Online fixers offer to bypass China’s ban on gender tests

SHADY middlemen are openly advertising on Chinese social media to smuggle blood samples of pregnant women to Hong Kong to get around the mainland’s ban on gender testing.

The business thrives on a wellorganised underground network that serves the huge demand for illicit sexselective abortions in mainland China – driven by limits on family size and an entrenched cultural preference for sons.

Gender tests analyse small fragments of foetal DNA in a pregnant woman’s blood and can detect the presence of a Y chromosome, which signifies a male. They can often accurately predict the gender of a foetus weeks before doctors can see the sex organs in an ultrasound.

Chinese authorities vowed in 2015 to crack down on the trade but dozens of blood smuggling agents are still openly advertising services on websites such as the Twitter-like platform Weibo, an AFP investigation has found.

Gender testing – except on medical grounds – is outlawed in China, where sex-selective abortions have helped create a surplus of about 31.6 million men. A long-standing one-child policy was eased in 2016 to permit two children, but gender testing continues.

The process is legal in Hong Kong, with some clinics apparently turning a blind eye to the origins of the blood samples being tested.

Three agents contacted by a reporter posing as a customer offered to arrange appointments with medical labs or to transport blood samples from China to Hong Kong for about $580 (£460).

Other agents use human smugglers. In February, a 12-year-old girl heading to Hong Kong was caught at the Shenzhen border carrying 142 vials of blood samples from pregnant women.

Multiple Chinese government departments did not respond to requests for comment.