The biological Chinese mother of a boy born via surrogate in Japan and her son is pictured here in Hong Kong on April 26, 2016. (Mainichi)

Relatives of senior Chinese Communist Party officials have taken advantage of underground surrogacy businesses based in Tokyo to have children with Japanese citizenship to secure a way to protect their assets and escape China in the event such drastic moves become necessary, they have told the Mainichi Shimbun.

After negotiations with a Chinese surrogacy broker that took nearly six months, the Mainichi was able to meet with a Beijing resident in her 30s in Hong Kong's Central financial district, her 2-year-old son in tow. The boy, who comes from a wealthy family in China, was born via surrogate in Japan and holds Japanese citizenship.

"I was resistant toward surrogacy, because it felt like I was using my family as a tool," his mother said. "But nobody could defy the orders of (my husband's) uncle."

The woman says her husband is on the board of a trading firm, and his uncle holds senior positions in both the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government. And it was that uncle who instructed the woman to go to Japan to arrange for surrogacy, saying, "If there's someone in the family with Japanese citizenship, it'll make it easier for us to flee there if China collapses."

"The higher up in the Communist Party someone is, the less likely they are to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the country," the woman said with a wry smile.

In the world of Tokyo's underground surrogacy business, based in Shinjuku Ward's Kabukicho district, the child's biological parents are the Chinese couple who request surrogacy. In the official Japanese koseki family registry, however, the Chinese surrogate mother in Japan who gives birth to the child is listed as the child's mother, while a third-party Japanese man -- named by a broker -- is listed as the child's father. With one Japanese parent, the child is able to hold Japanese citizenship.

Having a family member who has Japanese citizenship means it is possible for that member's Chinese family to safely transfer their assets to Japan, and easier for the Chinese family members to buy and sell real estate as well as establish companies in Japan. It also facilitates the transfer of people and assets to a third country, such as the United States.

In May 2013, the woman met the Chinese surrogate living in Japan in Kabukicho. She shook hands with the surrogate and said only that she hoped the woman would bear her a healthy child. Learning that many women became surrogates because they are heavily in debt, the woman said she felt sorry for the surrogate, saying, "She was young and cute."

The surrogacy broker contacted the woman in April 2014 with news that the surrogate had given birth, but the woman experienced no special emotion about having become a mother. But when she traveled from Beijing to a child care center in the Kanto region in May last year to pick up the child, she found that the boy closely resembled her husband. She said, "It made me realize that no matter the process through which the child came into this world, he's still family." But that also meant she now faced a serious quandary.

"We don't want to confuse our son, so we're not going to tell him that he was born via surrogate. But in the case of an emergency in which the family has to rely on Japan (using the boy's citizenship), my husband and I have discussed that we'll explain the situation to him and apologize."

On the top floor of a five-story building in Tokyo's Shimbashi district on June 11, the Mainichi interviewed a fortysomething Chinese man who had had his biological son via surrogate in Japan. After about an hour, when the Mainichi asked to see his child's bank account balance, the man raised his voice, saying, "What are you talking about? That's personal asset information."

After some negotiation, he agreed to access the internet banking account on the condition that the Mainichi would only release a round figure. His smartphone showed that there was over 2 billion yen in the account of a toddler not yet 2 years old. Moreover, the man said the money in the account was only a portion of the assets that his family had dispersed around the world.

Asked whether the account would raise red flags among Japanese authorities, he snorted, saying, "There are understanding people at financial institutions, so we're fine." Chinese authorities, too, can't do much about the bank accounts of children with Japanese citizenship, whose ties to their biological Chinese parents are difficult to trace.

Japanese financial institutions are obligated to report suspicious transactions that may be linked to illegal activity to the Financial Services Agency (FSA). But according to a source at a major Japanese bank, in practice, the decision to report certain activity is left to the discretion of the branches of banks that manage the specific accounts. If a branch determines that certain transactions have no ties to crimes, they are not reported to the FSA.

The U.S. is the most famous destination for Chinese defectors, but according to the aforementioned Chinese man, "Japan is more lax in a lot of ways, so it's easier."

(Continued in Part 2)