“Birth tourism” — where pregnant women have their child on America soil to become citizens — has been happening for decades. But Chinese elites have “weaponized” the practice, says author Peter Schweizer, raising a generation of legal citizens who have no loyalty to the US. In this excerpt from his new book, “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,” he explains how.
As we sang “Auld Lang Syne” in the early morning of Jan. 1, 2025, the first American newborn of the year arrived to much fanfare and celebration.
But this time, the baby was the progeny of Chinese citizens, and the mother had intentionally traveled to give birth on American soil, so that the child would automatically be granted US citizenship, a practice known as birth tourism. When such children turn 21, they can also apply for resident status for both of their parents.
This baby was born in the US territory of Saipan in the Pacific. More than 70% of the newborns in Saipan are Chinese birth tourist parents who utilize the territory’s 45-day visa-free visitation rules and the “Covenant of the Northern Mariana Islands” to guarantee that their children will have American citizenship.
That little child’s parents are two of many who are taking advantage of America’s birthright citizenship policies, based on an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. How many is anyone’s guess.
Since the US government does not directly track birth tourism, we must rely on estimates. In 2012, one nonprofit calculated that about 36,000 foreign-born women gave birth in the United States and then left the country.
But the number is likely to be far, far higher. Chinese officials estimate that the number is a staggering 50,000 of their own citizens per year. Scholars who have studied the subject in depth, like Australian-based professor Salvator Babones, put the figure even higher, perhaps twice that.
“With up to 100,000 Chinese babies being born US citizens every year,” he writes, “birth tourism may result in millions of new elite Chinese-Americans.”
Chinese birth tourism in the United States has been practiced for decades, but it has especially flourished in the past 15 years.
That means at least 750,000 and possibly as many as 1.5 million Chinese, who are also American citizens by virtue of being born here, are now growing toward adulthood in China.
Brood awakening
These babies are often the children of elites who have prospered in the communist Chinese system. They have been suitably indoctrinated in Chinese Communist Party-controlled schools and taught about US values, culture, or history, from a distorted CCP perspective.
Yet as citizens, they are eligible to vote in US elections and can relocate to the United States at any time.
Based on what little data we have about Chinese-to-US birth tourism, this tidal wave could hit American society beginning in 2030, when the first baby wave reaches 18 years old.
We might call them the Manchurian Generation, but it’s a story stranger and more lethal than fiction.
Another even more Byzantine and suspicious form of birthright citizenship is the widespread use of surrogate mothers in the US to carry the children of CCP officials. These officials then collect the children at birth and raise them back in China.
One such senior Chinese Communist Party official lives in a fortress-like mansion in Southern California. When not carrying out his predictable duties as a senior official for several CCP “united front groups” in California designed to advance the interests of communism in the United States, he is helping to breed dozens of children in the United States.
Guojun Xuan is a slender, 65-year-old Chinese businessman who has purchased more than $100 million in California real estate. Back in China, he has served for decades as a deputy of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional People’s Congress, a branch of the Chinese government’s National People’s Congress.
In the United States he serves in senior leadership positions of several organizations controlled by the CCP and Chinese intelligence services called the United Front Work Department, including the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, where he serves on the executive committee.
Xuan has another interest: producing children via surrogacy with women across the US.
In May 2025, when a 2-month-old infant under his care was hospitalized with head injuries, officials found 15 children living in his $4.1 million Arcadia, Calif., mansion, ranging in ages from 2 months up to 13 years.
In total, they found 21 children connected to the CCP member.
Xuan arranged the births of his children through mothers spread throughout the United States. The contracts were made through his Mark Surrogacy Investment LLC, which served as a multistate embryo pipeline.
Surrogates often were unaware that others were carrying children for the same couple at the same time. Neighbors saw pregnant women coming and going from the house, which seemed to operate more like a surrogacy command center than a traditional home.
Xuan is listed as the owner of dozens of companies in California, most of them either investment or real estate firms. He has purchased more than 150 properties in Southern California worth more than $105 million.
He is not alone in his surrogacy baby mill.
Records in California indicate there are 107 companies with the word surrogacy in the name in the state, all owned by Chinese individuals.
No one in the Irvine, Calif., neighborhood noticed anything unusual until one day a forklift delivered “a huge pile of diapers” to a nondescript apartment building.
Scheme team
The delivery was to a business run by two Chinese nationals called You Win USA. It quietly occupied 20 apartments in a suburban complex and discreetly hosted pregnant Chinese women so they could give birth to their children on US soil.
You Win USA charged its customers between $40,000 and $80,000 for its services, which included helping Chinese parents avoid detection by US Customs and Border Patrol when entering the country. They instructed the women to wear loose-fitting clothes to hide their pregnancies.
They were also instructed to steer clear of certain American ports of entry with tighter security. It is better to fly into Las Vegas or Honolulu before heading to Los Angeles Airport, where the screening of international flights is stricter.
Some Chinese mothers checked into the Trump International Hotel in Honolulu and spent the night so they could show customs officials the hotel receipt and demonstrate their wealth and status. Chinese parents were also instructed to lie on their visas, that is, to declare that they were simply “tourists” visiting the United States for 30 days of travel, with no planned medical procedures.
Once the Chinese mothers-to-be arrived safely in Los Angeles, You Win USA put them in apartments and provided them with prebirth medical care.
Chinese birth tourism companies tout the fact that Southern California hospitals, like Fountain Valley Regional Medical Center, have “Chinese doctors and bilingual nursing staff to provide you with comprehensive care.”
When it was time to give birth, You Win USA took the mothers to Orange County, Calif., hospitals and told them to lie (again), declaring that they were indigent and unable to pay the full cost of the medical expenses. These wealthy Chinese clients would then get reduced rates, paying only $4,000 (sometimes less) when the normal cost was $25,000.
More than 400 Chinese babies were born in one Orange County medical facility over two years, costing the hospital nearly $1 million in lost revenue.
Dongyuan Li, a Chinese national who lived in Irvine and ran You Win USA, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit immigration fraud and one measly count of visa fraud. (If you lie or encourage other people to lie on their visa application, you are committing visa fraud.)
She was sentenced to less than one year in prison. Li’s disregard for the United States is telling. When communicating with Chinese clients from California, Li referred to US immigration authorities as “the foreigners.”
While Li’s operation was shut down, many others continue to operate as of this writing.
China Mifubaby Group (Mifu) is a luxury baby operation based in Irvine. It has a big footprint in China — with offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In addition to California, it offers services in Saipan, as well as Toronto and Vancouver, Canada.
Mifu is very active on Chinese social media, explaining why Chinese mothers should go to the US to have their children. Some selectable (paid) services include private, award-winning chefs, Chinese medicinal consultations, tours of SoCal and extensive consultations, training and seminars about living permanently in the US.
Mifu does not disclose the volume of clients, but they bring in millions in revenue every year. Nearly every Irvine property they own was purchased for more than $1 million with a mortgage, and they have at least 50 properties.
Policy shift
Birth tourism from China exploded under President Barack Obama’s tenure because his administration made it “more accessible,” according to a Senate report. The Obama administration instructed US consular officers “not to deny visa applicants solely because they planned to travel to the United States to obtain citizenship for their child.” Obama made it so Chinese birth tourists did not even need to lie on their applications. The change in policy also made it harder to prosecute visa fraud cases involving birth tourism.
Why would a repressive government like Beijing not crack down on this practice? After all, the children of their best and brightest are being born as American citizens.
Yet Beijing encourages US birth tourism — and why has nothing to do with American values or patriotism.
Birth tourism operators tout that the United States is “the most attractive nationality” because of free stuff, not freedom. US citizens receive “free education from junior high school to public high school,” and even “senior supplement benefits [Social Security and Medicare] when you are living overseas.”
One Chinese agency offers “a primer on how the US welfare system works.”
Chinese baby tourism operators frame the practice as a legitimate business model, not fraud. Chinese officials seem to agree. Lawyer Liang Zhiyi explained to a Chinese government newspaper, “[Birth] tourism is an opportunity to make money. Operators should not waste this opportunity.”
He adds: “This could have a long-term positive impact on the United States. Bruce Lee is a child of childbirth travel. Maybe we can still find a genius.”
What exactly does a “positive impact on the United States” mean from a Chinese Communist Party perspective?
The Chinese elites using these services offer no evidence that they reject the CCP and embrace American or Western values. A Chinese birth tourism company called Star Baby Care has a client list that includes government tax officials, executives at China Telecom, Chinese Central Television, and Bank of China.
Beijing’s ‘hand’
Communist China has a long and notorious history of using mass migration as a strategic weapon. In 1997, Great Britain began the two-decade process of Hong Kong’s transition from British to communist Chinese rule. During that period, Beijing, under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party, engineered an elaborate effort to have more than 83,000 Chinese with fake identities migrate to Hong Kong.
These immigrants represented 1.4% of Hong Kong’s population, but even more importantly, they totaled 9.12% of the territory’s voting population.
“These fifth columnists appear to be ordinary immigrants, but they carry the Chinese government’s official blessing,” explains scholar Yin Qian. “These migrants served as Beijing’s ‘invisible hand’ to steer the territory in the designed direction.”
The same can happen here. A group of influential, indoctrinated, legal citizens is being raised to act in China’s interests, not America’s. The Chinese Communist Party executes civilizational warfare through mass migration unlike anyone else.
Excerpted with permission from “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,” out now from Harper.
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