What's new

Chinese couples who are unable to have children are turning to a surprising place for help these days: America. By hiring American surrogates, Chinese couples get around a ban on surrogacy in China as well as the country's birth limits.

It also guarantees their children something many wealthy Chinese want these days: a U.S. passport.

Tony Jiang and his wife, Cherry, live in Shanghai and couldn't have children naturally. First, they turned to underground hospitals in China for surrogacy.

It didn't go well.

Jiang says one of the surrogates ran away.

"It was almost Chinese New Year's break, she became so homesick so she flew back home," he says. "My wife was just two or three days away from embryo transfer, that was really ridiculous and disappointing."

So Jiang went online and found a fertility clinic in Orange County, Calif.

Three years and $275,000 later, Tony and Cherry have a son and two girls, which, had they all been born in China, would have broken the law.

The couple now works for the clinic, connecting it with Chinese clients, the vast majority of whom, Jiang says, suffer from infertility.

Others clients have included gay men as well as heterosexual couples barred from having a second child in China.

Jiang's first clients were a couple — both Communist Party members — who were leaders at a government-owned firm.

"How could leaders violate this kind of regulation?" he says "You could be easily laid off if somebody knows you already have two kids."

The wife had nearly died giving birth to their first son. The couple did have a second child through surrogacy, who – because he was born overseas – did not violate Chinese law.

Still, they're very cautious about appearances.

"Only their closest friends, relatives, know they have two boys. All their colleagues, leaders, bosses don't know," Jiang says.

Advantages Of American Surrogacy

Chinese women routinely fly to the U.S. to give birth, so their children can get an American passport and enjoy the benefits that come with it, including clean air and a U.S. education. Birth tourism is so common it provided the plot for a popular movie last year, Finding Mr. Right.

Amy Kaplan is the director of West Coast Egg Donation and West Coast Surrogacy, the fertility clinic that helped and now employs Tony Jiang.

Kaplan says Chinese surrogacy took off in recent years through word of mouth. Her clinic saw their first Chinese client in 2009. Now, 47 percent of clients waiting for a surrogate are from mainland China, she says.

i i