The real scandal in the Xu Bo surrogacy case isn’t a headline number — it’s that no number is verifiable, because American law never anticipated that a single foreign national might try to father dozens of children through commercial surrogates and simply see what the courts would allow.
Key Points
- A California family court reportedly found Xu Bo, a Chinese gaming executive, seeking parentage for four unborn children while already fathering or in the process of fathering at least eight more through surrogates.
- Xu himself, testifying by video through an interpreter, said he hoped to have roughly 20 U.S.-born children — mostly boys — to eventually run his company.
- His company, Duoyi Network, has publicly disputed the higher tallies reported in the press, insisting only 12 of his 100-plus total children were born via U.S. surrogacy, and accusing The Wall Street Journal of mistranslation.
- The widely repeated figure of 300 children traces to an ex-partner’s allegation, not to any court finding, birth record, or company admission — it remains the least substantiated number in the story.
- The underlying problem is structural: U.S. surrogacy law has no mechanism to cap, track, or centrally verify how many children one intended parent can commission.
What the California Court Actually Found
The origin of this story is not a tabloid tip but a family court proceeding in Los Angeles. Reporting traced to that docket describes a judge, Amy Pellman, confronting a petition in which Xu Bo sought parental rights over four unborn children while court research simultaneously turned up at least eight more he had already fathered or was in the process of fathering through gestational surrogates. Pellman denied the parentage request — a notable rebuke in an industry with famously little federal oversight. That denial is the one concrete, adjudicated fact anchoring the entire story; everything else — the running tallies of 100, 300, or “a little over 100” — sits downstream of it, supplied by press investigation, company statement, or secondhand allegation rather than a sealed court record made public in full.
In His Own Words: The Business Succession Rationale
What makes this case more than a curiosity about wealth and reproduction is that Xu did not deny the strategy — he explained it. Appearing by video through an interpreter, he reportedly told the court he hoped to have about 20 U.S.-born children, with a stated preference for boys, so that one of them might eventually take over his business. That framing — children as a succession plan rather than a family in the ordinary sense — is what has driven much of the ethical unease surrounding the case, independent of whatever the final head count turns out to be.
The scandal that the boss of Duoyi Network game company, Xu Bo,has hundreds of children has been spreading for decades in China.
In China’s edition, the parts of surrogacy and America was faded for some reason. https://t.co/nIzQSaN7PP
— Mango (@sweetmangomi) September 13, 2026
The Company’s Rebuttal, and Why It Matters
Any honest account of this story has to reckon with Xu’s side of it, because it is unusually specific for a story built mostly on secondhand reporting. Duoyi Network, his gaming company, issued a statement acknowledging that Xu has “over 100” children in total after years of effort — but insisting only 12 were born through U.S. surrogacy, and accusing the Journal of having “intentionally misrepresented the facts and disseminated false information” through a translation error. A separate account attributed to Xu framed the arrangement in cultural and even nationalist terms, saying he believes “more children bring more blessings” and hopes his choices benefit “the long-term development of the Chinese nation”. That is a genuine, named, on-the-record rebuttal — not vague deflection — and it substantially narrows the U.S.-born figure that headlines have run with, even as it confirms the far larger overall child count
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