An investigation by undercover journalists has exposed an illegal surrogacy ring in China, including the unknown fate of children labeled “deformed.” Chinese government health authorities say an investigation will be launched.
The Paper, a Shanghai-based news outlet, released the results of the investigation on Monday; their investigators visited clinics in Hangzhou and Xiamen, which were owned by the Longduhua Medical Group. Surrogacy is currently illegal in China, yet the agency has allegedly been operating for 18 years.
The investigation found that prices for surrogacy services range from 550,000 yuan ($77,128) to almost 1 million yuan ($140,024), with hundreds of surrogate mothers scattered in cities across China. A salesperson told the investigators that the agency sees 300 births each year, and also provides other “services,” such as customizing the gender of embryos used for IVF. When investigators asked what would happen if they were caught, they said the clinic could get fined and the doctors involved could lose their medical licenses.
Disturbingly, there are indications that “unwanted” children could meet a grisly end; if a child was found to have any disabilities at birth, parents could get a refund or start again with a new surrogate. As for the babies? A representative told the investigators that they would “take care of the deformed child.”
READ: Woman born from surrogacy opposes it: ‘We’re using wombs, we’re buying children’
Several other hospitals are currently under investigation for producing and selling fake birth certificates, which are used to legitimize children who were either kidnapped or born through surrogacy. “There is indeed a market, where many childless families want children, and it will naturally facilitate and promote underground transactions,” Yuan Bin, a professor at the College for Criminal Law Science of Beijing Normal University, said in an interview earlier this month.
Bin also explained that parents have increasingly been selling their children at a profit while claiming the children had been placed for adoption. A 2015 report from Southern Metropolis Daily found that out of 363 cases involving 380 abducted children in China from 2014 to 2015, 40% were sold by their biological parents.
“Staff at the hospitals are our acquaintances,” one baby broker said. “As long as they don’t mention the baby is a surrogate child, there should be no problem in applying for household registration.”
