Written by Will Lewis

The U.S. is the world’s leading exporter of sperm.

According to an ABC News report, as of 2005 American sperm banks controlled over 65 percent of the global market.

This places Americans in a prime location for the import of another commodity: greenbacks, bones, dollars—money.

The business is estimated at $100 million per annum and growing, sans pun.

In other countries, however, troubled waters are swirling, and the sperm donation business is struggling for a foothold. In 2001, the Chinese Ministry of Health began allowing sperm banks to open. Today, there are currently 17 locations across the eastern giant that allows donations.

However, strict guidelines and a social taboo against diddling yourself make the acquiring of spunk difficult.

In China, to donate sperm the little swimmers must roll at least 60 million deep per millimeter to qualify. The World Health Organization defines that as three times the sperm count of the “average healthy male.”

Beyond that, donors must be between the ages of 22 and 45 and cannot lead a homosexual lifestyle or be a foreigner.

The heavy restrictions severely limit the amount of donors and created a nine-month waiting period for hopeful parents.

With approximately 40 million Chinese diagnosed as infertile, the infertility rate has risen three percent in the last 20 years.

If the red tape weren’t enough to stall your fertilization celebration, avid Chinese reader, then the social taboo that the general public place upon artificial insemination might just do the trick.

In an article with the “China Daily Wang Jian, a Chinese graduate student, expressed his reluctance to let his family know about his donation. He fears that they “will kill me for letting a stranger use the precious family seed.”

Misquoting Jane Austen, it is a universally acknowledged truth that a single man in possession of little fortune must be in want of a pay check.

If that man happened to be a young American student, his family would most likely admonish him with little more than a stern look.

There might be a quick request for the topic to not be discussed at dinner. Hopefully, no one was drinking milk.