WATCH: Made in the USA, raised for China — The surrogacy threat no one is talking about

Video

Saturday, March 7, 2026

OPINION:

Chinese nationals are using surrogates in the U.S. to have children. The result? Future agents of the Chinese Communist Party with full American citizenship.

Retired U.S. Intelligence Officer Emilio Gonzalez joins Politically Unstable with Washington Times Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler to discuss this massive national security risk nobody seems to be talking about: Chinese surrogacy exploiting American birthright citizenship.

[SADLER] We want to get into an article that you wrote for us at The Washington Times that takes a deeper dive into Chinese surrogacy and birthright citizenship. And it’s an issue that I don’t think many people are familiar about and why this is a huge national security risk. I’d like to start the conversation with the case of Chinese billionaire Xu Bo, who has fathered or sired over 100 U.S. nationals. Can you talk to me about that case and exactly what the Chinese are doing to exploit our birthright citizenship?

[GONZALEZ] I believe this gentleman wants to create a dynasty of his own children in the United States. Every one of those kids has a U.S. passport. International surrogacy is not regulated in the United States. And in fact, there are some states that actually encourage it. California being one of them.

Surrogacy is against the law in China. They can’t do it, so they go elsewhere. Interestingly enough, it’s an abuse of our 14th Amendment because we all talk about if somebody is here, they’re born here, it’s a birthright citizenship. Well, that includes surrogacy. And it doesn’t matter whether your parents, whoever your biological parents, are foreigners or whether they have no intentions whatsoever in living here or allowing you to live here as that surrogate child.

About half of all surrogacies in the United States are foreign-born donors. And about half of those are Chinese. The Chinese play the long game. I’m not sure anybody has the correct numbers on how many of these Chinese American children there are. But even if the number is minuscule, say — I’m just making this up — you know, 10 or 20,000. That’s 10 or 20,000 people that are being raised in China under the Chinese Communist Party rule. They’re being indoctrinated. They have to follow the law that says that every Chinese citizen is an intelligence agent. And then those kids can come back.

You know, there are some residency requirements when you come back, having lived overseas for an extended period of time. But once you meet that, those kids can then sponsor their parents and those kids can then sponsor their siblings. And interestingly enough, the minute you’re born here of a Chinese national, you immediately get a passport or you’re authorized a passport and a social security number. So those children will have every single bit of rights and privileges of being an American than any other person here in the United States.

[SADLER] And with the Xu Bo case, he’s sired more than 100 children here in the United States. That’s insane. He’s not trying to be a father for these 100 children. You said he’s trying to set up a dynasty. And how exactly does one go about this? If you are part of the Chinese Communist Party, do you come to California? Do you recruit a U.S. native, a woman, and pay her off to carry the baby? How does this work?

[GONZALEZ] They’re advertised. I mean, California is filled with surrogacy clinics. In fact, they even advertise in Chinese. And so it’s a function of, you find somebody that’s willing to be a surrogate, to fertilize eggs, you can have a sperm donor, an egg donor, you put them together, and then you put that inside somebody willing to carry the child from gestation. When that child is born, that child belongs to that parent, the father, who is a Chinese national, and off they go. And that’s the end of it. It’s a contractual arrangement.

The closest we come to trying to regulate, if we did want to regulate this, would probably be passing some sort of state laws that regulate interstate commerce, right? But in the case of Bo, I believe it was a judge that basically said, you don’t have parental rights over these kids because this is a business. This is not putting together a family. This is not bringing people together. No, this is a business. You want to create — or you have created — 100 children for reasons that are completely antithetical to a family. This is a business.

You’ve said it’s a dynasty. Those 100 kids are walking around China with U.S. passports and U.S. Social Security numbers, and they’ll be allowed to come back here one day and vote, by the way, and run for office and sponsor their other family members.

[SADLER] What are the laws surrounding surrogacy and IVF here in the United States? Does each state have their own law? Is there a national law? What is being done? Because I feel like IVF in general, it’s a very gray area. It’s a brand new science. And there’s not many guardrails around it.

[GONZALEZ] First of all, there’s no federal law against surrogacy. But there are a few states that regulate it to the extent of, you know, we want to know who the parents are, father and mother, you know, that kind of thing. But there is no standing legislation right now that says you cannot have surrogacy, that a foreign national cannot come to the United States for the purpose of surrogacy.

Here’s another one. You don’t even have to come here. Imagine, if you will, hiring a surrogate, bringing that surrogate to China. The procedure is done in China. That surrogate then comes back to the U.S., has the baby. The father comes back, grabs his child, off he goes. I mean, so this is really a perversion of the 14th Amendment. And listen, the Chinese are very apt at this stuff. Like I said before, they play the long game. The more people they can get in here, the better.