¥750,000 Per Child: Inside Qingdao’s Underground Surrogacy Trade
On October 30, 2024, a covert commercial surrogacy facility was discovered operating in an automotive trade center in Qingdao, Shandong Province. This site, or the underground surrogacy lab, has been illegally trafficking the bodies of young women for reproductive services. Their wombs have been forced into machines for birth, and have been offered high-priced pregnancies and sex selection, all of which directly violates the Chinese law and ethics of the medical field and humanity.
The Discovery
Allegations first came from a whistleblower who anonymously reported about strange activity inside a locked compound. Inside the clinic hid dystopia, or a revival of The Handmaid’s Tale. Dozens of women were classified and evaluated by their physical features and social class, and were also documented by codes instead of names. Reports have also unfortunately shown that these women have undergone brutal processes of frequent egg retrieval and surrogacy procedures, and oftentimes even without the use of anesthesia. Some were even forced to repeat the process up to 17 times in the timespan of mere three months. A lot of the surrogacy services were sold at ¥750,000, and were charged ¥200,000 extra for sex selection and ¥50,000 for falsified birth documentation.
The Culprit
The hand behind all these endeavors belong to Qingdao Meike Biotechnology (青岛美克生 物科技有限公司), operated by legal representative Cong Zhangchao (丛章超). Cong also controls other fertility consulting firms like the Qingdao Chunyun IVF Consulting (青岛春孕试 管婴儿咨询有限公司). These companies all have registered ¥1 million each in given assets. Cong has operated for more than a decade in commercial surrogacy, swimming in grey and illegal waters with little to no investigative or regulative actions.
Government and Public Response
The Qingdao Municipal Health Commission has coordinated with public security and market supervision departments to launch an investigation. Officials have also pledged to enforce existing bans on commercial surrogacy and punish any actors involved in illegal reproductive practices. This ban should be made strict and sharp.
Implications
This case also revealed something big: there is currently no transparency or supervision regarding certain private facilities in China, despite its illegality. Millions of women are under the palms of impending exploitation. Certified and highly-respected surgeons and medical staff are performing unauthorized procedures— many of which are still unnoticed and scattered across many parts of the nation, if not the world. These people are not held accountable, exposing the weak institutional safeguards within the medical profession.
Furthermore, reproductive power has been devalued for centuries but now functions as a main source of black-market profiteering. With an extremely well-profitted field existing, the question is, who are the buyers of these surrogated babies? Who is paying millions of dollars for the wombs of innocent women abducted for their vile and corrupt interests? Who is this benefitting from these companies and will they ever be held accountable to daylight? The question is difficult to answer. Benefactors could be anyone, anywhere, somewhere out there ready to prey and feast on bodies of the female population. And who is to care for these surrogated women? How will their justice be reclaimed in an era where we emphasize commerce over human rights?
Conclusion
To end this article is the questioning of surrogacy. At the end of the day, surrogacy depends on the exploitation of the less privileged and fortunate women. In most cases, like the Qingdao case, it is an unequal transaction that might be not informed of and coercion-based. We should push forward legal actions to cease such injustice, and see women as a unity, a real, living person of full humanity, instead of an asset judged and used for our biological functions.
Written by: Penny Wei
