable plan to me. And yes, we bonded over our admiration of Jackie Chan movies.
If I scratch a bit below my surface level reaction to these exotic billionaires, this story has me grappling with several thorny issues. Among them:
-coerced existence
-parental aspirations in oppressive regimens
-birthright citizenship
-sex/gender dynamics
-family welfare caps
F@ckin’ weird, is my considered judgement on the matter.
@Mimai:
If we only saw this behavior from people in oppressive regimes, I would take this differently.
But we see it with Musk, and there’s long been a tradition of bastard offspring of the wealthy and powerful. And a lot of people like to bring up Ghengis Khan’s amazing number of children, and how our goal in life is to propagate our genes.
I think all the other issues are just an add-on effect to that.
@Gustopher:
I think we are on the same page about these particular wealthy and powerful people.
And they aren’t really that interesting to me aside from a gawking glance.
The fact that you “would take this differently” is exactly what I find interesting (though my interest is broader than your “if we only” perspective).
These “bastard offspring” have not consented to their future existences. Or to the highly unusual factors that will shape their existences.
How then should I think about their humanity, their “free will,” their worldview, their behavior?
@Gustopher: @Mimai:
I’ve written about this before, but I think it was used from an epistemological perspective—confusing pedagogical tools with the phenomena being taught; mistaking metaphor for reality.
I had a brief online exchange with someone I coded as a tech type, who was applying the ‘biological imperative’ all over the place, but especially wrt to trans.
I pointed out that this person was assigning intention to chains of chemicals as if they were complex organisms. I pointedly asked where they got this idea.
I expected to get a response that I was being pedantic, or for the person to hedge. I already had responses prepared for both. But to my surprise, this person doubled down:
I was surprised. Because it had not occurred to me that someone couldn’t distinguish an obvious metaphor from the subject of study nor thought to question how a chain of chemicals with a basic structure could contain motive.
So as to provide something more substantive than what could be dismissed as a competing interpretation, I did a search. Within a minute, I found a Dawkins interview wherein he expressed regret for using that metaphor, because people began to anthropomorphize chemicals that undergo reactions. I linked it.
IIRC, the conversation ended with no response. I suspect Musk’s view is of comparable depth and misapprehension.
@Kurtz:
Genes with motives. Computer code with intentions. Humans with free will 😉
“We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
@Mimai:
Maybe I am missing something here. Perhaps not connecting what you expected me to. Or simpler, I didn’t read closely enough up thread.
The former is true of everyone, no?
The latter is less straightforward. I suppose I would say we all have peculiar circumstances that shape our existence that are nonetheless tied together broadly by how we came into the world.
The Chinese fellow’s offspring seem entirely different in that his description of intent sounds more like how Altman may describe ChatGPT. Or more like how Musk would talk about and has deployed and iterated Grok.
….
Hmmm coerced existence.
…
I have a few other things I’ve been meaning to discuss with you. But that can must be kicked down the road again. Because I am tired and now thinking of coerced existence in and out of context of the OP.
Thank you or curse you, I know not my feels.
@Kurtz:
Yes, the former (coerced existence) IS true of everyone. That’s exactly it.
And in this case, these “bastard offspring” will be coerced into an existence that is shaped by the most, ahem, peculiar of circumstances and people.
What I find interesting is whether/how I will accommodate that if/when I think about these offspring in the future.
Indeed, my language above suggests (reveals) that I have already encoded them as not-quite-human. This is probably driven by the fact that I’m considering their coming into being as a scientific matter, a technological feat.
And yet I know plenty of Humans who exist because of technological feats. And plenty of other Humans who are blessed by the fruits of such feats.
Even more interesting is how I am…how I will…consider their (ie, “bastard offspring”) peculiar circumstances and conspecifics. Will I conveniently downplay/forget these contextual factors? Will I amplify them?
Most likely, I will do both. Depending on the circumstances. And I doubt that I will have a principled or morally justifiable reason distinguishing between the two. Hell, I probably won’t even be aware that I’m doing it.
I am a psychologist who sees individuals when it suits me. And a sociologist who sees social structures when it suits me. My convenience and coherence are paramount!
@Mimai:
Something is here. Something is not quite right.
I will sleep. Re-read. Then see what’s what.