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Life without children is incomplete,” claims Kuang Mei (pseudonym), the mother of a 2-year-old boy born via assisted reproductive technology (ART) in 2017. Despite suffering 18 months of painful procedures and uncertainty, and hospital bills of around 50,000 RMB, Kuang is grateful for the chance to become a parent.

In 2014, the then 24-year-old Kuang began to worry when she showed no sign of pregnancy after two years of marriage. At a public hospital in Hengyang, the city in the central Hunan province where she resides, both Kuang and her husband were diagnosed with fertility issues, but two years of clinical treatment did not solve the problem. At the doctor's advice, they turned to intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) in 2017, the socalled “second generation” of in vitro fertilization (IVF) or “test tube baby” technology.

As the last resort of many infertile couples, Art—including artificial insemination (AI), in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (IVF-ET), and derivative techniques—have seen explosive demand from China. They even have a popular nickname, “Child-giving Guanyin (送子观音),” after the bodhisattva that Chinese traditionally worshiped as the goddess of fertility, but their recent breakneck development has raised many ethical, legal, and cultural complications for Chinese society.

Only several months after the birth of the world’s first “test tube baby,”