The App That’s Helping Gay Couples Have Kids in China

navy blue sweatpants. He really does not look like a tech bro or an LGBT icon. If anything, he reminds me a bit of my suburban uncle. Gungla is probably the most famous gay man in China now, but not that long ago. He wasn't openly gay. He was a police officer married to a woman. So yes, Gangla is definitely surprising. In China, gay rights are non existent, and under President Shi jing Ping there's been a crackdown on civil so sciety, public expression, and human rights in general.

Even so, Blood has been able to thrive by tapping the LGBT community as a market in just a few years, Blood has attracted forty million users that rivals Grinder, one of the earliest gay dating apps, and Blood is preparing to I p O. When I sat down with gung Lea, he told me that the biggest difference between Blood and other companies is its ideals and beliefs. He wants to showcase of Chinese company diligently serving the LGBT community, showing

that they can do things with value and philanthropy. Gungla's latest venture puts this philosophy to the test. It's called Blue Baby, a service to help gay men who want to have babies by surrogate overseas. Surrogacy is technically illegal in China, but there's growing demand for it anyway. You can see that in places where it is legal, like California, where more and more straight Chinese couples have gone for surrogacy. Blood now wants to help its clients do the same thing.

Running almost any business in China requires navigating a lot of uncertainty. For Blood, the risk is even more acute. If it wants to grow, it's got to push the frontiers of what's possible and acceptable for the LGBT community in China. Which still faces a lot of stigma and prejudice. China is a country where there's no gay marriage and a gay couple can't adopt a child. So Blood is testing the government's tolerance for something quite new, gay families.

I'm Pa Gadkari, I'm David Ramley, and I'm done Lawrence. You're listening to Decrypted. For most of his life, gang La was known as Ma Bauli. He was a veteran police officer in Herbe Province, which is outside Beijing, and he was married to a woman, but online he was someone else. He used the alias Gangler to live a parallel life as a gay man and an internet entrepreneur.

He started a website called dan Land, which became an important hub for the LGBT community in China, and he juggled these two careers for more than a decade, rising through the ranks of the police as Mar Bauli whilst expanding the website as dun Low, and then in his police superiors discovered what he'd been doing here, making a bottle the whole Kant. He talked to me about what a difficult period that was. He said that when local

media outed him as the developer of the service. He was forced to choose between shutting it down or leaving the force. He chose the ladder, horrifying his parents in a country where stable government jobs are highly prized. Things got even worse when they checked out his business and they realized he was gay. He said. The shock made his mother so ill he had to return home and look after her. Of course, this was also the end

of his marriage. Despite all that, Gungla doubled down on his online venture and threw himself into launching Blued, an app for the Chinese gay community. It was late two thousand twelve. Like other dating apps, Blue used Geel location to help man find dates and connect with friends. Gunglas timing was good. After all, this was the smartphone boom, when mobile use and access to the Internet was exploding and investors were eager to find the next ten cent

or by do. One of those investors was David Chow at the firm d c M. He'd spotted Blued. D c M had already backed other Chinese social media companies, and David thought the LGBT community was a huge potential market. In the United States, about one out of ten people, or ten percent or lgbteam members um and of course in China, that would imply if it gets through the US levels in the future, that would imply a hundred

and four million people. So you know, the LGBT market in China in the future could be larger than the entire population of Japan nowhere near that. Many people identify themselves openly as gay in China now, and it's obviously hard to know or measure what percentage of any population is gay, or is openly gay or might be gay. But investors like David also see extra potential in gay consumers in China, at least because they tend to have more spending power than the average in part because they

don't have children. That's the promise of the so called pink economy. We expect it to grow into high single digits over the next five to ten years, and and hence you know, you have a large enough community to UM support an entire economy of its own. That potential is starting to become a reality, and BLUED has played a big role. It's most popular function is video broadcasts, where uses live stream to their followers, who can send

virtual gifts and money. Blood gets a cut of these virtual payments, and it also runs regular ads in the app with millions of people signing up. The gay community has become more visible in China. There is a growing movement and there are more and more spaces where people can can be out in China. That's Darius long Aino, a senior fellow at the Paul Thai China Center, part

of the Law School. Darius studies LGBT issues and legal reform in China, and I wanted to talk to him about how Blood fits into the broader context of gay rights, even if they're from remote places, places on the countryside, third tier cities where you know, ten fifteen years ago really hard to find your community, but through Blood it's

much easier now. So there's a growing connected community that has higher visibility in society and even advocacy organizations that are starting to advocate for the community and the movement. As optimistic as that sounds, that us still a lot of risks involved for anyone and any business associated with the LGBT community. Blued is carving out a market that hasn't existed in the past, at least partly because of

intense stigma around being gay in China. There are no explicit legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, and there's also no gay marriage and no civil partnership for same sex couples, and the government has become less tolerant of demands for civil rights of any kind in recent years. I don't think in many advocates in China do not think the government is targeting LGBT issues per se, but they're wary of any form of organization where people are

finding each other and trying to create movements. Someone who has experienced this personally is Ryan Law. He lives in Guangjo in southern China and works for an NGO focused on LGBT health. I met him recently in New York. He described what the spheres like right now. At the beginning of twenties seventeen, the whole uh, you know, services not only old, but the whole cervice society situation got

you know, a whole lot of worse in China. So the kind of director you know, impact of that is a you know a lot of events like openly gathering events we cannot do like we A lot of our events can shut down. But why why would your events get shut down? Because any kind of group event gets

shut down. You know, they just don't want you to kind of get together and you know, try to come up with something and you know, to advocate or you know, do things together, I think, but especially LGBT things right now, I think Ryan says he still sees room to move things forward, but he and his colleagues have been getting more visits from the police and are more careful now about how they communicate and what they do in public, like very very seriously careful. Even you know, we stopped

the talking things on way chair. We all moved to a signal, even if only a little bit sensitivele we go to Gmail. Yeah, just think this kind of thing. And also, you know, like our events, our poster, we don't put our logo anymore. Because we put our logo, then you know it will go shut down. It's not always easy to predict where the line is that you shouldn't cross. For example, a dating app for lesbians called

La got shut down in seventeen over an event in Shanghai. First, you have to know that Shanghai has a weekly wedding market in a park where parents come to mingle and find husbands and wives for their single adult children. RelA helped organize a group of parents whose children are gay, but a few days after they went to the wedding market, the app got shut down. It disappeared from app stores

and from social media, although it has since relaunched. Darius, the Yale researcher, says that initially the government was just as weary of Blood, but Dana was a former civil servant and he knows how official dome works in China. He's been very smart about smoothing the way pool ctically for his business. Blood had successfully sold itself as like a up and coming tech darling to to the government example of indigenous Chinese innovation. It's an example of success

for Chinese enterprise. Blood isn't exceptional in this respect. All large companies in China need to stay on the government's good side, so it's normal for companies to foster relationships with officials. But Blood has been especially assiduous according the government, in part by stepping lightly and avoiding public scrums. For example, in two thousand sixteen, the government issued rules that banned depictions of so called abnormal sexual behavior on Chinese television,

which included homosexuality. The next year, a government affiliated group issued similar rules for online content. Some major platforms reacted by banning gay themed content altogether, causing uproar in the LGBT community. Instead of commenting publicly, gun La got in touch privately with one of the officials responsible That officials said he had just taken old rules for TV and applied them online. Gungla framed it as a business issue.

He suggested that next time there should be more opportunity for public input. In January this year, the same group issued another list of banned subjects, this time for short video platforms. The list includes foot fetishes and criticism of the Chinese Communist Party, but it doesn't include explicit mention of homosexuality. Gungla thanked the official privately and counts it as a win for dialogue over confrontation and Uiva Take

Will So Take. Gongla said that he really believes dialogue can solve problems and that the government is supportive of his company because it knows Blueood is doing things well. He said that even though there are some officials who aren't very tolerant of the gay community overrule, he said the government is well intentioned that right there is a good example of Gungla's business savvy. Bloods market made pend on pushing social boundaries, but Gungla's focus is definitely on business,

not on advocacy, and not on challenging the government. In fact, Blue has become an essential partner for the government and its public health outreach, particularly for HIV and AIDS programs, and this strategy has worked at least for now. Blood has been growing rapidly since twelve and today it's got forty million total users. About six of those are in China and the rest are outside China, mainly in countries

where there's a big Chinese speaking population. The Blued investor, David Chow, says the company is planning to diversify into new services that cater to LGBT consumers, and Blue Baby is the first. The idea came from Gungla's own life, because about four years ago he started looking seriously at becoming a father. He says he always liked kids and thought they were cute, but then he hit thirty five and he started to envy other people when he saw

them with their children. He wanted one of his own. There was a lot to figure out, like where it's even legal to have a child by stirring it. He also thought about what life might be like for his child, the child of a gay man in China. He said he thought about how the child might feel a lot of pressure, or experienced prejudice, or feel insecure unsafe. He said the child might feel that other people have mothers

but that he didn't. In fact, he told me a story about how, not long ago, while they were all at home together, his son called out for a mother that he just didn't know. Eventually, Gangla decided to go to California for surrogacy. He was hoping for twins, but only one baby came to term. Spent a month in l A, two weeks before the birth and two afterwards. He said the feeling of fatherhood never really hit him

until he held his son in his arms. It was then on that he really felt the rising combination of love and responsibility. Gungla's son now lives outside the city with his grandparents and his other dad, Gunglo's boyfriend, mostly because the air quality in the environment is better there. Gungla face times with his son and of course gets lots of photos and updates about what he's doing. Like lots of parents, he thinks his son is extremely smart and says maybe he'll go to school in the US

one day. Gungla says surrogacy is something really positive that's transformed his life, enlightened some of the pressures of being gay in China. It's also part of the reason he decided to start Blue Baby. Yeah. In December, I went to l A to visit HRC Fertility. It's one of

the clinics that Blued partners with in California. It has a refined, a beige reception area, and they get a lot of Chinese clients, which you can tell because there's so much Chinese being spoken, maybe more Chinese in English. I was there to meet a man named Russell who'd flown in from China to deposit seamen, which is the first step in having a baby by surrogate. I come

from Shahaiu, I have a partner. I'm out to everyone except that Perry Russell isn't one of Blue Babies clients, but he's just the sort of person gung La is hoping to serve. He's thirty seven and works in marketing for an international company. He also has his own marketing business on the side. Russell's parents still live in the small rural town where he grew up, and he says it's becoming an issue that they don't know he's gay. They don't understand why he's not settling down and starting

a family. Remember the marriage market in Shanghai we talked about. Because I'm getting older and older than the pressure is stronger and stronger from the family than just since recently, I think maybe it's a good idea, yeah, to have that baby. And also I personally I like babies too, so why not. So Also the reason I wanted to have a baby, well then because they have given me a lot of pressure. They want me to get married. So I'm thinking maybe I can just escape the step,

like escape marriage, just two babies. That's much easier for me. The path's becoming a gay parent is full of hurdles. For starters, it's incredibly expensive. Russell is budgeting two thousand dollars for the process, and that's about how much gun Las spent as well. Russell first looked into adoption but found it would be impossible for him as a single gay man in China. He has friends who've had babies by surrogate in Thailand, which would be cheaper, but it's

illegal there. So after doing some research, Russell found an agency called Los Angeles Surrogacy. For Russell, the next steps to find an egg donor and a sarrogate, but it will probably take another year before he becomes a father. You know, in terms of an egg dollar and in transma sorga, do you know what you're looking for? Do you know what you want? Um? I'm more I'm putting more attention to the paying more attention to the egg donor.

At the moment, I haven't thought about the next step, so I want to have a mixed baby since it's already a sarrogate baby, so I won't have a mixed and I would go forward dark hair because if the egg donor is a blonde girl, I'm sure that it's very likely that my baby is going to be like blonde. Then you know, in the future, I have this blond kid on the streets, there was where's your mother? And it's still obvious that he does. He's it's not my baby.

Blue Baby wants to make surrogacy easier and safer for the LGBT community, steering clients to places where surrogacy is legal and long established like California, employees connect clients with trusted providers and shepherd them through each step, choosing an egg donor choosing a surrogate, drawing up legal contracts. There are three employees in Los Angeles who pick up clients at the airport, book hotels and help get them around

the city. Blue Baby was launched less than two years ago, so it can't count any actual births yet, although some of its clients are pregnant, or rather the surrogates are pregnant. Blue Baby is also a test of how Blued can diversify its business into products and services that aren't necessarily online. For a mobile app and an online company, surrogacy is a very high touch business. See said that in comparison to the Internet side of his company, surrogacy is actually

a slow business. It's a service industry, but he wanted to do it anyway because he thinks he can help people and because it's a happy thing, even in saying that though it will turn a profit eventually. When David sat down with geng La, it was around the Chinese New Year, and he talked a lot about what's spurring

gay men from China to turn to surrogacy. H to my the Chinese New Year means heading home to visit family, and Gungla says it brings out all the pressures of being gay, pressures that parents and relatives feel as well. When an adult child comes home unmarried with no kids, it's hard for parents to face their friends too. He says. Bringing home his son the next generation of the family has repaired the heartache and the difficulties that his being

gay and coming out has meant for them. A lot of people I spoke to, including academics and doctors, as well as intended parents themselves, said the same thing. Having a child makes it easier for these men to come out to their families. I asked Russell whether this was part of his plan too. Do you think once you have baby, you'll tell your parents who come out to your hands. Well, that's a very good question. I'm not going to tell them. Maybe my kid would tell them

when he or she grow up. Russell is hoping for a girl after this long process, and he anticipates lots of challenges to raising his child. He thinks he might have to send her to an expensive international school because she'll be a US citizen and technically a foreigner in China, Russell isn't sure if he'll be able to get her the documents and permits needed to attend a regular Chinese school. He wonders how future classmates may react to her, and if she'll resent him for not being a normal dad

in a traditional family. How wuld how would your child be up? Said, they won't really, They'll just know what your family is like, and that's their family. They'll just accept it. Because the kid is going to face a lot of difficulties in school, and because it's not a normal family, he's not going to be treated equally as other kids. I know it's not going to be easy because our society is not ready for this kind of baby,

especially if we are gay couples. The plan eventually is for Blue to address this kind of worry with things like social kids groups on the app, where children of LGBT parents can bond free from the stigma they might face for having a non traditional family. Russell is also concerned that at any moment, the Chinese government could decide it's not going to look the other way anymore. And you know our government is very communist. You don't know

what they're going to do in the future. Maybe one day they were just to say, Okay, we have to stop this. You cannot do set babies in China, you cannot promote it. When we asked Don La and David Chow about that kind of risk, whether it's a crackdown on surrogacy or the gay community more broadly, they both said they aren't worried, and Blue certainly seems to be thriving. It's domestic business has turned to profit for the last two years, and Gun was now planning an I p

O so June. On the point about Bloods plans to to go public, did you get the sense that any part of those plans was related to putting the company on a sure of footing and insulate it from risk coming from the government. Not necessarily. I mean, if the government wants to crack down in China, they will um but one reason they may not is demographics. China's population is aging really rapidly, and having spent a long time trying to limit the population, I think the government is

now interested in boosting the birth rate. And even if these babies are born by surrogate, they're still babies. They're still boosting the birth rate. Given how expensive this procedure is, I wonder how many babies this you know, this avenue would actually yield. That's true. I mean it does seem incredibly expensive and complicated, you know, with the currency controls

in China and stuff like that. But some of the fertility experts that I talked to who have been to China on the kind of educational tours that Blood has put on to talk to gay men who are considering surrogacy said that often their parents are with them and this is such a strong it's so it's such a strong imperative to have children in China that these parents are just totally committed they're going to chip in and

help make it happen for their sons. Well, that was one of the big revelations for me working with you on this story. I had no idea that, um, it would help parents deal with their children's sexuality if they had a grandchild in the picture. Yeah, I mean I think it sort of just allows them to ignore it. I mean, who cares about their children's sexuality when they have a grandchilds Yeah, so did you meet any of Blue Babies clients, They wouldn't make any of their clients available.

I mean they said basically, they were all really worried about privacy, and um, I mean it's still not something that's really accepted in China. Um, it's not seen as normal, right, even even just surrogacy by straight people, right, So I think there's a lot of concerns around that. Um. I was able to talk to a surrogate who's working with a blue baby client and she's about to give birth any day now. Um, and that was cool. I mean it was kind of so we're gonna have a blued baby,

the first blue baby, any day now. And that's it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. We want to hear from you, so you can find me on Twitter at Dune Lawrence and I'm at Pia Gadkari, And please help us spread the word about on new season. You can leave us a rating and a review wherever you like to listen. This episode was produced by piaged Cary and Lindsay Cratiwell. Our story editor was Emily Busso. Thanks also to Ann vander May, aki Ito and Brad Stone.

Francesco Leavy is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week. M M. Hm