A Heritage Foundation analyst has voiced concern that wealthy Chinese nationals are increasingly turning to American women to act as surrogates so that their offspring might be naturalized as Americans.
"We have no idea who these children are," Independent Women's Forum visiting fellow and Heritage research associate Emma Waters said in an interview with Fox News.
"Should they come back and get involved in research in academia or purchase contracts or even apply for jobs in sensitive areas, we don't have clear tracking to show that these US citizens actually had a far more complicated background and path to the United States."
'Huge Red Flag'
Since surrogacy is outlawed in China, a rising number of Chinese women beyond reproductive age are turning to American surrogates to help them start or expand their families.
Although many of these Chinese people want children out of the goodness of their hearts, Waters warns that this practice paves the door for Beijing to covertly enter even more sectors of the American economy in the future. She calls it a "huge red flag."
In 2015, the Chinese government eased restrictions on family size after decades of enforcing the "one child" policy. Some states have made it possible for single parents to apply for social security benefits and enroll their children in schools.
According to Waters, these shifts have increased the number of Chinese people looking for surrogates abroad. She estimated that each year they represent hundreds of customers of fertility services, which is difficult to verify since such information is not made public.
Surrogate mothers in the US give birth to children conceived in either China or the US. Even though they will be raised in China, the children of US citizens who are Chinese nationals get and keep all the benefits of US citizenship.
Notably, foreign surrogacy contracts are legal only in the US and a few other countries, such as India, Ukraine, Laos, Columbia, and Georgia.
Only a small number of states in the US allow for paid surrogacy, and none of those jurisdictions necessitate disclosing contracts with foreigners. It is now difficult to determine the identities of the parents, children, or Chinese participants in these cases.
Possible Next Steps
Waters claims there is no way to determine whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is directly involved in the commercial surrogacy sector.
She suggested that the expanding industry be investigated by the congressional committee focusing on China, which is responsible for safeguarding American interests.
Waters proposed a measure to keep track of overseas surrogacy contracts in a manner similar to the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act, which mandates record-keeping about foreign investment in US land.
The researcher said that a deeper investigation into the situation is feasible right now, and nations should be compelled to disclose the data they already possess.
