The facility operated without a permit, implanting up to 300 human embryos per year in surrogate mothers paid for the service. Birth rates become a major emergency in China.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - Health authorities in Beijing have shut down an illegal clinic that provided each year about 300 human embryos to surrogate mothers hired by wealthy couples unable to have children. The facility had no legal or medical permit to operate.

The scandal broke out when a report by China Central Television triggered an investigation into the case. Law enforcement officers, along with health, food and drug regulators, carried out a raid at the Hong Kong Fuchen Group on Monday morning.

The 'clinic' had been operating without a license for at least six years, providing reproductive assistance to couples. In the last four years, business had grown to about 300 embryos per year, said Song Hongbo, a salesman for the group.

Although named after Hong Kong, there appear to be no connection between the clinic and the territory since its president hails from Suihua, in Heilongjiang. "There are a lot of fake things in this business, even the names," Song said. Although "We are registered as a hospital," he explained, "we do not have any qualifications to conduct this assisted reproductive technique".

The downtown office that was closed served mainly to sign people up for the service, which was then conducted at a separate and undisclosed clinic.

The company had been openly recruiting egg donors and surrogate mothers online, with a promise payment of hundreds of thousands of yuan. The whole process reportedly cost 1 million yuan (US$ 160,000), or 1.2 million if a couple insisted on having a boy. Surrogate mothers would get 170,000 to 230,000 yuan.

In China, assisted reproductive techniques are allowed only in approved hospitals, but the use of in-vitro fertilisation technology to implant embryos into surrogate mothers is banned.

The country's infamous one-child policy and parents' traditional preference for boys-who carry on the family name and take care of elderly parents-have made China overcrowded with males who will never marry.

Since the state is in charge of retirement programmes and health care, the situation has set off alarm bells in various strata of the population, who are demanding ever more strongly an end to one-child policy.

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