Couple recruited nationwide web of surrogates to bear more than 22 children
Los Angeles County prosecutors on Tuesday charged Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan with conspiracy to commit child abuse involving 14 children at the couple’s Arcadia, California mansion, in what District Attorney Nathan Hochman called an “unprecedented case of child abuse.” The couple conspired to authorize and direct nannies to beat and physically punish babies and toddlers in their care, Hochman alleged.
Xuan was also charged with one count of child abuse, and both he and Zhang were additionally charged with dissuading witnesses, the district attorney’s office said. An attorney for Zhang did not immediately return a request for comment.
Mitchell Krems, a lawyer for Xuan, called the abuse allegations “patently false” and said his client had been unfairly scrutinized. “My client is coming from communist China where there’s a restriction on how many kids he can have,” Krems said. “He came to the U.S. to exercise his civil liberties.”
Child-protective agencies took custody of the couple’s children in May 2025, when Xuan and Zhang were initially arrested on suspicion of child abuse after bringing one of their infants to a hospital with a head injury.
All told, Xuan and Zhang had more than 22 children, mostly through surrogacy, the Wall Street Journal previously reported. Several women were pregnant with the couple’s children at the time of the arrests last year.
To recruit women to carry their children, Xuan and Zhang established a surrogacy agency to handle the pregnancies but did not tell some surrogates that they owned the company and had other children, according to surrogates who worked for the couple along with messages and documents reviewed by the Journal. Krems declined to confirm how many children the couple have in total and disputed that the couple had deceived their surrogates.
The motivations behind the couple’s use of surrogacy and the identities of the children’s biological parents remain under investigation, Hochman said Tuesday. Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed search warrants at the couple’s Arcadia home as part of a separate ongoing investigation, he said.
In an interview last year with the Journal, Zhang said she wanted to have many children because she grew up amid China’s one-child policy, which she found restrictive. The couple often used Xuan’s sperm and a donor egg to conceive the children, documents reviewed by the Journal showed.
Much of the district attorney’s evidence in the case is footage recovered from 32 closed-circuit cameras stationed throughout the house, according to the complaint, which referenced recordings showing nannies and Xuan beating the children.
At the couple’s arraignment Tuesday, the district attorney intends to seek bail of $100 million, Hochman said, citing the couple’s wealth and the risk they could flee the country.
Xuan and Zhang ran a real-estate company called Yudao Management with extensive holdings around Los Angeles, which they operated with a group of businessmen based in China, according to former employees, business filings and court records in legal proceedings involving the company.