Now streaming over on The New York Times‘ “Op-Doc” platform is a fascinating half-hour look into the use of US surrogates by Chinese parents via a “matchmaker between Chinese parents and American wombs.”
The documentary — My American Surrogate — comes from Leslie Tai, a US-born filmmaker who spent her 20s in China. It follows Qiqi, who “is among the growing number of entrepreneurs looking to cash in on the surge of foreign couples — in her case, from China — looking not just to have their babies in this country, but also to find American women to carry those babies to term.”
The all-female team who worked on My American Surrogate includes co-producer Yan Cong, who has previously featured on RADII’s B-Side China Podcast:
Writing on Twitter, Yan said of the film: “There are a lot of big topics we want to unpack in 30 minutes, like the commodification of women’s body, the increasingly powerful Chinese consumers in the world, and the racial dynamics in the US… But what I really love is how intimate and personal this film is.”
The people behind this short are also in the process of producing a full-length documentary about the Chinese birth tourism industry entitled How to Have an American Baby — a project you can keep an eye on by signing up for more info here.
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