this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
167 points (96.1% liked)

News

36292 readers
2909 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.


Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.


7. No duplicate posts.


If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.


All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Videogame executive Xu Bo, said to have more than 100 children, and other elites build mega-families, testing citizenship laws and drawing on nannies, IVF and legal firms set up to help them

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old

On the one hand, this is objectively grotesque and there should be laws that better prohibit this kind of misuse of surrogacy.

On the other hand, I don't trust that the WSJ didn't develop this story with top-down ulterior motives - namely to shift public (and possibly actual Justices') attitude in favor of Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship ahead of the Supreme Court case.

[–] treadful@lemmy.zip 51 points 2 months ago (12 children)

This is less about nationality and citizenship as it is about billionaires skirting laws and exploiting the poor. In this case, it's just foreign billionaires exploiting American poor.

load more comments (12 replies)
[–] comador@lemmy.world 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Elon Musk: Doesn't everyone do that?

[–] tal@lemmy.today 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Elon's only had 14. Man is clearly slacking.

[–] verdi@feddit.org 3 points 2 months ago

"Whatever you do, there's a Chinese person somewhere that does it 10x better"

[–] flightyhobler@lemmy.world 31 points 2 months ago

Ok let's end billionaires

[–] kandoh@reddthat.com 29 points 2 months ago

Oh, a billionaire says he has over 100 children and it becomes a whole anti-immigrant panic article in the WSJ.

It's paywalled so I can't know for sure, but I bet they don't even verify the claim. I bet they ran with this because they're onboard with the ending of birthright citizenship.

[–] RustyShackleford@piefed.social 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Of course, what rich person hasn’t had the idea of stealing Genghis Khan’s behavior that left around 8% of modern day China his ancestor.

[–] hexabs@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

His decendents?

[–] minorkeys@lemmy.world 25 points 2 months ago

Oh look, rich people being absolute pieces of shit...yet again. On an unrelated note, Free Luigi.

[–] azimir@lemmy.ml 22 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Given current political distractions being thrown about to make us lose sight of the Epstein Files, I presume the timing and flavor of this article is the WSJ working to support ending birthright citizenship in the US in aid of the racist fucks in charge of the US government.

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

They have to come up with a convincing rationalization for those who won't just blindly respond out of their own natural primitive xenophobic impulses.

"Look, some bad people are exploiting our system, so we should ignore an entire amendment rather than address this particular issue with legislation that doesn't also hurt millions of others."

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 2 points 2 months ago

“This bathwater is dirty, why do you insist to keep bringing up babies!”

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

That was my first thought as well.

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

What the fuck? Well no worries Trump about to get his way and outlaw that in America. But goddamn what's the end game here?

[–] protist@mander.xyz 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Billionaires

I think you missed this part. Trump's more likely to try to make it illegal to criticize them

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 12 points 2 months ago

Can’t they simply buy citizenship for $1 million now too?

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago

The endgame is to build a dynasty. With a 100 kids and billions of dollars he can basically play Queen Victoria and put his kids in positions of power. He can give his kids the best education at the most prestigious schools where they meet the kids of the other elites. He can basically build a massive old boys network within his own family. In the future some of his kids will be leaders of industry, lobbyists and even politicians.

And with so many kids and money good chance one becomes a US senator or even the president

[–] BoycottTwitter@lemmy.zip 15 points 2 months ago

The WSJ may sometimes be less evil than Murdoch's other companies but at the end of the day this is a Murdoch publication and it must not be trusted too much. The ultimate purpose of the article is to build right-wing outrage. The other comments already do a great job explaining how it's really the billionaires who we need to rein in.

[–] someguy3@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

He said he hoped to have 20 or so U.S.-born children through surrogacy—boys, because they’re superior to girls—to one day take over his business.

Several of his kids were being raised by nannies in nearby Irvine as they awaited paperwork to travel to China. He hadn’t yet met them, he told the judge, because work had been busy.

Goes on to describe many such cases.

China currently has a 3 child max policy, at which point I don't see the need for a limit. This is something else though.

[–] not_that_guy05@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Hey I was about to post about Irvine. The guy that was getting downvoted is kind of right about "farm house", but not really. It's more of a tourism kind of things, they come when they are closing to delivery.

Live close to Irvine. It's kind of like the rumor that goes around neighboring cities.

[–] Lexam@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ok, but have they considered having Canadian babies? American baby values have to be tanking right now.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

Right now America is probably the best country in the whole world if you're a billionaire, whole fucking place is being sold around us...

[–] etherphon@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

You think some asshole who made billions of dollars on VIDEO GAMES would be more chill, but they're all assholes I guess.

[–] ninexe@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Why is it so easy for billionaires to have children while the working class struggles?

[–] ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Children are a fixed cost, and all fixed costs become insignificant exponentially fast as you become super rich.

$200,000 to raise a child until age 18 is four years' wages if you make $50,000 a year, and after living expenses, unsustainably unaffordable.

Elon Musk makes $24 million an hour. He can afford 120 more children through age 18 every hour.

Even with surrogacy costs added, it's next to nothing to billionaires, just more assets and a different kind of wealth they can create.

[–] ninexe@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago

Interesting.

I'm glad we keep saying "they're a business and they need to make money" so they can have a much easier time raising a family than any of us.

[–] veroxii@aussie.zone 0 points 2 months ago

Poor people have children all the time. In my daughter's class at school 2 of her friends are from families with 7 siblings. And we live pretty regional. I honestly don't know how they make ends meet.

But it's not stopping people from having kids.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 0 points 2 months ago

Sounds like a big pile o bullshit.

The US is a failed state at this point. Ain't no one queuing up to get in.

[–] Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world -1 points 2 months ago
[–] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If anything could convince libs of supporting the end of birthright, it's the threat of hundreds of chinese babies being born to US citizenship.

[–] silence7@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Its probably a lot more effective at convincing folks that we shouldn't have billionaires

[–] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago

It's already a bi-partisan consensus that China shouldn't have billionaires

Fortunately for them, they can't do anything about the billionaire problem - so instead they'll focus on the xenophobia

[–] lka1988@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Race has nothing to do with this. Take "Chinese" out and replace it with literally anything else. They're still billionaires exploiting loopholes.

[–] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Birthright isnt a loophole.

If you want to abolish billionaires, you dont need to deal in xenophobic scaremongering to do it; but if you want to abolish birthright, you gotta play all the notes of xenophobia. The billionaire flair is just the lib-spin.

The WSJ publishing this story should tell you everything you need to know about its intent

Edit: otherwise they would be writing about how billionaires are exploiting inheritance

load more comments
view more: next ›