Suspicion of Abandoning Her Two Surrogacy Children in US, A Chinese Actress Has Become The Spotlight in China

A bomb exploded on Weibo, a Chinese social network, on the afternoon of December 18, 2020, Beijing time.

Zhang Heng, the ex-boyfriend of famous Chinese actress Zheng Shuang, claimed that the emotional dispute between him and Zheng Shuang was not as simple as what netizens had previously thought.

He released a photo with his two children, followed by a birth certificate of the two children in the United States. According to the exposure, the parents of both children are Zhang Heng and Zheng Shuang, and the birth dates of the two children are only one month apart. This suggests that both children are from surrogacy.

To make matters worse, a audio recording was later released anonymously, which was marked as a discussion between Zheng Shuang’s parents and Zhang Heng’s parents about their children. In this recording, Zheng Shuang’s parents talked about “induced abortion” many times, but after learning that this was against US law, they changed their strategy, hoping to “abandon them immediately after the birth of the children and let them adopt by someone else.”

Cdrama Tweets provides a brief English text version of the audio recording:

There are so many factors involved in the whole incident that there is a lot of debate on the Internet in China. NetEase Entertainment Channel’s report on the incident has been forwarded 210000 times on Weibo and garnered 244000 comments.

First, although abortion is a legal right for women in China, it is still considered extremely immoral to suggest a seven-month-surrogate mother to abort, and also very dangerous.

Secondly, surrogacy services are basically illegal in China. Although it may not be illegal for Chinese to buy surrogacy services overseas, it has been widely regarded by the public as extremely immoral in recent years. On this basis, the “abortion” mentioned by the people in the recording becomes “asking others to have an abortion”, which has nothing to do with women’s own reproductive rights and is pure oppression.

Finally, the tendency to abandon children in the recording is also cold-blooded.

According to other rumors, the US travel visa held by Zhang Heng is about to expire, and if Zheng Shuang continues to refuse to sign the necessary legal documents, the two children will not be able to return to China. The two children do not have any relatives in the United States and will be taken away by social welfare agencies.

This further reinforces Zheng Shuang’s moral flaw in the incident and collapses the image she has previously established in the entertainment industry.

The reason why this incident has caused an uproar on Chinese social networks is mainly because Zheng Shuang, the “heroine” of the incident, is one of China’s well-known female stars in recent years.

Born in 1991, Zheng Shuang made her debut as Shan Cai in Meteor Garden in 2009. After that, she starred in many TV series that were very popular in China. In 2019, she became a representative member of Youth4Climate and spoke on COP25. Since 2021, she has also become the spokesman of Prada in the Chinese market.

Her relationship with Zhang Heng began in August 2018. In December 2019, they officially broke up. She sued Zhang Heng the next month, claiming he was suspected of fraud and demanding 10 million yuan ($1.54 million) in compensation.

Zhang Heng was silent for nine months, then denied all the charges and hints in the news. Previously, many news had hinted that he was hiding in the United States to avoid charges of fraud.

But now, on January 18, 2021, Zhang Heng exposed the existence of the two children on social media and claimed that he stayed in the United States to prevent the child from being abandoned. This greatly changed the direction of the public opinion.

By the time this article was released, Zheng Shuang had not responded to the rumors.

Update: Zheng Shuang issued a statement at 13:30 on January 19, 2021, Beijing time. The statement said her lawsuit with Zhang Heng in China and the United States is continuing. She will not respond to the materials released by Zhang Heng and the information circulated on the Internet.

The following is the full text of the statement in English:

This is a very sad and private thing for me, and I didn’t want to talk about it in public. But the matter has been exposed step by step with ulterior motives. After thinking about it for a long time, I had to respond to it because I didn’t want to occupy the resources of public opinion.

My legal team in China and the United States has never given up protecting the legitimate rights and interests of me and my family since the year before last, nor has it given up communication and mediation with each other. However, in the legal proceedings in China, we have repeatedly rejected the blackmail of Zhang Heng, who threatened to expose privacy. In the legal process in the United States, I have also taken the lead in safeguarding my rights.

As a star, I am well aware of China’s importance to the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic. I do not violate the national policy on Chinese soil, and I respect all laws and regulations abroad.

If I have to explain all the unconfirmed information publicly, this is my most sincere answer.