A surrogate mother in California was recently shocked to learn she was carrying a child for a Chinese billionaire who has allegedly fathered over 100 children through U.S. surrogates. According to CBS News, a former partner in a custody lawsuit claims the number of children Xu Bo, the founder of the video game company Duoyi Network, has fathered could be as high as 300. Xu Bo said in a statement that he has custody of only 12 children born through surrogacy in the United States, although he recently posted a photo on social media of over 100 young children seated in rows.
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A few days later, Xu Bo released a statement in Chinese saying, “Mr. Xu Bo believes in the philosophy that more children bring more blessings, and he wishes for all his words and actions to benefit the long-term development of the Chinese nation.”
In their bombshell investigative news report, CBS News spoke to 32 surrogate mothers to expose the “loopholes and shady practices” that permeate the United States’ commercial surrogacy industry.
The U.S. is the only developed country where commercial surrogacy is legal, and California serves as the epicenter of the shady practice because it has the loosest laws. Few, if any, meaningful protections exist for surrogates or their babies, the network’s yearlong investigation found.
There are reportedly up to about 10,000 surrogate births in the U.S a year, and the babies are granted U.S. citizenship at birth, raising ethical and legal concerns about transparency and oversight in the commercial surrogacy industry.
Industry whistleblowers told CBS News “they were aware of cases in which intended parents hired multiple surrogates in rapid succession.” Commercial surrogacy is the primary and standard method for homosexual men to obtain children.
No federal agencies track these births. These whistleblowers, whose identities CBS News are protecting, said they believe the abuses cast a “dark shadow” over the assisted reproduction industry, harming dedicated professionals.
The surrogates interviewed by CBS News said they received compensation “far below the six-figures often advertised — about $45,000 for single births and under $70,000 for twins.”
Some of them said agencies and intended parents pressured them to implant two embryos.
“Judy,” a single mother who signed with the agency Patriot Conceptions, told CBS News she was initially told the intended parent was a single father seeking a large family and was unaware of his Chinese identity until 12 weeks into her pregnancy.
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Judy expressed feeling blindsided and misled, noting that she requested to meet the intended father at least five times without success.
In a different case, a Chinese couple in California couple made national headlines in a major child abuse and surrogacy investigation. In May 2025, Silvia Zhang, 38, and Guojun Xuan, 65, were arrested on suspicion of felony child endangerment and neglect after their two-month-old son was hospitalized with traumatic head injuries.
“The home was set up to basically homeschool the younger children,” Arcadia Police Lt. Kollin Cieadlo told People. “There were classroom settings and there were areas for the children to play and eat and things like that. It was very much focused on education. It appeared that a lot of time was spent as a group with all the children and the nannies going through education type materials.”
Authorities obtained surveillance footage which allegedly showed one of the nannies—employed by Zhang and Xuan—“violently” shaking and striking the two-month-old boy on May 5, 2025, according to an Arcadia Police Department press release.
Police raided their Arcadia mansion and removed 21 children—aged two months to 13-years-old—into protective custody, discovering that most were born via surrogacy. The couple operated Mark Surrogacy, an agency that misled gestational carriers into believing they were helping a couple with few or no children, rather than a large-scale operation.
The couple is fighting for custody of their children in multiple states. Since the initial raid, they have had at least six more surrogate-born babies in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, bringing their total to 27 children. Several surrogates have come forward alleging deception and are seeking custody of the infants they carried.
President Trump tried to end the practice of birthright citizenship with an executive order, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in June that neither the President nor Congress can deny birthright citizenship without a Constitutional Amendment.
In his 39-page dissent in Trump v. Barbara, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito argued that the majority made a “serious mistake” by upholding birthright citizenship, warning that the ruling “produces grotesque results” and encourages “birth tourism” by foreign nationals from adversarial countries. He stated that the 14th Amendment should only confer citizenship on children who “owe allegiance solely to this country.”
While President Trump has insisted that a constitutional amendment is unnecessary, and House Speaker Mike Johnson has acknowledged that amending the Constitution is a “quite a process,” some Republicans, such as Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), are pursuing the constitutional amendment route, which requires a two-thirds majority in both chambers and ratification by three-fourths of the states.
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