Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan were charged with conspiracy for allegedly directing nannies to abuse 14 children in their care
By Katherine Long
A Chinese-born couple who paid a nationwide web of surrogates to bear close to two dozen children for them were arrested Tuesday in what Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman called an "unprecedented case of child abuse."
Hochman alleged that Silvia Zhang and Guojun Xuan conspired to commit child abuse by authorizing nannies caring for 14 babies and toddlers in the couple's Arcadia, Calif., mansion to beat and physically punish the children, sometimes directing the abuse. Xuan was also charged with one count of child abuse, and both he and Zhang were additionally charged with dissuading witnesses.
Mitchell Krems, a lawyer for Xuan, said the-child abuse allegations were "patently false" and that Xuan had been unfairly scrutinized. An attorney for Zhang didn't immediately return a request for comment.
Child-protective agencies took custody of the couple's children in May 2025, when Xuan and Zhang were initially arrested on suspicion of child abuse after bringing one of their infants to the hospital with a head injury.
All told, Xuan and Zhang had more than 22 children, mostly through surrogacy, the Wall Street Journal previously reported.
Several women were pregnant with the couple's children at the time of their arrests last year. To recruit women to carry their children, Xuan and Zhang established a surrogacy agency to handle the pregnancies, but didn't tell some surrogates that they owned the company and had other children, according to surrogates who worked for the couple along with messages and documents reviewed by the Journal.
Krems declined to confirm how many children the couple have in total, and disputed that the couple had deceived their surrogates.
Why the couple used surrogacy to have so many children, as well as the identities of the children's biological parents, remain under investigation, Hochman said Tuesday. Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation also executed search warrants at the couple's Arcadia home as part of a separate ongoing investigation, he said.
In an interview last year with the Journal, Zhang said that she wanted to have many children because she grew up amid China's one-child policy, which she found restrictive. The couple often used Xuan's sperm and a donor egg to conceive the children, documents reviewed by the Journal showed.
Xuan also wanted to have a large family, Krems said. "My client is coming from communist China where there's a restriction on how many kids he can have. He came to the U.S. to exercise his civil liberties."
Much of the district attorney's evidence in the case is footage recovered from 32 closed-circuit cameras stationed throughout the house, according to the complaint, which referenced recordings showing nannies and Xuan beating the children.
At the couple's arraignment Tuesday, the district attorney intends to seek bail of $100 million, Hochman said, citing the couple's wealth and the risk they could flee the country. Xuan and Zhang ran a real-estate company called Yudao Management with extensive holdings around Los Angeles, which they operated with a group of businessmen based in China, according to former employees, business filings and court records in legal proceedings involving the company.