A report in the New York Times details the case of a prosperous Chinese businessman, Xu Wenjun, who wanted a son to continue the family line. In Cambodian court testimony, Xu said his wife could not bear a child. But Xu’s friends said he had no wife and was open about being gay.

In 2017, Xu signed a contract with an agency agreeing to pay €70,000 for surrogacy in Cambodia, using a “Russian model” as an egg donor, and a Cambodian woman to carry the child to birth. This was despite the Cambodian Ministry of Health announcing a ban on the practice the previous year.

“Surrogacy means women are willing to sell babies and that counts as trafficking,” said one Cambodian official. “We do not want Cambodia to be known as a place that produces babies to buy.”

In 2018, about 30 surrogates, all pregnant, were nabbed in a police raid on an upmarket housing complex in Phnom Penh. Dozens of surrogates were arrested, accused of trafficking the babies they were carrying.

Xu’s surrogate gave birth in prison, but was given a suspended sentence on condition that she raise the child herself, even though she has no genetic connection to the boy.

Xu himself was later arrested in a police sting and has now spent the last three years in prison.