Haotian Bai, 37, the U.S. Army veteran who runs a California surrogacy agency catering to wealthy Chinese clients, has denied exploiting birthright citizenship laws after one of his surrogates went public with claims she was kept in the dark about her pregnancy’s billionaire father.
Bai spoke out after Patriot Conceptions, his Irvine-based operation, was thrust into the spotlight last week. A surrogate identified only as “Judy” said she discovered she was carrying the child of reclusive Chinese billionaire Xu Bo, who has allegedly fathered more than 300 children, only after reporters informed her. She said she had responded to an Instagram ad for Patriot Conceptions, who arranged the surrogacy.
“We do not disclose client demographic breakdowns. We collect intended parents’ nationality at intake and disclose it to the surrogate during matching,” Bai said when contacted for comment. “A parent’s foreign nationality … does not by itself establish that obtaining citizenship is the purpose of an arrangement.”
The controversy has revived scrutiny of Bai’s earlier ventures in Hawaii, where his military service brought him after he climbed to the rank of lieutenant. Former Hawaii House of Representatives member Matthew LoPresti of Oahu told the Post that in 2019, Chinese interns began appearing in his office unrequested, just as he was receiving classified missile defense briefings at Camp Smith military intelligence headquarters.
“All of a sudden, I started getting these Chinese interns, assigned to my office somehow. I still don’t really understand how that happened,” LoPresti said. “I remember scratching my head and I asked how these interns came to my office and why. I didn’t ask for them or approve them.”
The timing alarmed LoPresti, who was also working for the FBI on counterintelligence matters. “I started having all these meetings with generals and getting security briefings at the military intelligence headquarters up in Camp Smith,” he said. “I was getting intelligence briefings about missile defense capabilities.”
“These Chinese kids were not necessarily what they claimed to be there for. There was something suspicious about it. I brought it to the FBI’s attention. The timing was very strange,” LoPresti told the Post.
Bai’s path to running an international surrogacy operation began when he arrived in the U.S. Around 2012 from Lanzhou University in Central China to pursue a master’s degree in environmental engineering at Iowa State University. A former colleague told the Post that Bai “joined the Army to get citizenship,” enlisting at a time when the military was welcoming non-citizens in exchange for fast-tracked Green Cards.
“The Army was recruiting Chinese students to join the officers program. When he joined the military, I was proud of the guy. He seemingly did extremely well in the military,” the source said. “I knew him as a hardworking, decent fellow.”
Since his military service, Bai has cultivated connections in Republican policy circles. In 2024, he was inducted into the Veterans Fellowship Program at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University’s conservative think tank run by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice since 2020. The organization did not respond to questions about what policy initiatives Bai worked on during his fellowship.
Bai’s surrogacy business model rests on a legal framework that remains entirely permissible under current law. Patriot Conceptions operates between China and the U.S., recruiting American surrogates informally through social media and paying them between $60,000 and $120,000. The agency’s base cost for intended parents runs $120,000 to $200,000.
The company’s promotional materials reveal its target market. It offers Chinese or English versions of its website and directs visitors to contact the agency through WeChat, China’s dominant messaging platform. The site maps 25 states it deems to have a “generally supportive posture” for children to easily obtain U.S. Citizenship, advising foreign parents to study laws in each state when selecting a surrogate. Only Louisiana is marked black for “restrictive or unresolved posture.”
In a 2024 profile on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce website, Bai claimed his company had helped thousands of parents have children via surrogacy, with 40 percent of clients being “international.” A review of the company’s materials suggests those international clients are almost entirely from China.
Bai previously built Pacific Surrogacy in 2019, another California-based company catering to Chinese parents. A lawsuit between Bai and his then-business partner, Yulun Jiang, revealed that company’s financials were all run out of China. He has since launched TrustUS, an app describing itself as facilitating international bank transfers and payments.
Patriot Conceptions has said it arranged only the one surrogacy on Xu Bo’s behalf and that “the surrogate deserves to have her concerns taken seriously,”. The agency has also stated it is not connected to a separate case in Arcadia, California, where Guojun Xuan, 65, and Silvia Zhang, 38, were accused of hoarding at least 26 children in their mansion, most born through surrogacy they had arranged themselves.
The 2019 internship controversy that LoPresti reported to the FBI was sold as a cultural exchange initiative with China. Hawaiian lawmakers came to suspect the interns were not being properly fed and were forced to live in cramped conditions during their two-week stays. “I remember one intern had a meltdown,” LoPresti said. “This girl had this blowout in the middle of the state Capitol yelling at everyone in Chinese. I have no idea what she was saying.” LoPresti got the program shut down. At the time, Bai denied students were being exploited, and he faced no charges. When contacted recently, he denied in an email that he had ever sold internships.
Bai has spent recent years building his public profile through conventions, podcasts, galas, and opinion pieces for business magazine Inc., positioning himself as a voice at the intersection of veterans affairs, entrepreneurship, and fertility services.