Category: China

Accused of abandoning two babies in the US, this Chinese celebrity has sparked a national debate about surrogacy

CNN

Nectar Gan

Ad for surrogate mothers, Burbank, California, USA
Ad for surrogate mothers, Burbank, California, USA. Cory Doctorow, Flickr

(CNN)At first, it seemed like a classic celebrity romance.

Zheng Shuang, 29, was one of China’s most popular actresses after shooting to fame a decade ago. Zhang Heng, 30, was a talented producer for a variety show. In 2018, the pair went public with a set of couple selfies, and often appeared affectionately in the spotlight afterward — even co-starring in a popular reality series.

So fans were shocked when Zhang took to China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo earlier this month to claim he has been stranded in the United States for more than a year, left alone to “take care of and protect two young and innocent lives.”

The couple was believed to have split while two surrogate mothers they hired were pregnant with their kids, with Zheng accused of abandoning the babies.

A Chinese media outlet subsequently publicized alleged photos of the children’s birth certificates, which showed they were born in December 2019 and January 2020 in the US. Zhang and Zheng were named as their parents.

It also published a recording of an alleged phone call, during which Zheng’s parents allegedly suggested abandoning the children or giving them up for adoption, while Zheng allegedly expressed frustration that abortion was not a viable option given the mothers were 7 months’ pregnant at the time. . . continue reading

Spanish and US scientists go to China to create human-monkey chimeras

BioEdge

Michael Cook

In a stunning example of evading ethical controversy by exporting it, Spanish and American researchers have created monkey-human chimeras in China. The hybrid embryos will be destroyed after they develop a central nervous system and will not be brought to term. . . [Full text]

Short Form Conclusion of the China Tribunal’s Judgment

China Tribunal

In December 2018 The Tribunal issued an interim judgement:

“The Tribunal’s members are certain – unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt – that in China forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time involving a very substantial number of victims.”

. . .The Tribunal has considered evidence, in its many forms, and dealt with individual issues according to the evidence relating to each issue and nothing else and thereby reached a series of conclusions that are free of any influence caused by the PRC’s reputation or other potential causes of prejudice. . .

These individual conclusions, when combined, led to the unavoidable final conclusion that;

Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale and that Falun Gong practitioners have been one – and probably the main – source of organ supply. The concerted persecution and medical testing of the Uyghurs is more recent and it may be that evidence of forced organ harvesting of this group may emerge in due course. The Tribunal has had no evidence that the significant infrastructure associated with China’s transplantation industry has been dismantled and absent a satisfactory explanation as to the source of readily available organs concludes that forced organ harvesting continues till today.

. . . Governments and any who interact in any substantial way with the PRC including:

  • Doctors and medical institutions;
  • Industry, and businesses, most specifically airlines, travel companies, financial services businesses, law firms and pharmaceutical and insurance companies together with individual tourists,
  • Educational establishments;
  • Arts establishments

should now recognise that they are, to the extent revealed above, interacting with a criminal state.

China Tribunal Summary Report – VIEW/DOWNLOAD HERE

A question of conscience: In doing the bidding of their political masters, how far are Hong Kong police willing to go?

Hong Kong Free Press

Keiran Colvert

Here’s a question for every officer in the Hong Kong police – if the Hong Kong government asked you to shoot to kill to clear protesters from the streets would you do it? This might sound like a far-fetched scenario in Hong Kong – a place which has, until now, been dramatically different from Mainland China in terms of citizen’s rights and the rule of law. Having witnessed the grim scenes unfolding in Admiralty yesterday, and given that two people are currently in intensive care as a result of the police action, this question, unfortunately, may become all too relevant for people serving in the Hong Kong police. . . [Full text]

He did it: uproar over Chinese gene-edited babies

BioEdge

Michael Cook

A Chinese scientist has faced widespread condemnation for editing the genome of two babies at his lab in the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, together with an American colleague.

The researcher, He Jiankui, outlined his work at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong. His experiments have not been peer reviewed or published so it is impossible for other scientists to verify his claims. In a Q&A session, He came under heavy fire from other scientists. . . Full text