Los Angeles County prosecutors are seeking bail of US$100 million each for a Chinese-born couple charged on Tuesday with conspiring to abuse young children who were born through surrogacy and raised in their California mansion.
Guojun Xuan, 66, and Silvia Zhang, 39, allegedly directed nannies to physically punish the children, watched the beatings through an extensive surveillance system and coached children before police arrived to deny the abuse, according to a felony complaint.
At least 14 surrogate-born children, some as young as two months old, were abused, the district attorney’s office said. It said the couple were accused of conspiring to subject 15 of the 16 children living in the home to repeated physical abuse.
“The number of children who were subjected to this alleged horrific abuse is unprecedented,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement.
Prosecutors cited the risk that the defendants would flee and the nature and extent of the alleged crimes in recommending the bail amounts.
Both defendants are charged with felony conspiracy to commit child abuse, between April 2021 and May 2025, and with being accessories after the fact for allegedly helping a nanny avoid arrest. Xuan also faces a separate felony child abuse charge and five counts of dissuading a witness. Zhang faces four counts of dissuading a witness.
If convicted as charged, Xuan faces up to 17 years and four months in prison and Zhang up to 11 years and eight months, according to the district attorney’s office.
The South China Morning Post has sought comment from Mitchell Krems, who has represented Xuan in related child custody proceedings. It was not clear whether either defendant had a lawyer in the criminal case.
The alleged abuse came to light after police responded to a report that a two-month-old boy had suffered a head injury, the district attorney’s office said. Prosecutors allege that a nanny, Chunmei Li, struck the infant on May 4, 2025, and that Xuan and Zhang did not obtain medical treatment until two days later. Zhang allegedly told hospital staff the baby had fallen from a bed.
When detectives came to the home on May 7, Zhang and Li gave the same false account and the couple directed officers to the wrong bedroom, the complaint alleges.
Li has been charged separately with felony child abuse under conditions likely to cause great bodily injury or death and faces up to 12 years in prison.
According to the complaint, about 32 motion-activated cameras recorded video and audio throughout the home, with live feeds displayed on a large television beside the couple’s desks in their shared office. Prosecutors allege the system recorded nannies repeatedly striking children on each of 11 consecutive days, from April 27 to May 7, 2025.
On April 30, Xuan allegedly told a nanny who was striking a child to hit harder, then joined in, delivering open-handed blows to the child’s head and lifting him by one arm while continuing to strike him.
On May 4, Zhang and Li allegedly laughed as they watched footage of a nanny striking a child with a shoe. The next day, the couple allegedly met the nannies and discussed the importance of disciplining children without leaving visible marks.
Before police arrived on May 7, Xuan and nannies allegedly undressed several children to check them for marks, and Zhang told a nanny to put away the sticks used to strike the children. The couple also allegedly told children to deny they had been beaten.
The nannies shown in the footage are described in the complaint as uncharged co-conspirators.
The complaint also alleges that the couple ran a surrogacy agency, Mark Surrogacy Investment LLC, from the home and gave false information to women recruited across the United States to carry more children for them.
One surrogate was allegedly told Zhang was a single mother struggling to conceive and learned only during a second pregnancy for the couple that they already had about 16 children.
Zhang kept a spreadsheet that, as of May 7, 2025, listed 21 children by name and date of birth, prosecutors allege.
Xuan has told investigators that he fathered 22 children, all but two of whom were born to surrogates, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Wall Street Journal, in an investigation published in August 2025, identified both defendants as Chinese-born. It reported that Xuan came to the United States from Xinjiang and that the couple ran a Los Angeles-area property business with partners based in China.
Zhang told the Journal that her experience of China’s one-child policy had motivated her to have a large family. She denied selling children and said the couple could provide for them. Xuan told a Chinese-language outlet that they were both US citizens, according to the Journal.
The Arcadia household had already been featured in the US debate over birthright citizenship before charges were filed.
At a congressional hearing in March titled “Protecting American Citizenship: Birthright Citizenship for Illegal Aliens and Tourists”, Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, cited surrogacy arrangements with Chinese ties as part of what he described as the exploitation of birthright citizenship.
“Even more insidious is the use of surrogacy in the United States to produce children for senior CCP officials and elites,” he wrote in his testimony. He cited the Arcadia case as a “prominent example”.
“These cases highlight a largely unregulated surrogacy industry in states like California, where over 100 companies with ‘surrogacy’ in their names are owned by Chinese individuals,” he wrote.
The criminal complaint against Xuan and Zhang does not allege any link to the Chinese government.
Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia who also testified at the hearing, challenged that argument in an interview with the SCMP in March, arguing that separate issues had been conflated.
“Nothing about President Trump’s executive order would address that,” Frost said. “If there’s a problem with abuse of surrogacy relationships, that’s a surrogacy regulation question, which is a state law matter.”
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Trump vs Barbara on June 30, striking down the Trump administration’s executive order restricting automatic citizenship for children born to parents in the country unlawfully or temporarily. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
