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

The Government of China changed its official position on organ sources numerous times. As early as 2001, a doctor from China testified at the United States Congress¹⁹⁶³ that the Government of China was using organs from executed prisoners without consent. The Government denied this claim until July 2005, when Huang Jiefu, then-Deputy Minister of Health, stated at the World Organ Transplant Conference that most transplant organs in China were obtained from executed prisoners.¹⁹⁶⁴

On March 9, 2006, a woman with the pseudonym Annie made a public statement that there had been large-scale harvesting of organs in China sourced from living Falun Gong practitioners.¹⁹⁶⁵ Three weeks later, spokesperson Qin Gang for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded, “it is a lie to claim that organs are being taken from executed prisoners without their consent.”¹⁹⁶⁶ In April 2006, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Health, Mao Qunan, claimed that the “main source of organs in mainland China is voluntary donations from citizens at death” and denied China’s exploitation of death-row prisoners’ organs for transplantation.¹⁹⁶⁷

Nine months later, in January 2007, Mao Qunan stated that China was actually using organs from executed prisoners for transplantation. Since then, the Government has maintained that these organs come from executed prisoners. In December 2008, Huang Jiefu published an article in The Lancet, entitled “Government Policy and Organ Transplantation in China,” stating that over 90% of the organs are sourced from death-row prisoners.¹⁹⁶⁸

Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television, a station authorized by the Government of China to broadcast in mainland China, reported in March 2015 an interview with Huang Jiefu.¹⁹⁶⁹ The Government used this channel to subtly revise its stance on the “too sensitive” issue of organ sourcing. In answering a reporter’s question regarding the “number of executed prisoners being much smaller than that of organ transplants,” Huang Jiefu said:

“What you are mentioning is too sensitive an issue, so I cannot describe it very clearly to you. It is easy to get a clear idea just by thinking of the situation–for such a country [China]: there is no transparency, what the sources are, you cannot know; how many have been done remains a secret as well…in fact, many things are a mess, you cannot know clearly how many.”

The Government of China considers its number of executions a state secret. According to Amnesty International, between 1995 and 1999, a total of 8401 Chinese citizens were sentenced to death, giving an annual average of 1,680. Between 2000 and 2005, it was 1616 per year. ¹⁹⁷⁰ The numbers have fluctuated from year to year, but the overall average number for the periods remained the same before and after the persecution of Falun Gong began. Between 2006 and 2008, the average was 1,066, ^{1971 1972 1973} an indication of fewer executions. Amnesty International stopped reporting the number of executions in China in 2009.

These figures were calculated by totaling publicly available reports of individual executions. Amnesty International considered these totals to be an understatement. They wrote:

“Credible sources suggest that between 7,500 to 8,000 people were executed in 2006. The official statistics remain a state secret, making monitoring and analysis problematic.” ¹⁹⁷⁴

Other organizations, such as Duihua Foundation, gave estimates similar to what Amnesty International attributed to credible sources. ¹⁹⁷⁵ Duihua calculated its total by extrapolation from the death penalty case load of individual Chinese legal practitioners.

Although the figures by different organizations with different methodologies varied, their conclusions and time trends are similar—the actual figure of the prisoners executed is believed to be much higher than China’s official data, and the overall average figure of the prisoners sentenced to death before 1999 remains consistent with that after 1999, when the persecution of Falun Gong began.¹⁹⁷⁶

Since January 2007, when the law was changed to require that all death penalty cases be reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court of China, the number of executions has decreased. For example, in 2007, 15% of death penalty cases were dismissed by the review.¹⁹⁷⁷

To meet transplantation standards, sources must not have these diseases or conditions: fatty liver, hepatitis, cancer, infections, diabetes, history of cardiovascular disease, HIV antibodies, syphilis antibodies; high blood pressure, heart disease, tuberculosis, or history of liver or kidney disease. In addition, one out of ten people in mainland China carry the hepatitis B virus.¹⁹⁷⁸ The percentage is much higher in the prison population. The percentage of death row prisoners who would qualify as organ sources is low.

In September 2013, Zhu Jiye, director of the organ transplant research center at Peking University and director of the hepatobiliary surgery department of the Peking University People’s Hospital, told China Economic Weekly:

“Before the launch of the pilot donation project in 2010, organs from executed prisoners accounted for almost all organ organs. In our hospital, we have done 4,000 liver and kidney transplants in a year. These organs all came from death row prisoners.”¹⁹⁷⁹

Thus, the number of annual liver and kidney transplants performed by just one hospital far exceeds the Amnesty International calculation of the number of executed prisoners nationwide. Because of the high volume of organ transplants performed in China since the rapid growth began in 2000, the claim that all or most transplant organs came from executed prisoners is contradicted by the total number of transplants performed.

“China Network” published an article on March 5, 2013: “Ministry of Health: Organ transplants stating that China will no longer rely on executed prisoners within two years.”¹⁹⁸⁰ At the China Organ Transplant Conference in November 2013, Huang Jiefu announced the “Hangzhou Resolution,” promising to discontinue the use of organs from executed prisoners by June 2014.¹⁹⁸¹

In February 2014, The Transplantation Society (TTS) published an open letter to the Chinese president entitled, “To Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China: China’s Fight against Corruption in Organ Transplantation.”¹⁹⁸² The letter stated, “The Tianjin website (www.cntransplant.com) continues to recruit international patients who are seeking organ transplants,” and “First hand reports from our Chinese colleagues and a number of investigations suggest that the practice of obtaining organs from prisoners in China involves notorious transactions between transplant surgeons and local judicial and penal officials.” In fact, a Chinese organ broker, Omar Healthcare Service, was still running online advertisements soliciting patients in the West to receive organ transplants in China, suggesting that Chinese transplant tourism was still ongoing.¹⁹⁸³

In December 2014, China state-owned media declared that from January 1, 2015 onwards, China would stop using executed prisoners’ organs for transplants, and that citizens’ voluntary organ donations after death would be the only source for organ transplants.¹⁹⁸⁴ This announcement was made by Huang Jiefu, former Deputy Minister of Health and now director of the Chinese Human Organ Donation and Transplantation Commission.

Traditional Chinese custom requires bodies to be preserved whole after death. Organ transplantation in China began in the 1970s, but by 2003, the number of voluntary donations remained at zero.¹⁹⁸⁵

In May 2010, an article published in the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, likened organ donation in China to a wilderness.¹⁹⁸⁶ According to Huang Jiefu, before 2010, there was no organ donation system in China. The national organ donation system started in 2014.¹⁹⁸⁷

In March 2010, China piloted an organ donation program in Shanghai, Tianjin, Liaoning, Shandong, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian, Xiamen, Nanjing, Wuhan, and eventually in 19 provinces and cities.¹⁹⁸⁸ This program was jointly run by the Ministry of Health and China Red Cross.

On February 25, 2011, the Yangzi Evening News noted that, since the launch of the Nanjing Organ Donation pilot program in March of 2010, not a single voluntary organ donation had been received. Over the past 20 years, only three people had donated their organs in Nanjing City.¹⁹⁸⁹

In Shanghai, the first organ donation from a deceased organ donor happened on August 21, 2013. Yet there are 11 transplant centers in Shanghai approved by the Ministry of Health.¹⁹⁹⁰

New Beijing Paper reported in March 2012 that 207 voluntary donors had donated organs after death over two years nationwide.¹⁹⁹¹ The title of the article was “Organ donation pilot program did not solve the dilemma of the supply and demand disparity.” On February 25, 2013, the national organ donation working video meeting reported that only 659 donations had occurred in total nationwide since March 2010.¹⁹⁹²

According to Huang Jiefu, the voluntary organ donation rate in mainland China is 0.6 per million people.¹⁹⁹³ A World Health Organization study shows that Chinese citizens’ organ donation rate is 0.03 per million, only 1/20 of Huang’s figure.¹⁹⁹⁴ Yet, at the 2015 China Organ Transplant Congress held in Wuhan on August 6-8, 2015, Huang Jiefu declared that China had successfully realized the transformation from reliance on prison sources to voluntary organ donation from citizens.¹⁹⁹⁵

Ye Qifa, Executive Chairman of the China Organ Transplant Alliance and professor of organ transplantation at Central South Medical University, reported that as of August 2015, 4,626 citizens in China donated their organs after death since 2010, totaling 12,405 major organs (implicitly claiming a rate of nearly three successfully transplanted organs per donor). At the same time, he projected that in 2015 the number of transplant surgeries in China would pass 10,000 and might surpass the historical record set in 2006.¹⁹⁹⁶

In 2014, at the Hangzhou Transplant Congress, Dr. Ye had expressed frustration that around 70% of 165 approved transplant centers showed no interest in developing civilian organ donation programs. Doctors indicated that no matter how well the computer matching and deployment system works, it doesn’t make sense if there is no organ supply and that even when a donated organ became available it was often of poor quality and cannot be used. According to Ye, there was a persistently large gap between supply and demand. ¹⁹⁹⁷

Huang Jiefu indicated in his interview with Beijing Youth Daily on November 18, 2015 that the organ donation system in China does not function in practice, because the Red Cross and the National Planning Commission, the two most important organizations in organ donation, did not actually coordinate with each other:

“The two departments jointly established a national organ donation and transplantation committee on March 1, 2014, but it exists in name only. So far no meeting has been held yet.”¹⁹⁹⁸

According to an article titled “Many Challenges in Organ Donation” published by Guangming Daily on September 3, 2013, donor organ coordinators stated that among 100 potential organ donors about half were ineligible because they could not meet the requirements for donation. Of the remaining donors, about 30 provided organs which were unusable because of delays in the availability of organs after death. Ten donations were overruled by relatives’ objections. In the end, there were fewer than five available donors.¹⁹⁹⁹

In 2015, investigators from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong called the institutes for voluntary organ donations in China. Most did not answer the phone. The few offices that did answer the phone indicated that there were tiny numbers of people who had registered to donate, and that the number of successful donations was extremely low.²⁰⁰⁰

On December 6, 2015, the staff at the Red Cross Society of Beijing confirmed that organ donation was still in the preparatory stage. The Beijing Red Cross did not even have a donation office at the time and had not yet arranged a single case of organ donation.²⁰⁰¹ Yet there are 20 state-approved transplant centers in Beijing, many of them with the capacity to carry out thousands of transplants per year.

On December 17, 2015, a female staff member at the Shanghai Red Cross organ donation office in Huangpu District reported that her office had begun carrying out donation work at the beginning of the previous year and that the city of Shanghai claimed 5 successful organ donations since the donation system began.²⁰⁰² Yet there are 11 hospitals in Shanghai which have state approval to carry out organ transplants and all of them are capable of carrying out a large volume of transplants.

On December 12, 2015, a Tianjin Red Cross worker reported that since an organ donation database was created in 2003, there had been a total of 170 donated organs.²⁰⁰³ Yet Tianjin’s Oriental Organ Transplant Center has over 500 transplant beds and is estimated to have an annual capacity of at least 5,000 transplants.

On May 14, 2015, a female staff member at the organ donation office at the Red Cross chapter in Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province said:

“There are people who have registered for organ donations at some point in their life, so they intend to donate their organs. But there are not many cases like this. Moreover, none of them have actually donated their organs yet. When the person was young, they register to be an organ donor. But we have to wait until they pass away. However, when the person passes away, his or her organs may not be usable due to changes in health. We cannot use organs that are diseased. As of now, we haven’t had any donated livers or hearts.”²⁰⁰⁴

In March 2015, Liu Zhonghua, chief physician of the urologic surgery department of Henan People’s Hospital said:

“It is almost impossible for Chinese people to donate their organs. You simply can’t find anyone; you nearly can’t find anyone. If they are not related to someone by blood, who would be willing to give you their organs?”²⁰⁰⁵

In July 2015, the on-duty staff at the organ donation office of the Red Cross chapter in Jiaozuo said:

“There are some people who registered for organ donation, but the number is very, very small; and you must wait for them to die of natural causes before organ donation can take place; the number of people who donate their organs after they die from accidents is very, very few … As for those who donates organs after death, they can’t make the decision, since they’re deceased. So their family has to call us to give consent for the donation. Even if the deceased’s close relatives consent to the donation, sometimes all it takes is one word from a distant relative, and the family changes their mind about giving consent for the donation.”²⁰⁰⁶

An early interview reported by Sohu Health addressed the question, “Are 1.5 million people in China waiting for death due to the low organ donation rate because there is no love?”

“For the world’s most accepted way to obtain organs, almost all transplant doctors of China have said it is ‘impossible.’ These doctors include Li Leishi, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and founder of the National Clinical Research Center of Kidney Diseases at the Nanjing General Hospital of Nanjing Military Command.”²⁰⁰⁷

Li Leishi, wrote in a 2008 article titled “Organ donation after death exists in theory, but is difficult to do in reality”:

“In China, for organ donation after the death of a citizen, from both the system and law there are no conditions for its existence … when a death has occurred, contacting the family members of the dead and discussing the donation issue would already miss the best time [for transplantation], and the organ’s ischemia time is then too long and it cannot be used for transplant. So in China, organ donation after death does not exist in the system. In addition, China has no standard for defining brain death, and organ donation has no legal protection.”²⁰⁰⁸

To date, these issues have not yet seen substantive changes or improvements. In recent years, official state media have reported a few high-profile cases of individual human organ sales.²⁰⁰⁹ The number of such reported transactions remains miniscule.

As early as in April 2006, Sanlian Life Weekly reported that:

“China currently has a voluntary organ donation rate from living relatives of 1.1%. The control of over 98% of organ sources originate from outside of the Ministry of Health system.”²⁰¹⁰

The archived website of the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center (CITNAC) reveals:

“in order to support the large number of organ transplant surgeries every year, we need to give all of our thanks to the support given by the government. In particular, the Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, Public Security system, judicial system, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Civil Affairs have jointly promulgated laws to ensure that organ donations receive government support and protection. This is a ‘one of its kind’ in the world.”²⁰¹¹

The New York Times reported on April 6, 2016 that donation coordinator Cao Yanfang of the Zhejiang Province Human Organ Donation Management Center said that 2,766 people donated 7,785 organs in 2015 and that there were 66,000 donors on the state registry. Those aggregate figures, like the aggregate figures for transplants in general, conflict with individual figures.

For transplants performed, looking at individual hospitals bring us to volumes far larger than the official aggregates. For organ donations, by looking at individual donation centers, we get figures far smaller than the official aggregates.

There are two explanations for this discrepancy between overall donation figures and those aggregated from individual centers. One is that organs from prisoners are classified as donations.  Huang Jiefu in March, 2014 stated that

“[transplant reform] is not about not using organs from executed prisoners, but not allowing hospitals or medical personnel to engage in private transactions with human organs.”²⁰¹² “We will regulate the issue by including voluntary organ donations by executed prisoners in the nation’s public organ donation system.”²⁰¹³ “Once entered into our unified allocation system, they are counted as voluntary donations of citizens. The so-called death row organ donation doesn’t exist any longer.”²⁰¹⁴

On October 8, 2015, the British Medical Journal, in an article titled “China’s semantic trick with prisoner organs,”²⁰¹⁵ co-authored by five medical experts from United States, Germany and Canada stated that

“The announcement of December 2014 itself is neither a law nor a governmental regulation. It is only at best a statement of good intentions but has no force of law. The announcement is not even mentioned in the policies of the PRC National Health and Family Planning Commission, which administers the China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS).”

The article asserts that the Chinese authorities are simply playing word games by “labeling prisoner organs as voluntary donations from citizens.”

On March 10, 2015, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that medical experts in United States, Germany, and Canada wrote open letters to medical journals to warn that

“China is still using death row inmates’ organs. The only difference is that these organs are now being classified as citizens’ voluntarily donated organs. This change will bypass international ethics, and their unethical practices might never stop.” ²⁰¹⁶

According to The New York Times article “China Bends Vow, Using Prisoners’ Organs for Transplants,” organs from prisoners, including those on death row, can still be used for transplants in China, and that this use has the backing of policymakers. Dr. Otmar Kloiber, the secretary general of the World Medical Association, said that the announcement in December by Huang Jiefu was “an administrative trick.”²⁰¹⁷

A second explanation for the discrepancy between overall donation figures and the aggregate of what individual donation centres report is that Chinese hospitals are buying from impoverished family members of patients near death, who consent to the harvesting of organs from their loved ones. What health officials now call a donation system is, for the most part, a purchase and sale system with hospitals as brokers. Patients pay large sums for organs. The families of potential donors near death are offered large sums for their consent.

Regarding the money patients pay for the purchase of organs, Huang Jiefu said:

“First of all, transplantation is an expensive operation; currently our social medical insurance does not cover organ transplantation. Transplantation belongs to high‑end medical service, and not all patients can afford such an operation and the postoperative medical expenses.”

Regarding the money families of donors receive for the donation of organs, Huang Jiefu said:

“In the United States and other countries, the decision to donate relieves the family of the potential donor of any further financial risk. This removes a significant barrier to the consideration of organ donation for the family by removing any financial disincentive for making the decision to donate a loved one’s organs. In these countries, the donor processing and charges for procurement are passed to the recipient with the government health care system as a financial backstop. In China… [a] fully funded social security network is not in place; thus, the decision of a family to donate would burden them with further financial obligations. A financial system has to be put in place that would offset the charges from the hospital with respect to organ donation. In the transition from the pilot program to the national program, for donor families with a financial burden, China adopted a humanitarian assistance system featuring the spirit of fraternity and reciprocity. This system recognizes both the altruistic nature of the gift by recognizing the donor in a public manner and the financial burden from the decision to donate a family member’s organs, which may encumber the family. The financial burden may be significant, especially in light of the median income in China.”

In an interview with Sina on March 3, 2015, Huang said:

“It is impossible for the organs from death‑row prisoners and the organs donated by citizens to exist in the one and the same system. If our organ donation system is like that, people will not trust it; they will be afraid that the system is unjust and not transparent. Poor people donate organs, and rich people have the right to receive transplants. I agree with the view elaborated by the Global Times editorial, ‘respect death‑row prisoners and there will be more healthy people to participate in donation.'”²⁰¹⁸

The comment, “Poor people donate organs, and rich people have the right to receive transplants,” encapsulates the brokerage system hospitals are running, which is claimed to be the replacement of the prisoner system. For the distinction between rich and poor to make a difference, the funding given by the health system to the cajoled surviving relatives of those near death has to be more than just financially neutral. Dr. Jay Lavee reports that these payments are large, “some equivalent to twice the annual income of the family.”²⁰¹⁹

There is a second discrepancy at play here–the difference between total transplants and total organs donated, no matter how inaccurately the term “donation” is used.  The official Chinese line is that all transplants come from donations. Yet, total transplants, if one aggregates the work of individual hospitals, far exceeds the figure of 7,785 reported in April 2016 for 2015.

There are two transplant systems running in China: a system however inappropriately described as a donation system, and a system outside the donation system. The donation system collects those few donations which really are voluntary, prisoner organs funneled through the donation system, and the organs of dying patients bought with the consent of their families. The non-donation system, which towers over the donation system, account for the bulk of organ transplants in China.

The medical field began to conduct human organ transplantation in the 1960s. There has been a tremendous development in China’s human organ transplant industry after 1999. The timing of this growth corresponds to that of the Chinese Communist Party’s persecution campaign against Falun Gong.

Our books, Bloody Harvest: Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners in China and The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, have discussed transplant growth in China in detail and concluded that Falun Gong practitioners are the main victims targeted by the large-scale live organ transplant industry in China.

According to an internal survey conducted by China’s Public Security Bureau, by July 1999, at least 70 million people in mainland China were practicing Falun Gong.²⁰²⁰ On July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party leadership launched an eradication campaign against the practice of Falun Gong.²⁰²¹

Since the very beginning of the persecution, Falun Gong practitioners appealed to government departments in their provinces, in the Beijing appeals office, or at Tiananmen Square. The number of people petitioning the government in Beijing was at its highest between the beginning of 2000 and the end of 2001.

The Public Security Bureau in Beijing determined that up to April 2001 a total of 830,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been registered or arrested. This figure does not include those who refused to give their names to police.²⁰²² A large number of practitioners did not disclose their identities to avoid implicating their families or people in their workplaces and neighborhoods. The unidentified practitioners were not sent back to their hometowns.²⁰²³

According to a report by China’s justice department, China had 670 operating prisons, holding a total of more than 1.5 million inmates.^{2024 2025} There were also 300 forced labour camps before the laogai system was abolished at the end of 2013. ²⁰²⁶ The book Laogai: The Machinery of Repression in China, published in 2009, stated that as many as 3 to 5 million people were imprisoned in laogai camps.²⁰²⁷

The U.S. Congressional Executive Committee on China’s annual report for 2008²⁰²⁸ noted that international observers believed that half of those incarcerated in China’s forced labour camps were Falun Gong practitioners. Ethan Gutmann estimates that Falun Gong constituted about half of the laogai system in 2001 and then leveled off to 15 to 20% over the long term, translating to about 500,000 to 1,000,000 Falun Gong practitioners being detained in the laogai system at any given time.

Many detention centres were built or expanded all over China to house the large number of Falun Gong practitioners who were arrested and detained. The Chinese Communist Party also made use of military and underground civil defense facilities to establish holding units for Falun Gong practitioners.²⁰²⁹ These practitioners have disappeared, both legally and practically.

On August 21, 2000, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security held a nationwide telephone conference to relay new orders that the practice of Falun Gong was to be eradicated in three months.²⁰³⁰ Du Daobin of Hubei Province reported in May 2003 that the local 610 Office, the Communist Party office charged with the repression of Falun Gong, had received instructions which stated, “no law regulates the treatment of Falun Gong practitioners,” and “death of Falun Gong practitioners from beating is nothing and shall be counted as suicide; the body shall be directly cremated without investigating the person’s identification.”²⁰³¹

In October 9, 1984, the Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Civil Affairs jointly promulgated the “Provisional Regulations on the Use of Corpses or the Organs of Executed Prisoners.”²⁰³² It allowed the corpses and organs of prisoners to be used under certain conditions:

1) the body was not collected, or the family refused to collect the body; or

2) the executed prisoner voluntarily gave his body or organs for use by medical or health units; or

3) the families have given consent.

Although the law may not have been originally conceived with a specific loophole in mind, it did allow organs from prisoners to be used without their consent and also without the consent of their family, as long as the body was not collected. The law does not require a prisoner to be sentenced to death and then executed for his or her organs to be used.

In the case of Falun Gong, the authorities also used the “Provisional Regulations” to prevent the families of the dead practitioners from claiming their bodies, which in turn facilitated forced organ harvesting and the unlawful sale of bodies. The authorities do not necessarily inform family members when a Falun Gong practitioner is arbitrarily detained in a “re-education through labour” camp.  Moreover, many detained Falun Gong practitioners, in order to protect their family, friends, work colleagues and neighbors, do not self-identify once detained. For the non-self-identified, the authorities do not know who the family members are and cannot notify them.

This combination of Chinese legal factors allows for the sourcing of organs from Falun Gong practitioners without either their consent or the consent of their family members, and whether or not they have been sentenced to death. Moreover, the numbers subject to this license to harvest organs is large, because of the large numbers of non-self-identified Falun Gong practitioners in detention.

In detention centres, Falun Gong practitioners are frequently given blood tests and medical examinations, while other prisoners (with the exception of Uyghurs, Tibetans and certain House Christian groups who were also targeted) receive no such treatment.

During the investigation, Ethan Gutmann interviewed over 50 Falun Gong practitioners who had been detained in labour camps and prisons in China, many of whom were forcibly given blood tests and unusual examinations. Many similar cases were recorded in Matas’ and Kilgour’s Bloody Harvest. The website Minghui.org publishes many firsthand accounts of Falun Gong practitioners all over China who had gone through such examinations.

In April 2014, in Guizhou, Liaoning, Hunan, Hubei, Beijing and other locations, police entered practitioners’ homes and forcibly took blood samples and cheek swabs. The policemen claimed to be following orders from above.²⁰³³ In one month, sixteen practitioners in the Dandong area of Liaoning Province had blood samples forcibly collected by police.²⁰³⁴

Cases of practitioners’ bodies being cremated without the consent of their families continue to be reported on Minghui.org. Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been displaced or have gone missing.

At the time that Chinese transplants jumped, according to official figures, to 10,000 a year, China did not have an organ allocation system.  The Public Health newspaper reported in September 2003 that Huang Jiefu had held a lecture on China’s organ transplant legislation in Xiangya Third Hospital of Central South University. He suggested that setting up an organ allocation network could resolve the chaotic situation of organ allocation and management. With the participation of the health administrative department, an organ allocation network at the provincial, regional and national levels could be gradually formed. The deployment of the network would

“prevent back-and-forth transportation of source organs and cut the surgical cost by half. Also, transplant quality can be greatly improved, because the waiting time can be shortened.”²⁰³⁵

Given that this proposal was being made a full decade before an organ donation system was established in China, Huang Jiefu must have been referring to organs from prisoners.

On March 31, 2006, a person identified as a senior military doctor who belonged to the General Logistics Department of the Shenyang Military Command wrote to the Epoch Times:

It only takes a day to transfer 5,000 people using a closed train. I witnessed the transfer from Tianjin to Jilin. There was a train that moved over 7,000 people during the night, escorted by heavily armed security personnel.”²⁰³⁶

The website Minghui.org publishes many firsthand accounts of Falun Gong practitioners all over China who had gone through such transfers.

In March 2015, Phoenix Satellite Television, a Hong Kong-based mandarin language station authorized by the Chinese government to broadcast in mainland China, published an interview with Huang Jiefu.²⁰³⁷ Huang said:

“When we decided to stop the reliance on executed prisoners for organ transplants [it was] the most helpless period we’ve been in….Using prisoner organs, this kind of situation naturally would come to have all kinds of murky and difficult problems in it. Do you know the meaning of my words? …. It became filthy, it became murky and intractable, it became an extremely sensitive, extremely complicated area, basically a forbidden area.”

He mentioned that because of the downfall of a ‘big tiger’ in the anti-corruption campaign, it is now possible to touch this forbidden area. When asked which “big tiger” he was referring to, Huang answered:

“It’s just so clear. Everyone knows the big tiger. Zhou Yongkang is the big tiger; he was our general secretary of the national Political and Legal Affairs Committee, and a formerly member of the Politburo Standing Committee. Everyone knows this….So as for where executed prisoner organs come from, isn’t it very clear?”

The Political and Legal Affairs Committee was established in September 1949 to direct the work of the Ministry of the Interior, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Justice, Committee for Social and Legal Affairs, and the Ethnic Affairs Commission.²⁰³⁸

On June 10, 1999, before the campaign against Falun Gong was officially launched, the Chinese Communist Party created a “Central leading group to handle the Falun Gong issue,” under which an “Office of the leading group to handle the Falun Gong issue” was established. It is internally known as the “610 Office,” deriving its name from the date of its founding, June 10th, 1999. With a structure extending from top to bottom throughout the Party, government, and military, it has the power to command all police and judicial organs. This organization is akin to the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Cultural Revolution Group, and is dedicated to carrying out the systematic eradication of the practice of Falun Gong. It is an ad hoc agency at the highest levels endowed with extraordinary and extralegal power. It later changed its name to the Central Leading Group on Dealing with Heretical Religions or Office of Maintaining Stability. The organization is directly under the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee.²⁰³⁹

The 610 Office is the main organization created by the Communist Party to eliminate Falun Gong. It is nominally subordinate to the Political and Legal Affairs Committee. The Committee’s purview was expanded after the 610 Office was incorporated into it. The Committee and, in consequence, the 610 office, oversees the public security bureau, the procuratorate, and judicial systems.

The Political and Legal Affairs Committee and 610 office have the power to control personnel and resources in the police, Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the fields of finance, culture, education, science and technology, and health departments throughout the country. The regime mobilized the entire state apparatus in the campaign against Falun Gong.²⁰⁴¹

A propaganda campaign has been a key tool in the suppression of Falun Gong. Since the persecution began in July 1999, the 610 Office has used the country’s newspapers, television stations, radio stations, websites, and loudspeakers in rural areas to broadcast anti-Falun Gong propaganda. It also has used Xinhua News Agency, China News Service, China News Agency, Party-controlled media overseas, and Chinese consulates to spread this propaganda globally.

The demonization of Falun Gong provided a basis on which crimes against practitioners could be justified. In 2002, Jiang Zemin promoted Zhou Yongkang (who did not have prior experience in the public security system) from Party Secretary of Sichuan Province to Minister of Public Security, as well as Deputy Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Committee, in which role he cooperated with Committee Party Secretary Luo Gan to implement the suppression of Falun Gong nationwide.²⁰⁴²

Zhou made the capture and repression of Falun Gong a major focus of domestic security work in China. During his tenure the quantity of transplants taking place in China – sourced from Falun Gong – continued to grow rapidly.

Judicial systems sold organs to the transplant centres. Forensic hospitals actively conducted organ transplant. Special institutions under Public Security Bureaus, such as, Wang Lijun’s Jinzhou and Chongqing Public Security Bureau On-Site Psychology Research Centres, carried out organ transplantation and human body experiments on a large scale.

During the Communist Party’s 17th National Congress in October 2007, Zhou Yongkang replaced Luo Gan as the Party Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee. Zhou became head of the “Central leading group to handle the Falun Gong issue” and was placed on the Party’s highest strategic tier—the Politburo Standing Committee. At the end of 2013, the new Chinese Communist Party leadership removed Zhou Yongkang under charges of corruption and plotting to stage a coup. But the machinery of the Falun Gong persecution has not stopped.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) and later the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC) led the health care system in the transplantation of organs. In organizing, driving, and directly carrying out such activities, these agencies are fully responsible for overall planning, making policies, regulating and managing China’s human organ transplant industry and the organ donation and allocation system.²⁰⁴³

These agencies centrally coordinate and guide the Chinese organ transplantation systems: procurement and allocation, clinical care and services, post-operative registration, oversight, and donation. These agencies also organize and implement training and sharing in the regulations, policies, and techniques for transplantation. In particular, they evaluate the qualifications of the transplant institutions, as well as the capabilities and management of clinical practices. They also grant and manage permits to the qualified transplant centres.

Since organ transplantation has been made a high priority in the Chinese Communist Party’s national strategy and heavily emphasized as a future emerging industry, a large number of organ transplant projects have been funded under major national programs. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, other departments, and the military have invested heavily in research, development, and personnel training in transplantation technology to meet the needs of this rapidly-growing industry. New capabilities and techniques have emerged and been extensively spreading, allowing live organ transplantation in China to grow into a large, industrialized operation in less than two decades.

In March 2013, at the Twelfth National People’s Congress, the former Ministry of Health and the National Population and Family Planning Commission were dissolved, and Huang Jiefu was relieved from his position as Deputy Minister of Health. Meanwhile, a new National Health and Family Planning Commission was founded.²⁰⁴⁴ Huang Jiefu served as chairman of the China Organ Transplant Board. He was the chief editor of 11 surgery monographs and participated in the editing of 5 surgery monographs.²⁰⁴⁵ On March 1, 2014, China Human Organ Donation and Transplantation Commission announced its establishment. It declared that, under the leadership of the National Health and Family Planning Commission and the China Red Cross Society, the Commission would work as a central management unit to guide and oversee the human organ transplant and donation system in China. Huang Jiefu was named the Commission’s director.²⁰⁴⁶ Since then, Huang Jiefu has been the spokesperson for China in the field of organ transplantation.

Huang’s new title, director of the Chinese Human Organ Donation and Transplant Committee,²⁰⁴⁷ is not an official designation, according to Communist Party personnel information. The news section of the official Chinese Communist Party leadership repository lists Huang’s titles as “former Deputy Minister of Health” and “deputy director of the Central Health Committee.”²⁰⁴⁸ It is also germane that on the website of the National Health and Family Planning Commission the “Chinese Human Organ Donation and Transplantation Commission” established in 2014 is not listed under any departmental structure. ²⁰⁴⁹ Even though described as the central management agency for transplantation in China, the agency does not have an official website. It was announced at the inaugural meeting that its secretariat belongs to the National Health and Family Planning Commission. The Transplantation Commission appears to be a shell organization with no dedicated personnel or offices.

Huang Jiefu’s announced that China will discontinue the use of organs from prisoners on January 1, 2015. That announcement, itself, has no legal effect and cannot be traced to any officially promulgated policy statements or laws. The State Council’s Human Organ Transplant Ordinance promulgated on March 21, 2007, did not abolish the Provisional Regulations of 1984 ²⁰⁵⁰ which allow the sourcing of organs from prisoners without consent. The1984 Provisional Regulations are still valid today.²⁰⁵¹

The People’s Liberation Army is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and is one of the few militaries in the world that belong to a party rather than the State. It is a tool used to sustain the Chinese Communist Party’s control over China.

From 1999 to May 2006, the Chinese Communist Party Central Military Commission held six special meetings on “handling foreign-related religious issues,” which mainly targeted Falun Gong.²⁰⁵² The General Logistics Department was authorized as the core unit to lead every level of the military to eradicate the practice of Falun Gong including the power to manage the secret detention facilities and the process of live organ harvesting.

According to an investigation by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, over 100 different military hospitals have developed or expanded their organ transplant facilities, with over 2,000 medical personnel involved.²⁰⁵³ These include military general hospitals which belong directly to the Central Military Commission, all military branch general hospitals, general hospitals which belong to the seven regional military commands, hospitals affiliated with military medical universities, military hospitals coded with numbers, and armed police general hospitals. The transplant volume performed by Chinese military hospitals is the largest of any military in the world. They also play a role in resolving core technical issues in organ transplantation and supporting civilian hospitals with living organ supplies and technical assistance.

Although whistleblowers have played an important role in our previous investigations, it is important to note that they often could only fill in one piece of the puzzle. Surgeon Enver Tohti only knew that he was told to take out the liver of a living human being. He didn’t know why the man was being executed.²⁰⁵⁴

“Annie”, who made a public statement about the organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in March 2006,²⁰⁵⁵ was an employee at Sujiatun Hospital and knew that the requests for goods such as toilet paper and rice were going through the roof. The supplies were sufficient not just for her hospital but also for a second hospital full of patients. Ultimately, her husband, a surgeon, told her that the hospital was housing practitioners of Falun Gong and murdering them for their organs in large numbers.²⁰⁵⁶

Dr. Ko Wen-je was simply inquiring about the price and quality of organs on behalf of his clinic in Taiwan. He did not expect to be told that all of the organs would come from Falun Gong.²⁰⁵⁷

What distinguishes the whistleblowers we highlight in this section is that they know much more about the entire landscape of organ harvesting than these other whistleblowers did. They are also harder to vet. In the case of the first three witnesses below, they are only slightly better than anonymous electronic communications. In the case of the investigative phone calls set out after the first three below, the situation is better; the calls were recorded, the officials are known, and one could theoretically match the voice signatures.

On March 31, 2006, a person who identified himself as a senior military doctor who belonged to the General Logistics Department of the Shenyang Military Command wrote to the Epoch Times:²⁰⁵⁸

“Sujiatun is one of 36 similar secret detention facilities. From the information I can access, Jilin has the largest camp that detains Falun Gong practitioners, with the code of 672-S. There are more than 120,000 people detained there, including Falun Gong people from throughout the country, serious offenders, and political prisoners. Just the Jilin Jiutai region, which has the fifth-largest secret detention facilities holding Falun Gong practitioners, detained more than 14,000 of them.”

According to this military doctor, who indicated that he has chosen to remain anonymous for his safety:

“the Chinese Communist Party Central Military Commission had documentation since 1962, and has followed through to today, that all death row and serious offenders can be treated according to the needs of national and socialist development and can be dealt with according to the ‘revolutionary protocol.’”

“The seizure of organs from serious offenders was legalized by a supplementary regulation enacted in 1984. Many local public security departments deal with this either by directly transplanting from these people and cremating them afterwards, or by wounding them, forming death rituals, directly transplanting, and then cremating. After 1992, with the rising costs of industrial raw materials as a result of the development of many industries, human bodies became a valuable raw material. Both living bodies and corpses became raw materials.”

“At present, the Chinese Communist Party Central defines Falun Gong members as a class enemy. This means that there is no need to report if they are treated in line with the needs of economic development. In other words, like serious offenders, Falun Gong people are no longer seen as human beings, but raw materials for products, and they became a commodity.”

He wrote again to the Epoch Times in April 2006 to give more details of the process:

“Anyone targeted for organ transplantation would be taken away from prisons, forced labour camps, detention centres, secret camps, etc. At that point, their real name would be replaced with a code corresponding to a forged voluntary organ’s name … the next step would be to undergo the live organ transplant … this person is no longer seen as a human being, but an animal. [Doctors] who have performed one or two cases may still have some lingering fear, but after tens of thousands of live transplants and destroying the bodies, one becomes numb.”²⁰⁵⁹

“All organ sources targeted are said to be voluntary. Falun Gong and other inmates use their real names during custody. However, a forged name is used during organ transplantation. They become a fictitious person, but this person’s information is complete. There was also a signature on the voluntary organ donation form, but of course it was signed by someone else.”

“I have seen more than 60,000 such counterfeit forms. Basically, it says that the person voluntarily donates the organ and bears all the consequences. Many signatures were from same person’s handwriting.”

“These materials will be kept for 18 months and be destroyed afterwards. They are kept at the provincial level of military commands and can be accessed only with approval from the commissioner(s) of the Central Military Commission.”

“In fact, the number of underground, unofficial organ transplants in China is several times higher than the official figures. With an abundant source of living organs, many hospitals with military backgrounds also engage in large-scale organ transplantation in private, in addition to the official reports they submit to their superiors.”

“China is the center of international live organ trading, and has accounted for more than 85% of the total number of live organ transplants in the world since 2000. According to the data reported to the Central Military Commission, a few people have been promoted and became Generals due to their ‘achievements’ in this field. ”

“The military acts as the organ transplantation management system. This type of management and organizational core belongs to the military system. This is something that the local government cannot match, because once it becomes a military secret, no one can acquire the information. We all understand how the military system works. There is a huge source of living organs, and many military hospitals report their transplants to their supervising authorities. At the same time, they also carry out organ transplants on a large scale in private. This leads to the fact that actual numbers are much higher than the official statistics.”

“The Central Military Commission authorizes relevant military personnel and units to manage military affairs. All related information is regarded as military secrets. Personnel responsible for military control have the authority to arrest, detain or execute any doctors, police, armed police, and researchers who leak information.”

On April 14, 2006, a healthcare worker who worked in Jinan healthcare system for more than 20 years wrote to the Falun Gong information website Minghui.org:

“the Shandong Qianfoshan Hospital and the Police General Hospital of Shandong Province colluded with the prisons and forced labour camps in a large-scale operation to conduct live organ harvesting for transplants. The bodies of Falun Gong practitioners were used for hospitals’ interns to conduct experiments. The hospital obtained directives from the Central and was fully involved.”²⁰⁶⁰

“Both the Shandong Qianfoshan Hospital and the Shandong Police General Hospital (commonly known as Laogai Hospital, since such hospitals belong to the labour camp system) directly participated in organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. These hospitals received and fully cooperated with instructions directly from the central level of the Communist Party. Many transplants using organs from living practitioners were performed by these two hospitals, which partnered with Shandong Provincial Prison, Shandong Province Women’s Prison, and other prisons and forced labour camps. These institutions streamlined the supply of organs, including surgeons, extraction of organs, transplantation, distribution of profit, etc.”

“Qianfoshan Hospital partnered with the Tianjin Oriental Organ Transplant Centre to establish the Shandong Liver Transplant Institute. It boasted the largest transplant volume and the most advanced technology in liver transplantation in the province. The centre also performed kidney, testicular, lung, and corneal transplants.”

The hospital has a capacity of 800 beds. It has over 300 senior technical personnel, 44 doctoral and graduate advisors, and more than 90 part-time professors from Shandong University. These faculty members have clinical teaching responsibilities in not only Shandong University’s clinical medical school, but also Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Weifang Medical College, Taishan Medical College, Binzhou Medical College, Shandong Province Nursing School, and other institutions.

On December 10, 2009, an armed police officer in Jinzhou, Liaoning Province reported and testified via phone to the World Organization to Investigate Persecution of Falun Gong that he had guarded one of the organ harvesting sites and personally witnessed the entire scene of two military doctors excising organs from a female Falun Gong practitioner. ²⁰⁶¹

The armed guard was an eyewitness to a surgery on April 9, 2002, in an operating room on the 15th floor of the General Hospital of Shenyang Military Command, People’s Liberation Army. He observed two military doctors extract organs from a female Falun Gong practitioner. The Military Identification No. of one of the doctors is 0106069. The victim was a middle school teacher in her thirties. Before the doctors killed her, she had been subjected to a month of severe torture, molestation and rape. He stated:

“No anesthetic was given. The knife dug straight into the chest. Their hands didn’t even shake. If it were me, my hands would definitely shake…”

In 2002, this witness worked in the Liaoning Province Public Security system and participated in the arrest and torture of Falun Gong practitioners, including this female practitioner. She was covered in wounds from the ordeal. On April 9, 2002, the Liaoning Public Security department sent two military doctors to the scene – one from the Shenyang Military Command General Hospital and another who had graduated from the Second Military Medical University. This female practitioner was fully conscious when her heart, kidney, and other organs were removed without anesthesia. The witness, armed with gun, guarded the scene throughout the whole process. He also stated that Wang Lijun, head of Jinzhou City Public Security, gave an order that they “must destroy Falun Gong practitioners completely.”

In 2014 and 2015, Yang Guang, a China expert who resides in Denmark, reported to the Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty Television about two of his friends. One of his friends was a vice president of a medical university in northeastern China, in charge of logistics for its two affiliated hospitals. Before 2009, he was put in charge of the two hospitals, each of which conducted 2,000 to 3,000 organ transplants every year. The real name and former workplaces of Mr. Yang’s first friend were verifiable online. There was no attempt to contact the witness, because of the dangers to which the contact would expose him. The hospitals’ and witness’s names are redacted for safety concerns.

Below are excerpts of the account of the first friend:

“The two affiliated hospitals of our university conducted 2,000 to 3,000 organ transplantation surgeries each year. Due to a pool of living organ sources, tissue matching took less than a month, sometimes as short as 48 hours…The 610 Office (the Communist Party bureaucracy charged with eradication of Falun Gong) transported organ sources to the hospitals in prisoner transport vehicles. Once the tissue matching was verified, the transplants were performed. After the surgeries, the bodies were cremated…We only get serial numbers [of the “organ sources”] and knew only that they were Falun Gong practitioners. Such cases accounted for 90% of transplants in the hospitals. The whole process was monitored by the members of 610 Office…We were strictly required to keep secret. All the serial numbers and data of organ transplants were reported to the supervising Chinese Communist Party Committee at the end of each year, and then were removed from our computers under the supervision of 610 Office personnel.”²⁰⁶²

“Since 2000, the 610 Office started to supply us such kind of organs of Falun Gong practitioners. There were no names and addresses, just their gender, age, and a serial number. Whenever our hospitals sent medical teams to collect blood samples from the prisons, labour camps, and brainwashing centres, I had to prepare the tools, drugs, coolers and provide transportation. I have the complete records in hand…The military and police hospitals usually conduct more transplants than civilian hospitals.”

The vice president added, the actual death row prisoners, criminals who had been sentenced to death account for only a small number of the organs procured. ²⁰⁶³ Even in the ten biggest cities in China, no more than fifty prisoners were executed annually. Senior Chinese Communist Party officials and their relatives refuse to accept organs from executed prisoners. Those organs were usually reserved for foreigners who come to China for organ transplants. Prices for foreigners are not fixed—in some cases, those with money, desperate for an organ, have been charged up to $2 million for a transplantation and hospital stay.

Yang’s other friend worked at the Ministry of Public Security and was in charge of informant stations of a major city on the coast of mainland China. During the New Year holidays in 2012, he told Yang that as far as he knew, over the past decade, at least 500,000 Falun Gong practitioners’ organs were harvested for transplants in civilian hospitals in China. This number did not include the portion from the hospitals affiliated with the armed police, military, and public security. The statistics of these hospitals were top secret and even the personnel in the Ministry of Public Security could not obtain them.²⁰⁶⁴

Since Anne made her public statement about live organ harvesting in March 2006, the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong has documented more than 2,000 recorded phone interviews with members of the judiciary, military, armed police, and organ transplant centres in 31 provinces, municipalities directly under central government and autonomous regions.

The targets of investigation include members of the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee, the Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Central Military Commission, a CMC member and former defense minister, a former head of the People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department’s Health Division, members of central and local Political and Legal Affairs Committees, agents of the 610 Office, transplant doctors in military and civilian hospitals all over China, and an organ broker.

In Fengtai, Beijing, Chen Qiang, a People’s Liberation Army 307 Hospital’s kidney source liaison personnel, provided further evidence that many Falun Gong practitioners who went to appeal to the central government were secretly detained, given a code, and became living organ sources.²⁰⁶⁵

The following is part of the recorded dialogue between Chen Qiang and an investigator under the guise of a relative of a patient looking for organs (April 10, 2007, 3:09-3:28am EDT):

Investigator: …by the way, how could you be so sure he [the source] was a Falun Gong practitioner? Did you find out for sure?

Chen:  How to identify a Falun Gong practitioner? Well, when the time comes, then our side, our boss will have people showing you information, you know. He will show you the information and data. You can be sure. We have connections with government officials. There are connections to high ranking officials. You know, I will show you such material even if you don’t ask me for it.

Investigator: I heard from others that, several years ago, the Falun Gong practitioners did not disclose their names after they were taken away. There are quite many who belong to this type. Some were kept in the basement, and some are detained in neither prison nor forced labour camps.

Chen: What you said was what happened in 2003. I understand what you said. Those who didn’t provide their names were in the 2003 records. You need to find them from the 2003 archival records.

Investigator: Were there many in 2003?

Chen: Oh yes. In 2003 records, there were many Falun Gong people.

Investigator: You know that several years ago, they secretly detained many Falun Gong practitioners who went to appeal but did not provide their names. There were no records, no registrations.

Chen:  Yes, this is quite normal. If Falun Gong practitioners did not give their names, they would be given a code. If their names couldn’t be identified, there would be their code numbers. Also, one can be tracked by fingerprints. That’s how the source can be tracked. Nowadays in our society, especially for these types of matters…like our boss, like the connections to the detention centres, I cannot tell you. For situations like what you said, I cannot say casually. We have close relationships with them. Since we are engaging in this business, we have our people in each and every department. How can you get things done if we don’t have our connections? This thing is just like a supply line, you know?

On September 30th, 2014, Bai Shuzhong,²⁰⁶⁶ former head of the People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department Health Division, spoke to a World Organization to Investigate Persecution of Falun Gong investigator who assumed the identity of a Party investigator and proceeded to ask Bai pointed questions about living organ harvesting. Bai served from 1998 to 2004, and, as the top officer leading core institutions of the military health system, he would have been the main person responsible for conveying instructions to implement policy.

Investigator: When you were head of the health division for the People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department, regarding taking organs from the detained Falun Gong people for organ transplantation, was it an order from Wang Ke, the then-director of the People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department? Or did it directly come from the Central Military Commission?

Bai: Back then, it was Chairman Jiang … There was an instruction … to carry out this thing, that is, organ transplantation …, Chairman Jiang had an instruction that said this… about people selling kidneys for transplant surgeries. This, I should say, was not just the military that was doing kidney transplants.

Investigator: We also obtained some intelligence, that is to say back then, the Joint Logistics Departments [of the Military Regions] had detained a number of Falun Gong people as “live organs”. Is that true?

Bai: This, this is back then, ah, I think, at least this is how I remembered, because back then after Chairman Jiang issued instructions, we all did a lot of work against the Falun Gong practitioners.

Investigator: You guys [the People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department] and the Joint Logistics Department No. 1, Joint Logistics Department No. 2, including the Joint Logistics Department No. 40 subdivision, and the military hospitals they were in charge of, do you have a supervisory relationship with them?

Bai: We directly control the military medical universities. They are directly affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department, and they received repeated orders, because Jiang paid a lot of attention to this matter back then, and put a lot of emphasis on this matter … Jiang, when he was in the position, put a lot of emphasis, he gave instruction on this.

The World Organization to Investigate Persecution of Falun Gong investigated a number of Politburo Standing Committee members, a vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party Central Military Commission, and a Central Military Commission member.²⁰⁶⁷

Li Changchun ²⁰⁶⁸

On April 17, 2012, Li Changchun, a Politburo Standing Committee member, was asked by an investigator who assumed the identity of the chief secretary of Luo Dan about “the use of organs from detained Falun Gong practitioners for organ transplants and possible conviction of Bo Xilai for doing that.” Li replied, “Zhou Yongkang is in charge of this specifically. He knows this.”

Liang Guanglie ²⁰⁶⁹

From May 4 to May 10, 2012, Liang Guanglie, former Secretary of Defense, former People’s Liberation Army Chief of Staff, and member of the Central Military Commission, was investigated by the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong during a visit to the U.S. The investigator had assumed the identity of a member of special group investigating Wang Lijun. Regarding the Grade 3A military hospitals using Falun Gong practitioners’ organs for transplants, Liang replied, “I’ve heard about it …I did not take care of that thing. I was in charge of military affairs, instead of the logistics and medically related [affairs].” When asked about this, he stated that “it was discussed” during the Central Military Commission meeting.

Wei Jianrong ²⁰⁷⁰

In September 2008, Wei Jianrong, former deputy director of the central Political and Legal Affairs Committee, Chinese Communist Party stated that organ harvesting from detained Falun Gong practitioners had “happened a long time ago.” The investigator had assumed the identity of an official of the Ministry of State Security.

Tang Junjie ²⁰⁷¹

In April 2012, when answering the investigator’s question on “what kind of directions or commands did Bo give regarding removing organs from Falun Gong practitioners?” Tang Junjie, former Deputy Party Secretary of the Liaoning Political and Legal Affairs Committee, said, “I was asked to take care of this task. The Party’s central [leadership] is actually taking care of this. The impact was quite big…” He added, “At that time we mainly talked about it during the meetings within the [Politburo] Standing Committee.”

During this investigation, the investigator of World Organization to Investigate Persecution of the Falun Gong assumed the identity of a member of the Bo Xilai special investigation group under the Committee for Disciplinary Inspection of the Chinese Communist Party.

This is a story which begins in mystery and ends in mass murder. From where do all the organs for transplants come in China?

China, for most of its transplant history, did not have a donation system at all. China now has a donation system which produces almost no donations, so that is not the answer. Because of the availability of organs with short waiting times and the absence of a law sourcing organs from brain dead cardiac alive patients, the answer is not accident victims. Because of disease in the prison population, the need for blood type compatibility, a law which requires execution seven days after the sentence, and the decreasing number of persons sentenced to death, the answer, for the most part, is not death penalty criminals.

So what is the answer? The answer is mostly innocents, prisoners of conscience, Tibetans, Uyghurs, select House Christians and, most of all, Falun Gong practitioners.

What is driving this mass murder? Is it the Chinese Communist Party and its abhorrence of Falun Gong? Or is it the demand for organs and needs of the health system, particularly the military hospitals, for funding? Did the Party lead the health system in these mass killings, or did the health system take advantage of a vulnerable population that the Party had made available for exploitation?

The constitution of China refers to “the Chinese people of all nationalities led by the Chinese Communist Party” or “under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party” six different times. When something occurs in China as systematic and widespread and in such great numbers as the killing of Falun Gong for their organs, it is a denial of the reality of China to ascribe leadership to anything but the Chinese Communist Party. When the Chinese Communist Party issues an order that Falun Gong must be physically destroyed, as it has done, it is not too big a leap to conclude that the Communist Party has ordered that Falun Gong be physically destroyed through organ harvesting.

This explanation concludes that the large-scale organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners was directly ordered by the Standing Committee of the Party and implemented by both military and civilian institutions. Through various levels of the 610 Office, the Party established a unified chain of operations to enable harvesting of organs on demand. The People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department has served as the core operations unit, with cooperation from other military units, armed police, Political and Legal Affairs Committee at different levels, the medical system, and organ brokers.

Through this chain of operations, practitioners arrested when petitioning in Beijing and those detained across the country were forced to undergo blood tests and other medical examinations. The results were registered in a database of living organ sources to enable quick tissue matching for allocation. The People’s Liberation Army General Logistics Department operates in a centralized and secretive mode, allocating detention facilities, distribution, transportation, delivery, security, and accounting of supplied organs.²⁰⁷² Under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership, led by the military, organized and driven first by the Ministry of Health and later by its successor, the National Health and Family Planning Commission, China’s transplant centres grew rapidly.

The alternative is that the Party passively acquiesced to mass killings led by the transplant profession and the hospitals in search of funding and, perversely, reputation, and by patients who did not care who was killed as long as they could live. Greed, selfishness and institutional demands drove the health system to pillage the organs of a marginalized, dehumanized minority. The large sums patients paid for organs went not just to medical personnel and hospitals, but also, in part, to prison, labour camp and detention centre guards who handed over Falun Gong detainees. Corruption has become pervasive in China, and the killing of Falun Gong for their organs is one aspect of it.

The massive organ supply available from Falun Gong practitioners was, to hospitals and transplant professionals, an opportunity. Hospitals grasped the opportunity. They innovated continuously in transplant capabilities and technology. The innovations became standardized and shared among the hospitals. Within a few years, liver and kidney transplants became routine clinical surgery. Organ transplantation techniques and volume increased rapidly. National level transplant centres popularized their clinical technology throughout the country, trained a large number of transplant doctors, and led the exponential growth of China’s transplant industry.

A third explanation is a synthesis of the previous two. The Communist Party’s demonization and brutalization of Falun Gong and the health system’s insatiable demand for organs have lived in China in symbiosis. Each feeds off the other. The combination is a human rights and humanitarian disaster.

Before 2000, the technology in kidney and liver transplants had matured through the sourcing of organs from prisoners sentenced to death and prisoners of conscience. The repression of Falun Gong opened up a mass organ supply. If the Chinese Communist Party had not approved and supported the mass killing of Falun Gong for their organs, it would not have been possible for the transplant profession and the hospitals to participate in and benefit from these killings. Unless transplant professionals and hospitals were motivated for their own reasons to transplant organs without regard to their source, a Party-driven policy of killing Falun Gong for their organs would have not gone very far.

As noted earlier incentives to growth in transplant volume are supported by the Party’s national strategic planning. Since 2001, the Party has incorporated organ transplantation into its Five-Year Plans.

In an interview with Phoenix TV on January 11, 2015,²⁰⁷³ former Deputy Health Minister Huang Jiefu was asked these questions and gave these answers:

Reporter: Minister Huang, have you ever taken organs from executed prisoners?

Huang: I said I went there once, but I was not the one who did the extraction. But after that one time, I did not want to go again. I am a doctor. Doctor has a moral bottom line, which is respecting life and helping the sick. This must be done in sacred places. Otherwise, it is against the moral bottom line of a doctor.

Reporter: Do you remember which year it was?

Huang: 1994.

Reporter: Was that the first year you did a human organ transplant?

Huang: First year. Because organ transplant is divided into two teams. One is the organ team, who extracts the organs. One is the recipient team, who transplants the organs.

Reporter: You?

Huang: I am in the recipient team. I’ve never been in the organ team. But I did go once to see how they do it. So, I have only been there once. After that time, I never wanted to have anything to do with the organ team. But I feel that I needed to change it.

Reporter: When you help the recipient, you think it is saving a life. But do you try not to think about the “organ”?

Huang: The majority of the transplant surgeons feel helpless. On the one hand, you face the patient who has a failing organ. As a doctor, you have the ability and responsibility to save people. But the other side of the story, when you think about the organ source, you feel helpless.

In criminal law, the term for this behavior is willful blindness. A person who commits a criminal act and is willfully blind is as guilty of a crime as a person who commits the act with full knowledge.

Huang said that he felt helpless. However, he was not helpless. He could have said “no” to participating in organ transplantation using an organ from an improper source. If Huang truly “never wanted to have anything to do with the organ team,” then he could have stopped performing transplants. The notion that he has nothing to do with the organ team, when he is taking organs from the organ team, is a fantasy. If organ harvesting goes against the moral bottom line of a doctor, and in this case Huang stated that it did, then using an organ from an improper source also goes against the moral bottom line of the doctor. There is no difference in the morality of harvesting from an improper source and transplanting an organ harvested from a source which the transplanting doctor knows to be improper or to which the transplanting doctor is willfully blind.

Health workers went along. The detailed testimony of the Uyghur surgeon, Dr. Enver Tohti, tells us there were professional consequences for not going along. There were lucrative benefits for cooperating. Some rationalized their behavior by claiming that they were changing the system from within.

Live organ transplants from prisoners of conscience have been taking place since at least 1997. Live organ transplants of scale, and thus, from Falun Gong practitioners, have been taking place for 16 years, and counting. Although a few kingpins of harvesting such as Bo Xilai, Wang Lijun and Zhou Yongkang were arrested and jailed (using pretexts and not organ harvesting,) the reform never came. And that is a tragedy for the Chinese people.

The Chinese transplant system needs to be reformed. However, such reform is difficult in its current context—an autocratic Communist state in which the abuse and torture of enemies of the state is accepted practice. Stopping the persecution of Falun Gong and other prisoners of conscience, ending the sourcing of transplants from prisoners of conscience, and bringing to justice the perpetrators of organ transplant abuse would mean changing the nature of the Chinese Communist Party. Expecting an organ transplant island of transparency and rule of law in a raging sea of tyranny, repression, cover-up, and incitement is delusional.

Yet there may be a reckoning. Perhaps the Chinese people will have the opportunity judge its former leadership and its medical establishment. Once the reckoning begins, the road to justice will be lined with families, Han Chinese, Uyghurs and Tibetan, who have lost someone.

China has been one of the great cradles of medical innovation, a land where solutions to problems that we think of as novel and modern, developed and thrived. As a singularly great culture, China is second to none in its ingenuity, and, over thousands of years of civilization, it was second to none in its attention to ethics. Today, that ethical spirit may be suppressed and appear to be sleeping, but the ethics and the ethical are still there. Many Chinese people aspire to moral principles. In restoring the ethical and moral baseline, there is no better place to start for both the Chinese and the international community alike than stopping the Chinese organ harvesting juggernaut.