LA clinic seeks to access Chinese fertility market

A Los Angeles reproductive clinic is looking to tap a demographic of affluent Chinese women by promoting its egg-freezing treatment on Alibaba's group-buying website Juhuasuan.

Southern California Reproductive Center (SCRC) is currently in talks with Juhuasuan about bringing Chinese women to the United States for treatment, following the Chinese website's recent successful sperm-donation program that connected more than 22,000 donors with sperm banks through online booking three days last month.

The attempt by Alibaba shows that there's great potential to develop O2O (online-to-offline) commerce in medical and health care areas, said Su Yu, marketing specialist with Juhuasuan.

"We are now doing research and hope for cooperation [with SCRC] when everything is ready," he told China Daily.

The Hangzhou-based website has taken a cautious approach amid a national debate over women's reproductive rights after Chinese actress Xu Jinglei disclosed she had nine of her eggs frozen in the US two years ago at the age of 39.

Under Chinese law, only married women with infertility problems or cancer are allowed to have their eggs frozen because of concerns about egg trafficking.

Besides the legal considerations, medical experts are concerned about the potential risks to women's health.

The safety and effectiveness of the procedure have not been clear in China, because it is still in the clinical research stage, according to the maternal and child health services department of China's National Health and Family Planning Commission.

The practice has been performed in China for less than 10 years and only on a small scale, Li Rong, a doctor with the reproductive center of Peking University Third Hospital, told the Beijing Morning Post. The center conducts no more than 100 egg-freezing treatments every year.