AN UPDATE TO ‘BLOODY HARVEST’ & ‘THE SLAUGHTER’

Living transplants in mainland China differ from those in the rest of the world. In China, it is common practice to excise whole vital organs from living sources. A single kidney can be removed while still preserving the quality of the donor’s life, but extracting both kidneys, a heart, or a liver kills the donor.

Chinese hospitals and transplant centres often write about their capabilities in various forums – that’s why this Update is possible ­- yet the crucial medical distinction of whether the donor will live or die rarely appears in the literature. Instead Chinese transplant hospitals simply claim to have adequate supplies of young and healthy organ donors. Little distinction is made between extracting a single kidney (not necessarily lethal) and extracting a whole vital organ such as a liver.

Instead, it appears to be simply a matter of specialization. For example, Chinese Medical University’s China International Transplantation Network Assistance Centre (CITNAC) overseas website emphasized that “in China we carry out living donor kidney transplants. It is completely different from cadaver kidney transplants you hear about in Japanese hospitals and dialysis centers…Compared to cadaver kidney transplants in Japan, what is offered here is much safer and more reliable.”¹⁸⁹⁷

By contrast, the People’s Liberation Army Military General Hospital of Beijing’s Hepatobiliary Surgery Department claimed that they have established a fast and efficient channel to obtain excellent quality livers from the vicinity of Beijing and other cities and provinces.¹⁸⁹⁸

While the ultimate fate of the donors is rarely touched on, the health of the donor’s specific organ or organs is of great interest. In medical papers published by doctors from transplant hospitals, donors are often described as “free of hepatitis, fatty liver, malignant tumors and chronic disease; no long term medication history; and no history of alcohol consumption.” Most of these papers cited warm ischemia times (WIT) of less than 10 minutes with some even listed as 0 minutes. The majority of the organ sources were from cadavers, “brain-dead donors,” and “no-heartbeat cadavers.”

Zhang Xiaodong, director of the Kidney Transplant Center at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, said, “After the heart stops beating, the circulation stops, and this will cause organs to fail. The tolerable WIT is 3 to 4 minutes for hearts, 5 to 8 minutes for livers, 30 minutes for kidneys, and 24 hours for corneas.”¹⁸⁹⁹

Organs are transplantable only when the time and location of a donor’s death are known in advance and the organ procurement team is well prepared. Thus, vital organs from those who have died outside of a hospital (e.g. in car accidents or other trauma), would involve intolerable warm ischemia times and are not viable for transplant. In China, medical personnel usually go to the execution grounds to retrieve organs from prisoners right after execution.

Brain-dead organ donors have become the main source of transplant organs outside of China for decades, as such organs could have the shortest warm ischemia time possible. Because Chinese tradition requires bodies to be preserved intact after death, China has neither brain death legislation nor significant voluntary organ donation.

Xinhua News Agency reported in August, 2005 that among countries capable of transplantation, China is the only country without brain death legislation.¹⁹⁰⁰ As a result, 90% of Chinese doctors, as of August 22, 2014, were not aware of the criteria for verifying brain death.¹⁹⁰¹

The number of organs sourced from brain-dead donors in China is negligible. On July 25, 2006, Yangcheng Evening News published a report titled “The first successful lung transplant from a brain-dead donor.” Dr. Chen Zhonghua said, “Ms. Yang, a 39-year-old woman, is the first voluntary brain-dead organ donor in our country. … This is the first case that met international criteria for a brain-dead donor.”¹⁹⁰²

The Organ Donation Management Commission of China was established on August 1, 2006. Dr. Chen Zhonghua acted as the first Executive Chairman of the Organ Donation Management Commission of China.¹⁹⁰³ In July 2010, an article in the Organ Transplantation journal claimed that “since 2001, when Dr. Chen Zhonghua and his team began promoting organ sourcing for transplants from the brain dead, there have been over 60 successful organ donations after brain death in China.”¹⁹⁰⁴

Donations after cardiac death (DCD) were another commonly listed organ source in China’s transplant centers. Warm ischemia times of 0 to 5 minutes with “no-heartbeat cadavers” have become a standard practice of Chinese transplant doctors.

The Tianjin Medical Journal reported in 2009 that, between 2004 and 2008, the Tianjin Organ Transplant Center had excised 1,600 livers.¹⁹⁰⁵ Based on that, Shen Zhongyang, director of the center, created a surgical procedure for extracting livers from non-heart beating cadavers which could keep the warm ischemia time to 5 minutes or less. This procedure has been adopted widely in China.¹⁹⁰⁶

Liu Yongfeng, director of China Medical University’s Institute of Organ Transplantation, also created a rapid, comprehensive excision technique for abdominal organs, which he claimed could reduce both organ damage and warm ischemic time. It is a widely-used excision technique in many hospitals in China.¹⁹⁰⁷

According to Chen Zhonghua, between 2003 and August 2009, only 130 citizens successfully donated their organs after death in mainland China.¹⁹⁰⁸ The liver sources used by the Tianjin Organ Transplant Center alone have exceeded the number of citizen organ donations in all of China.

Here are two examples on how the China’s transplant doctors excise organs with a short warm ischemia time.

The Henan Medical Research journal published an article by the doctors of the Armed Police Corps Hospital of Henan in 2003 (Volume 12, Issue 2) titled “Experience of an orthotopic heart transplant,” which describes the key points of an organ procurement as follows: ¹⁹⁰⁹

• “The key to donor heart procurement is systemic heparinization (2mg/kg)”;
• “To irrigate the aortic root with cold cardioplegic solution to stop the heart, and cut the superior vena cava 4cm above the right atrium…speedily delivering the donor heart to the operating room.”
• “The warm ischemia time of the donor heart was 3 minutes, and the cold ischemia time was 85 minutes.”

From the description of this procurement operation, we can see:

• The donor’s heart was stopped with the irrigation of cardioplegic solution after opening the chest. This is corroborated by the 3-minute warm ischemia time.
• The 85-minute cold ischemia time indicates that the donor organ procurement and transplant into the recipient took place at the same location.

Xijing Hospital, affiliated with the Fourth Medical Military University, performed a combined heart-lung transplant on May 26, 2008. The procurement process was described as follows:¹⁹¹⁰

After being declared a “brain-dead patient,” the donor was intubated. During intubation, “secretions of the nose and mouth were quickly cleared away, to prevent the regurgitated material from being inhaled.” This implies that the donor was breathing spontaneously at the time.

The discharge of residual blood from the heart was accomplished by its automatic beating; the heart “emptied after several cardiac cycles.” This indicates that the donor’s heart was beating automatically at the time. The warm ischemia time for the heart and lung(s) were 5 minutes, and the cold ischemia time was 100 minutes, indicating that the organ donor and the recipient were located in the same place.

One thing that should be pointed out here is the order in which the donor was declared brain-dead and intubated. Clearly, the purpose of intubation was not to resuscitate the donor but rather for the purpose of excising organs from a living body.

In the end, the authors claimed that they had conducted 38 procurements in the same methods. That implies at least 38 living organ “sources” had been killed this way in Xijing Hospital this way by 2008.

The clinical requirements for declaring brain death requires three conditions, all of which must be present: deep coma, lack of brainstem reflexes, and lack of automatic breathing. Directly “diagnosing” brain death without intubation and resuscitation violates medical ethics.

These excision procedures are corroborated by sample warm ischemia time data from medical publications around China, as listed below:

In Chinese medical papers, the descriptions of cornea donors share great similarities with those for livers and kidneys. Most often, the donor is a “young adult” who had suffered a “sudden death.” The cornea(s) were taken between 10 minutes and a few hours after death. Below are some examples:

The attribution of so many organs to young adults after sudden deaths raises questions. What caused the deaths? How was news of the deaths communicated to various hospitals in such a short time? What unknown procedure enabled the hospitals to harvest “fresh” organs so soon after the deaths? Or does the phrase “young adults after sudden deaths” refer to executions as well?

According to a regulation issued by the Chinese Ministry of Health,¹⁹²⁵ once a kidney is removed from a body, it must be transplanted within 24 hours. The time limit for livers and hearts are 15 hours and 6 hours, respectively. Ideally, the donor organ should be transplanted immediately after the donor’s death, or directly taken from a living donor.

Emergency liver transplants are surprisingly common as this report from the Dalian Evening News recounts:¹⁹²⁶ On July 12, 2003, a 50-year-old Taiwanese named Liu Dongquan was admitted to the Organ Transplant Center of the Second Hospital of Dalian Medical University. The next day, the patient fell into a coma and needed an immediate liver transplant. Two days later (on the 15^th), a matched liver was found in Tangshan, Hebei Province. On July 18 at 4:50 pm, the liver was transported to Dalian. At 5:30 p.m., Liu was moved to an operating room. Five hours later, the liver was successfully transplanted into Liu’s body. A liver’s cold ischemia time should not exceed 15 hours. For a transplant which occurred on July 18, the liver found on July 15 must have been in the body of a living person at the time; otherwise, the liver would have become unusable by the time it was transported to Dalian on July 18.

On the night of February 6, 2012, the head of Chongqing’s Public Security Bureau got in a car and drove to the American consulate in Chengdu, looking for asylum. The man was Wang Lijun, one of the most high-profile law enforcement officials in China, in part because he had been hand-picked and promoted by Bo Xilai, a dark-horse contender for the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and potentially the top Party leadership. What interests us in this update is the specific medical innovations that took place under Wang Lijun’s command.^{1927 1928}

In May 2003, Wang Lijun was transferred by Liaoning Governor Bo Xilai to Jinzhou as police commissioner. Wang does not have a medical background, but soon after he took up the position, he established an “On-Site Psychological Research Center” located under the Jinzhou Public Security Bureau. He worked for 29 universities and research institutions with such titles as a part-time professor, Ph.D. advisor, and chairman.¹⁹²⁹

On September 17, 2006, in his acceptance speech for an award of two million RMB for the “Guanghua Innovation Special Contribution Award,” Wang stated that “our scientific and technological achievements in the field are the crystallization of the thousands of intensive on-site tests and the efforts of many of our people … to those who have served in the police force for many years, when we see a person go to the place of execution and in a matter of minutes this person’s life is transformed and extended into the lives of other people, it is soul-stirring. This is a momentous undertaking.”¹⁹³⁰

Ren Jinyang, Secretary-General of the Guanghua Foundation, further remarked, “Professor Wang Lijun and the research center carried out basic research and clinical experiments to solve the problem of recipients’ body rejecting the extracted organs for transplant after lethal injections. They researched and developed a brand new protective solution, which is used to provide a perfusion treatment for livers and kidneys both in vivo and in vitro. Through animal experiments, in vitro experiments, and clinical application, they have made step-by-step scientific success in making it possible for an organ to be accepted by the recipient.”¹⁹³¹

In September 2004, Sanlian Life Weekly contained an article titled “Tianjin Survey: ‘Asia’s Number One’ in Organ Transplantation,”¹⁹³² in which the head medical resident at Tianjin Oriental Organ Transplant Center, Zhang Yamin, said that donor organ procurement is costly, that a single organ perfusion preservation solution is not a small expenditure, and that every major organ requires four bags of preservation solution at 5,000 RMB each. At the beginning, there were no domestic manufacturers of perfusion solutions, so they had to use preservation solutions brought back from Japan, bag by bag, by Shen Zhongyang.

Wang Lijun’s drug experimentation with living subjects included improving medication for lethal injections to reduce complications from rejection responses after organ extraction and transplantation, as well as improving organ preservation solutions.

In June 2005, an example of his research was reported by Liao Shen Evening News as “the entire process of lethal injections in executed prisoners,” which was intended to help more people understand the research.¹⁹³³ At 5:00 am on June 9, 2005, in Cuijiatun in the Jinzhou City Economic and Technological Development Zone, a field experiment and study was carried out with a lethal injection. A researcher gave an introduction:

“Through the entire process of a convict’s death via lethal injection, the healthy person’s vital signs will be measured before and after the injection, the amount of poison residue in various organs afterwards, the prisoner’s psychological changes when facing death … this data will provide important help to organ transplantation after death by lethal injection and other aspects of human organ transplantation. Whether in China or abroad, this is cutting-edge research.”

The reporter described the experts gathered at the execution site as if they were staff of a research laboratory. The reporter referred to Wang Lijun as director of the Psychological Research Center. The reporter also listed professor and doctoral advisor Xi Huanjiu, the dean of Jinzhou Medical College, and other experts in medicine, criminal investigation, and psychology. They were described as conducting psychological analyses and clinical research on reportedly violent criminals who received the lethal injections.

According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce website, “Jinzhou Public Security Bureau’s On-Site Psychological Research Center” works with over ten universities and medical institutions, among which are the China Criminal Police College, Peking University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Northeastern University of Finance and Economics, China Medical University, Jinzhou Medical School and the People’s Liberation Army No. 205 Military Hospital. It is dedicated to live psychological research and techniques. It also collaborated with universities in more than ten countries in joint research and academic exchanges, including the United States, Japan, Italy, Norway, and Sweden.¹⁹³⁴

Wang Lijun also presided over a major project on atraumatic dissection in the Asia-Pacific region.¹⁹³⁵ The Swiss Virtual Dissection Foundation, the Tribunal Science Institute of University of Bern in Switzerland, Medical University of Graz in Austria, China Medical University, Jinzhou Medical College, and the People’s Liberation Army No. 205 hospital all took part in this project.

Between 2003 and 2008, Wang Lijun carried out thousands of what were effectively live human experiments. This raises questions both as to how Jinzhou, a third-tier city with a population of less than 900,000, had thousands of executed prisoners available for these experiments, and whether the prisoners were actually conventional death-row convicts.

Wang Lijun was transferred to Chongqing City in June 2008, and served as deputy mayor and the police commissioner of Chongqing City. During this period, he established the On-Site Psychology Research Center in Southwest University, and acted as its director, professor, and doctoral advisor. He continuously intensified the study on atraumatic dissection.

On August 27, 2014, Beijing Youth Daily reported that Wang Lijun had been awarded 254 patents in his office in Chongqing, 211 of which were submitted in 2011, an average of one application every 1.7 days. The report also mentioned a high-tech product called the “Primary Brain Stem Injury Impact Apparatus.”¹⁹³⁶

The patent’s inventors were Wang Lijun and the fourth laboratory of the Field Research Institute of Surgery in Daping Hospital, affiliated with the Third Military Medical University. They published a paper in Trauma Surgery in 2008 Issue 2, entitled “Finite Element Simulation and its Clinical Significance of Traumatic Brain Injury Caused by Temporal Impact in the Quasistatic State.”¹⁹³⁷

The paper claimed that the purpose of this study was to “Establish a simulation of a traumatic brain injury caused by a temporal impact … discuss the biomechanics of brain injuries caused by a temporal impact…results: the pressure at the hit point of the temporal bone and intracranial pressure increased with increased hit velocity…the results of the simulation matched the results of the biological experiment…this study has important significance for the diagnosis and prevention of brain injuries caused by temporal impacts.”

The paper referred to a software simulation in which this process would be explored, to provide data for real-world scenarios. The paper also set out an experiment, stating that until October 2007, twelve corpse heads were used for the impact tests. All of the subjects for the experiments were male, age 26-38, with an average age of 31. However, the overall purpose of the study seems contrary to its claim of saving lives. Instead, it studies injuries to the brain at different levels, (following injuries resulting from violent impacts to the primary brain stem, victims are left with various levels of cognitive and sensory motor dysfunctions, which can lead to respiratory and circulatory malfunctions that can be life-threatening¹⁹³⁸) which could be used to determine how best to kill; an impact to the temple that is placed just right can cause brain stem injury, loss of consciousness, and even brain death. The heart is still beating, and various organs and tissues continue to live. This impact is an effective alternative to lethal injection while maintaining organ function and reducing rejection responses.

In the China Patent Search System, we can find the “primary brain stem injury impact apparatus” ¹⁹³⁹ under patent number 201120542042X (pictured below); the inventors are Wang Lijun and the same authors of the paper who conducted the impact experiment on the 12 heads. The instructions also claim that the device has a “simple structure, is easy to produce, and adapted to promote the application.” The protection of utility model patents is ten years from the filing date in China. It is odd that this patent application was submitted on December 11, 2011 and published in August 2012, but its current legal status shows that the patent was terminated in February 2016.

On November 19, 2005, “Bodies: The Exhibition” opened in Manhattan, New York City, sponsored by Premier Exhibitions. On display were 22 skinless corpses and 260 real human organ specimens that had tissue fluid extracted and silicone pumped into them.

One piece of the exhibit features a young mother and her unborn baby. According to Chinese law, pregnant women cannot be sentenced to capital punishment. Who would donate the remains of his unfortunate wife and unborn child to a paid exhibition? Where did these human specimens come from? How did they become exhibits?

This exhibition tours the world and has been shown in New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and elsewhere for long period of time. In 2006, the New York Times reported that the exhibition has attracted more than 20 million viewers. According to the organizers, the human specimens were provided by Dalian Medical University in China and produced using body plastination technology invented by Gunther von Hagens. Sui Hongjin, the deputy director of the Anatomy Department of Dalian Medical University and general manager of the plastination company of Dalian Medical University, explained that “no one can recognize their identities.”¹⁹⁴⁰

Body plastination technology uses silicon, epoxy, and other polymer mixtures to replace the fluid in the human body.¹⁹⁴¹ Other than the plastination technology itself, the bottleneck in creating specimens is the availability of fresh human corpses. According to forensic medicine, the “fresh period” for a human body is two days.¹⁹⁴²

In June 2002, Sui Hongjin (deputy director of the Anatomy Department at Dalian Medical University), with another partner, opened a company named “Dalian Medical University Biology Plastination Ltd.” In 2004, Sui registered another company named “Dalian Hongfeng Biology Ltd.” Its main business is human body specimen manufacturing and exhibition.

Sui Hongjin could receive fresh corpses from a variety of local sources. The drive from Wang Lijun’s transplant operation in Jinzhou City to Dalian is about four hours. Wang Lijun was, as noted, a protégé and right hand man to Bo Xilai. Bo was the mayor of Dalian from 1993 to 2000, In 2000 and 2001, Deputy Secretary of the Liaoning Province Party Committee, then Acting Governor of Liaoning Province, then Governor in 2002. During this time, he invested one billion RMB to carry out prison expansion and reconstruction throughout the province, and to build new large-scale prison facilities.¹⁹⁴³ In the vicinity of Sui Hongjin’s corpse factories, there are Liaoning Province No. 3 Prison, Dalian Nanguanling Prison, Dalian Labour Camp, and Yaojia Detention Center.

On November 27, 2003, a cover article named “Corpse Factory Investigation” published in the second issue of Orient Outlook¹⁹⁴⁴ reported that, in addition to the companies operated by von Hagens and Sui Hongjin in Dalian, there were plastination specimen plants in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Tai’an and elsewhere, and that China had become the world’s largest exporter of human specimens. On August 23, 2012, Southern Metropolis Daily reported that mainland China has several dozen manufacturers engaged in human plastination.

Trafficking in human cadavers has become a business. Plastinated specimens are publicly priced and traded. The Government of China calls for bids on such trades. Here are some examples:

Guangzhou Medical College, whole plastinated human body specimens project

【Tender No: PSP-GZ-0106115】

Tender Date: December 1, 2006, to December 13, 2006 scaling.

Goods name: systemic nerves, arteries and veins (one side superficial and contralateral deep) and systemic nerves (central nervous system and peripheral nerves) plastinated human body specimens

Transaction Supplier: Dalian Medical University Biology Plastination Co.

Turnover: RMB one hundred thirty-five thousand yuan (¥: 135,000.00 yuan)

Purchaser: Teacher Luo in Guangzhou Medical College

Procurement agency name: Miss Shan in Guangzhou Alliance & Procurement Tender Agency Ltd.

Mudanjiang Medical College, teaching specimens and human services bid announcement ¹⁹⁴⁵

【Mudanjiang city government Web site – government procurement】

Tenders Date: June 30, 2011

Bid announcement: February 15, 2012

The successful supplier list: Dalian Hongfeng Biology Technology Co., Ltd.

The bid price: 997,000 yuan

Tenderer Name: Mudanjiang Municipal Government Procurement Center

Contact: Mr. Feng, Mr. Teng

Sui Hongjin’s Dalian Medical University Biology Plastination Ltd. is active in China’s educational equipment procurement network, to which it sells plastinated specimens of the human digestive system, nervous system, embryonic development, endocrine system, genitourinary (reproductive and urinary organs) system, respiratory system, sensory organs, and everything else, including “fetuses [of] 10 weeks to 32 weeks.” The company also offers negotiable product prices.¹⁹⁴⁶

On May 17, 2006, a college student in northeastern China wrote to Minghui.org:¹⁹⁴⁷

“Our tiny, amateurish medical college in Changchun somehow has more bodies and organ specimens than Waseda University in Tokyo. How is it possible that we have accumulated so many corpses and organ specimens in recent years after the Cultural Revolution? I asked the teacher whether these bodies were donated, but the teacher told me not to ask. Later I discovered that in the suburban district of Changchun there is a corpse processing plant. Today in China, do we really have so many cadavers from voluntary donors, so many that we need corpse plants? Bodies of infants and young children are also processed there. Are the Chinese parents really so ‘noble’ as to donate the remains of their own deceased infants?”

Dalian Hongfeng Biology Technology Co., Ltd’s body exhibition in Europe was called The Human Body. From February 2 to July 31, 2012, 200 real human body specimens were on display in Dublin, Ireland.¹⁹⁴⁸ Additional exhibits were scheduled that year simultaneously in other European countries: February 24 to May 27 in Budapest, Hungary, where more than 150 complete corpses and body parts were exhibited.¹⁹⁴⁹ From March 10 to June 10, The Human Body was on display in Prague, Czech Republic.¹⁹⁵⁰ From June 16 to September 9, The Human Body visited Ostend, Belgium.¹⁹⁵¹

For the nine years, between 2004 and 2013, Sui Hongjin’s several exhibits toured more than 60 cities in more than 20 countries. The number of visitors topped 35 million.¹⁹⁵² In 2005, “Bodies—The Exhibition” in the U.S. had become the main source of earnings for Sui’s partner, Premier Exhibitions.

When asked about the “corpse source” by a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily, Sui Hongjin, Chairman of Dalian Hongfeng Biology Technology Co., Ltd and director of the Anatomy Department of Dalian Medical University, declared, “The bodies are from [Dalian] Medical University autopsies. The source of origin is indicated as ‘body without record.’”¹⁹⁵³

According to regulations and autopsy rules issued by China’s Ministry of Health on February 22, 1979, undocumented corpses remaining unclaimed after a month can be used by medical colleges after the approval of a competent authority or the police department.¹⁹⁵⁴ Undocumented corpses must be embalmed if they are to be stored beyond a month before use. Otherwise, in 10 to 23 days after death, the body will have only hair, skin, cartilage and bone left intact.¹⁹⁵⁵

The corpses used in the body exhibits had been plastinated within two days of death.¹⁹⁵⁶ The corpses used by Sui Hongjin could not have been undocumented corpses. In August 2012, Sui Hongjin concurred in the Southern Metropolis Daily, “From the first day when Dalian Hongfeng was established, no plastinated specimen we have offered came from death row, there is no one,” and “At present, none of our plastinated human specimens are from donors.” “They come from people who have died in hospital and no one has claimed the bodies.”¹⁹⁵⁷

In 2008, at the request of the Attorney General of New York State Premier Exhibitions posted a disclaimer¹⁹⁵⁸ on the exhibition’s official website and at the New York exhibition site, citing “Dalian Hongfeng” as the source of human body specimens:

“This exhibit displays full body cadavers as well as human body parts, organs, fetuses and embryos that come from cadavers of Chinese citizens or residents. With respect to the human parts, organs, fetuses and embryos you are viewing, Premier relies solely on the representations of its Chinese partners and cannot independently verify that they do not belong to persons executed while incarcerated in Chinese prisons.”

Below is the translation of a transcript of a call made to Sui Hongjin by an investigator from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong.¹⁹⁵⁹ The investigator assumed the identity of a Party investigator and asked Sui about his business operations, including the provenance of the corpses. The call was made in late 2012, a period of great political uncertainty in China, not long after the purge of Bo Xilai. Investigations were being launched into many of Bo’s former colleagues, as well as his wife, Gu Kailai. These conditions would have helped to give Sui Hongjin the impression that he was speaking to a Party disciplinary investigator.

Investigator: What channels served as your main source of bodies?

Sui Hongjin: Dozens of corpses came from Public Security. They were procured by the Public Security Bureau.

Investigator: Then they are from the police. How many cadavers have you received thus far?

Sui Hongjin: I can’t remember now, perhaps dozens…if you come in person to investigate, I will discuss the matter with you. It’s not convenient to talk on the phone.

Investigator: Which Public Security Bureau supplied you?

Sui Hongjin: Dalian, the Dalian Public Security Bureau.

Investigator: So the source of the dead bodies you used was from the Public Security Bureau. Do you know where they got them?

Sui Hongjin: They … how do I put it, this was in 2004, there was once an internal report, a report to the Ministry of Public Security … because for some specific subjects, I only ask for a result. I cannot ask for too much detail … because I know this is a sensitive matter. I’m willing to cooperate with your investigation … if necessary, I can be interviewed, if you need a signed statement, that is not a problem. I stand by what I say.

On July 17, 2006, nine Ministries of the Government of China jointly issued the “exit and entry of corpse and cadaver disposal regulations,” prohibiting cadaver trading and the use of dead bodies for commercial activities. The regulations became effective on August 1, 2006.¹⁹⁶⁰

Sui Honjin’s human specimen business was not affected by the regulations. Instead, it began to grow and thrive. On November 23, 2010, Dalian TV reported, “Dalian Hongfeng Biological Technology Co., Ltd. Conducts business with more than 100 world-famous museums and its annual revenue has reached more than 200 million yuan.”¹⁹⁶¹

On December 15, 2008, Dalian Hongfeng Biological Technology Co., Ltd. was selected by the Dalian Municipal Government as one of the “high-tech enterprises” to receive tax incentives. In May 2009, Dalian Hongfeng opened its “Mystery of Life Museum” to the public, touted as “the only comprehensive museum in the world where the first signs of life can be seen.” According to Sui Hongjin, the “exhibition center was funded and supported by the Ministry of Finance and the China Association for Sciences; it was held in high regard and received support from various ministries and provincial and municipal leaders.”¹⁹⁶²