A U.S. Army veteran has established a fellowship at a well-known conservative think tank and operates a California surrogacy agency that caters to wealthy individuals from China.
Haotian Bai, originally from China, oversees Patriot Conceptions, an agency that works across the U.S. and China, as reported by the New York Post. He charges prospective parents between $120,000 and $200,000, while surrogates can earn anywhere from $60,000 to $120,000. This practice is legal due to current surrogacy laws and the birthright citizenship provisions in the 14th Amendment.
The agency recently gained notoriety thanks to a surrogate named Judy, who was under the impression she was gestating a child for a single father. However, CBS News revealed that the intended parent was the elusive Chinese billionaire Xu Bo, a video game mogul whose previous partner claims he may have fathered around 300 children. Xu, on the other hand, contests this figure and states he has custody of 12 children born via American surrogacy, while his company later adjusted the number to “only a little over 100.”
Patriot Conceptions specifically targets Chinese clientele, featuring websites in both Chinese and English, and redirects potential clients to WeChat. The firm identifies 25 states that are favorable toward citizenship, while advising that Louisiana has restrictive regulations. Bai mentioned to the Post that his company does not disclose client demographics and that a parent’s nationality alone does not imply that gaining citizenship is the goal of the arrangement.
Bai was awarded a 2024-2025 veteran fellowship at the Hoover Institution, which is Stanford University’s conservative think tank, where he has been recognized as a leader in third-party reproduction, as stated by the Hoover Institution.
He relocated from China around 2012, pursued environmental engineering at Iowa State University, and later enlisted in the military for citizenship, according to a former colleague’s comments to the Post. In 2019, he was accused of selling legislative internships in Hawaii to Chinese students—a claim he denied and which did not lead to any charges.
Patriot Conceptions claims to not be Xu’s sole agency and is open to scrutiny. Bai emphasized that it is important to take the concerns of surrogates seriously.
