A surrogacy agency operating between China and the United States is facilitating a growing practice in which wealthy Chinese couples arrange for their embryos to be implanted in American women, enabling the resulting children to acquire U.S. citizenship at birth. The agency, Patriot Conceptions, based in Irvine, California, has drawn attention amid concerns that it obscures the biological parentage of the children from the surrogate mothers who carry them.

Women serving as surrogates for the agency are reportedly recruited primarily through social media platforms and receive payments ranging from $60,000 to $120,000 for their services. After birth, the children are taken to China, where having a U.S.-citizen child is regarded as a status symbol among affluent families. This arrangement remains legal under current surrogacy laws and interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause, a principle recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Patriot Conceptions was founded and is run by Haotian Bai, a U.S. Army veteran who has positioned himself as a leading figure in third-party reproduction. Bai, who is currently based in Hawaii, received recognition last year from a prominent Republican think tank, which described him as a pioneering entrepreneur in the field. The agency gained public attention last week after a surrogate known only as “Judy” revealed that she was carrying the child of Xu Bo, a reclusive Chinese billionaire alleged to have fathered over 300 children. The surrogate stated she became aware of the biological father’s identity only after being contacted by a media outlet. She had initially responded to an Instagram advertisement for Patriot Conceptions, which facilitated the surrogacy arrangement. The company confirmed its role in coordinating the surrogacy for Xu Bo and emphasized that the surrogate’s concerns should be taken seriously.

According to a 2024 profile on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website, Bai said his agency has helped thousands of clients become parents through surrogacy, with approximately 40% of them being international. Company materials indicate that the vast majority of these international clients are from China. The agency’s website is available in both Chinese and English and encourages potential clients to communicate via WeChat, China’s leading messaging platform. It also provides a map highlighting 25 states characterized as generally supportive of surrogacy arrangements that facilitate U.S. citizenship for children born through surrogacy, advising foreign parents to understand state-specific laws before selecting a surrogate. Louisiana was noted as the only state with restrictive or unresolved policies.

In response to inquiries, Bai declined to disclose detailed client demographics but stated that intended parents’ nationalities are collected during intake and shared with surrogates at the time of matching. He denied that obtaining U.S. citizenship is the sole purpose of these arrangements.

Before founding Patriot Conceptions, Bai established another surrogacy company, Pacific Surrogacy, also located in California, which reportedly catered primarily to Chinese clientele. Publicly available court documents relating to a lawsuit between Bai and a former business partner reveal that company finances were managed from China.

Bai also recently launched an app called TrustUS, described as a software-as-a-service platform to facilitate international bank transfers and payments. The agency’s posted base fee for surrogacy services ranges from $120,000 to $200,000. Typically, Chinese parents travel to the U.S. on tourist visas to complete the embryo implantation process, though in some cases embryos are shipped directly from China to American surrogates.

Sources familiar with Bai’s background report that he arrived in the United States around 2012 to pursue a master’s degree in environmental engineering at Iowa State University. Following graduation, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, a path that helped him obtain citizenship and advance through the ranks to lieutenant. His military service included a posting in Hawaii, where he currently resides. Former colleagues described him as hardworking and disciplined.