Fertility Inc.: One Dad, One Hundred Babies

**Ryan Knutson** (0:05)
It was 2023, and inside an LA family court, clerks were working through some documents. They're what's known as parentage petitions. If you've enlisted a surrogate to carry your baby, then you need a judge to approve your parentage petition in order to actually take the baby home. It's basically the court saying, yes, this kid is legally yours.

**Katherine Long** (0:30)
Once this child is born, you, the parents, have the parental rights to the child. You are clear to put your name on the birth certificate.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:38)
That's investigative reporter Katherine Long. And are these usually contentious petitions?

**Katherine Long** (0:45)
No. Typically, these are, I hesitate to say rubber stamped, but it's a fairly simple process.

**Ryan Knutson** (0:53)
But this time, the clerks noticed something. One name kept showing up over and over again.

**Katherine Long** (1:02)
A man named Xu Bo had put his name on at least four applications for parental rights for children who were as yet unborn but were being carried by surrogates.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:17)
The same guy, Xu Bo, was applying for parental rights to at least four babies being carried by surrogates.

**Katherine Long** (1:25)
The clerks thought that was a little strange. It's not terribly common to have that many simultaneous surrogacies. They started poking around and they realized that in addition to those at least four children Xu Bo already had or was in the process of having eight other children.

**Ryan Knutson** (1:46)
That's 12 kids total. 12 kids, all born via surrogacy, all with the same father.
This sounds crazy.

**Katherine Long** (2:02)
It was certainly unusual.

**Ryan Knutson** (2:05)
When Katherine and her colleagues started digging into the surrogacy industry, they got curious about one particular corner of that business, the corner that serves wealthy Chinese parents.

**Katherine Long** (2:16)
When we started speaking with people who work in this corner of the surrogacy industry that caters to Chinese parents, something that we kept hearing was concerns about a small number of Chinese parents who seemed to want to have extremely large numbers of children.

**Ryan Knutson** (2:33)
Think 10 children, 20 children, even, I kid you not, 100 children.

**Katherine Long** (2:45)
When I first heard about this, I thought this had to be an exaggeration. This had to be made up. But then we started looking into it and turned out to be true.

**Ryan Knutson** (3:04)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knutson. It's Friday, March 20th. Coming up, another story from our investigation into the fertility industry. Today, one dad, 100 babies.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:40)
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**Ryan Knutson** (4:14)
In many countries around the world, surrogacy is illegal. So international parents looking to have a baby this way often head to the US. These days, about 40% of US surrogacies are for parents from abroad. And about 40% of those parents come from just one country, China.

**Nathan Zhang** (4:34)
You gotta understand the Chinese policy. Single woman cannot get fertility treatment in China. You cannot do sex selection in China. And gays are not legally recognized in China.

**Ryan Knutson** (4:46)
That's Nathan Zhang. He runs a business that helps Chinese parents access the US fertility industry, which many consider to be the best in the world.

**Nathan Zhang** (4:54)
For the idea of fertility, clinical side, US is like the NBA in the basketball field. That's the best players, physicians, and lab, technician, biologist, and those are the people.

**Ryan Knutson** (5:09)
Nathan's business is basically a concierge service. He looks Chinese customers up with IVF clinics, egg donors, sperm banks, surrogacy agencies, and lawyers. When he got into the industry about 15 years ago, Nathan says he catered to a pretty niche demographic, rich Chinese business people who tried having kids the traditional way and failed.
But more recently, he told me his customer base has expanded. He sees more gay couples now, more single women, and more wealthy clients looking to build big families. So our colleagues have been reporting on this trend of Chinese customers, often who are very rich, who want lots of babies. Have you seen that in your business?

**Nathan Zhang** (5:58)
Yeah, we saw a lot, just actually traditional Chinese. We really have bigger families, and my grandparents have seven siblings on my father's side. Yeah, my grandfather, my grandmother has like six siblings, but that's the Chinese traditional culture.