Organ Trafficking in China

“As of 2015, China declared that all organ donations would be “sourced from voluntary donors,” repealing an earlier policy that allowed the government to source organs from death row prisoners. Accordingly, in 2017, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) reported that the voluntary organ donor list of approximately 375,000 people “yielded 5,146 ‘eligible’ organ donors,” resulting in over 16,000 organ transplants.

Yet scholars and experts, such as those who form the China Tribunal, an international organization tasked with investigating transplant practices in China, find a different reality. They estimate from data, including hospital bed counts and medical personnel, that China conducts between 60,000 to upwards of 100,000 organ transplants annually.

Given the overwhelming gap in these statistics, from where did China source tens of thousands of organs?

The answer lies in the illegal operation of forced organ harvesting. Recent congressional testimonies estimate that 25,000 to 50,000 prisoners in China undergo forced organ transplants annually. Imprisoned and detained religious and ethnic groups, including the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, account for the majority of victims.

Accusations of organ harvesting in China came to Congress in 2006, when human rights advocates and government officials reported that “there has been and continues today to be a large-scale organ seizure from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.” Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that began in the 1990s, has amassed millions of followers since then. While estimates are varied and “difficult to verify,” the approximate number of current members ranges from 7 million to 40 million. However, since the late 1990s, the group has been targeted by the Chinese government. After a peaceful rally of 10,000 Falun Gong followers in April 1999, the government banned the movement, declaring the group to be an “evil cult.” Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners were, and continue to be, imprisoned and sentenced to labor camps. Many of these individuals face torture and die in custody, while others are “murdered by medical professionals for their vital organs.” This same practice continues today, targeting Falun Gong followers, the Uyghur community, and other oppressed minority groups in China.”

Uncovering Evil: Illegal Organ Harvesting in China and the 2025 “Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act
[McCain Insistute.org 8/7/25 by Jillian Proshan]

“In a chilling revelation that underscores the ongoing atrocities committed under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Mr. Cheng Pei Ming, the first known survivor of China’s state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting campaign, spoke to journalist Tasnim Nazeer for The Diplomat about his survival against the odds.

Cheng publicly shared his harrowing experience at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, exposing his story and the ongoing forced organ harvesting that is taking place in China. His testimony offered a rare and disturbing glimpse into the horrors faced by prisoners of conscience in China, particularly practitioners of Falun Gong. Cheng is said to be the only known survivor of China’s forced organ harvesting, and his testimony is unprecedented in exposing the hidden horrors of the brutal industry. 

A Brutal Ordeal

Cheng, who hails from a rural village in Shandong Province, was repeatedly detained and tortured between 1999 and 2004 for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions. The Chinese Communist Party, which views Falun Gong as a threat to its authoritarian rule, has branded Falun Gong a dangerous cult and has systematically persecuted its adherents for decades.

Speaking from inside a car in Washington, D.C., Cheng told me, “One day in 2002, I was told to pack up and was suddenly transferred to Harbin Prison and later to Daqing Prison. It was there that I was tortured even more severely.”

Cheng recalled the escalating brutality he faced in detention. In a particularly harrowing episode, he was tortured to the point of losing consciousness.

During his imprisonment, Cheng was subjected to forced blood tests – an ominous indicator of his organs’ viability for transplantation. “They did blood tests on me many times and subjected me to all kinds of inhumane torture,” he noted.

“The torture in the prison was very systematic. One was mental and the other was physical [torture]. Mentally they put me and my family members under pressure as they wanted me to give up my faith in Falun Gong and if I didn’t they would force my wife to divorce me when I was in prison.” Cheng was told that if his wife did not divorce him she would face similar persecution as he was facing.

After hours of excruciating torture known as “the big stretch,” during which his limbs were painfully stretched from all corners, Cheng swallowed a small rusty nail and a blunt blade he had found in the torture room. Despite not showing immediate signs of ill health, he was forcibly taken to the hospital on November 16, 2004.

His family was informed that there was an 80 percent mortality rate associated with the operation, supposedly to remove the objects he had swallowed.

“They said that I had to undergo an operation, but I firmly refused. They held me down and gave me an injection, and I quickly lost consciousness,” Cheng recounted. “When I woke up, I was still in the hospital and felt terrible pain in my side. There was a bloody tube connected to me. I was shackled to the bed. ”

Cheng was shackled to a hospital bed, with an IV tube taped to his foot, a drainage tube in his left chest, oxygen tubes in his nose, and a 35 cm incision on the left side of his chest. Typically, the removal of such objects would be done via endoscopy, but Cheng had undergone open chest surgery.

“The doctors and several of the ‘610 Office’ officials were there,” he recalled. The 610 office is a notorious secretive and powerful organization within the CCP, tasked with implementing the crackdown on the Falun Gong.

Following the forced surgery, Cheng was returned to detention at Daqing Prison, where he experienced severe shortness of breath and fatigue. Despite enduring ongoing torture by prison guards for his refusal to renounce Falun Gong, Cheng remained resolute.

In March 2006, he began a hunger strike and was subsequently transferred to Daqing Longnan Hospital. Upon arrival, his sister was present and witnessed Cheng being shackled to a hospital bed. A prison guard informed his sister that Cheng had supposedly ingested a knife and that the surgery required to remove it had an 80 percent mortality rate. This was the second time the family had been given such information, but this time, neither Cheng nor his family were asked to consent to the operation.

Cheng maintains that he had not swallowed any object and had no medical condition necessitating surgery before being forcibly taken to the hospital. He believes that the authorities were planning to kill him.

That night, before the scheduled surgery, Cheng requested to be unshackled to use the restroom across the hall. Upon his return, the guard forgot to re-shackle him and fell asleep, inadvertently providing him with an opportunity to escape via the hospital’s internal fire stairs.

“I noticed the fire escape on my way to the restroom and I knew where it was so I could use this to try to escape out of the hospital… I ran downstairs and called a cab in front of the hospital and quickly went out of the area into Tianjin city,” he said.

Cheng escaped as a refugee to Thailand where he stayed in a United Nations refugee camp. After a dramatic escape from China and a lengthy nine-year period of evading the authorities, Cheng made it to the United States in 2020.

A Grim Discovery

Once in the U.S., he underwent a series of medical tests that confirmed his worst fears: segments of his liver and a portion of his left lung had been surgically removed.

“At that time, I didn’t realize that it was organ harvesting. After undergoing medical tests, I found out that my organs had been harvested,” Cheng explained. “Part of my liver and lungs had been removed. I didn’t even know about it until I was examined in the U.S.”

Transplant specialists have confirmed through recent CT scans that Cheng is missing segments 2 and 3 of his left liver lobe, as well as half of the lower left lobe of his lung. These findings, along with a detailed report on his case, were presented to a panel in Washington D.C.

There have been consistent allegations that China is engaging in forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience – mostly members of Falun Gong, but also Uyghurs and Tibetans – for decades.

In 2021, U.N. human rights experts expressed concern over credible information about the practice. “Forced organ harvesting in China appears to be targeting specific ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities held in detention, often without being explained the reasons for arrest or given arrest warrants, at different locations,” they said. “We are deeply concerned by reports of discriminatory treatment of the prisoners or detainees based on their ethnicity and religion or belief.””

First Known Survivor of China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Speaks Out
[The Diplomat 8/10/24 by Tasmin Nazeer]

“The evidence of mass killing in China of prisoners of conscience for their organs sold at high prices to transplant tourists or local wealthy Chinese, as well as to well-connected Chinese, is overwhelming. An independent people’s tribunal, the China Tribunal, after holding extensive hearings and accumulating a wealth of evidence concluded in 2020 that the mass killing of practitioners of the spiritually based set of exercises Falun Gong for their organs for transplants was certain, beyond doubt.(1) Twelve United Nations human rights experts in 2021 characterized the evidence about forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience generally in China as extremely alarming, of utmost concern.(2)

David Kilgour and I in July 2006 produced the first report on this subject.(3) One of the reasons, though far from the only, that we came to the conclusion we did about the mass killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs, practitioners of Falun Gong in particular, was that there were no laws to prohibit the abuse, neither in China nor anywhere else. Most countries had then laws prohibiting the sourcing of organs from persons without their consent or the consent of their family members. However, in July 2006 we could not identify any country which had such laws with extra-territorial effect.

Since 2006 and the publication of that report, there has been a raft of laws enacted or proposed in several jurisdictions directed to preventing complicity in extra-territorial organ transplant abuse. There have been twelve types of laws enacted or proposed. Given the limited time I have here, I will present only one example for each type of law.

1) prohibiting extra-territorial violation of domestic transplant laws

The Council of Europe Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs now has fifteen ratifying states and thirteen other states which have signed the Convention but not yet ratified it.(4) That Convention obligates states parties to prohibit its nationals and habitual residents from engaging in organ trafficking whether inside or outside the territory of the state party. There are five states not party to the Convention, including Canada,(5) which have also enacted the legislation the Convention requires.

2) banning entry to the country of those non-citizens complicit in organ transplant abuse

Canada is an example for this type of law as well. The Canadian law which enacted a prohibition against complicity in organ transplant abuse abroad also enacted a prohibition on entry into Canada of foreigners who have engaged in conduct contrary to the criminal prohibition.(6)

3) prohibiting health insurance coverage of transplantation in countries with forced organ harvesting

Israel has enacted such a prohibition. Israeli law prevents insurance coverage for any organ transplant abroad, if the transplantation, had it taken place in Israel, would not have been conducted in conformity with Israeli law.(7)

4) authorizing the sanctioning of foreigners who have engaged in forced organ harvesting

In the United States, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act has passed the House of Representatives and is now before the Senate. The proposed Act requires the President of the United States to impose sanctions on any person listed by the President as facilitating forced organ harvesting or trafficking in persons for purposes of the removal of organs.(8)

5) giving government agencies the discretion to exclude any supplier if the supplier has been involved in forced organ harvesting

In the United Kingdom in the House of Lords, legislation was proposed which would give the Government of the UK a discretion to exclude any supplier if the supplier or a connected person has been involved in forced organ harvesting, or dealing in any device or equipment or services relating to forced organ harvesting.(9)

6) authorizing the government to deny passports to those convicted of purchasing an organ

Again here the United States proposed Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act provides an example. That proposed Act gives the Secretary of State power to refuse to issue a passport to any individual who has been convicted of an offense in the US of transferring an organ for valuable consideration for use in transplantation if the individual, in the commission of the offense, used a passport or crossed an international border.

7) requiring a government agency to produce country reports annually on the organ transplant policies and practices of designated countries

Another US proposed law is relevant here, the Falun Gong Protection Act. That Act too has passed the House of Representatives and is now before the Senate. That proposed Act provides that the Secretary of State must submit to the appropriate congressional committees, within a year of passage of the legislation, a report on the organ transplant policies and practices of the People’s Republic of China.(10)

8) requiring patients who receive transplants abroad or hospitals or doctors who provide aftercare to these patients to report the details of the transplantations to a designated government agency

The example here comes from France. A proposed French law requires any patient who obtains a transplant abroad to report that transplant to a health agency with a certificate that the organ was not purchased. Doctors are required to report to the same health agency the transplantation of any patient the doctor examines.(11)

9) requiring the government to make public aggregate figures of transplant tourism by country

A proposed Australian law requires any person entering Australia to report to the clearance authority whether the person has received a transplant outside Australia in the past five years, and, in the affirmative, the name and place of the medical facility where the transplant was received.(12) The proposed law further requires the Government to report yearly and publicly the number of times each place was mentioned.

10) authorizing a designated public authority to examine hospital transplant aftercare records

Again here the Israeli law is relevant. That law provides that health officials may examine the medical records maintained by any approved medical centre relating to organ removal and transplant, including material on the medical condition of an organ recipient, and also obtain any other pertinent information they require.(13)

11) prohibiting brokering in organs, even if the brokering is done entirely outside the country and does not violate the laws where the brokering took place

The example here is Taiwan. The Taiwan Human Organ Transplantation Act prohibits organ brokerage both within and outside Taiwan, whether the foreign laws prohibits organ brokerage or not.(14)

12) authorizing the revocation of licensing of medical personnel where the personnel have committed a serious violation of the prohibition against brokering.

The Taiwanese law is also relevant here. It provides that, if the person violated the law is a physician, the physician is to be subject to suspension of practice for from one month to one year, or revocation of their practice license.(15)

A few countries have laws enacted or proposed on cross border organ transplant abuse. Even fewer had enacted laws addressed to the abuse. No country has enacted the full legal slate of possible laws to prevent and remedy the abuse. The overall conclusion here is that, though several positive steps have been taken, much remains to be done to prevent and remedy transplant tourism and complicity in organ transplant abuse abroad.”

Laws Enacted and Proposed Prohibiting and Remedying Transplant Tourism and Complicity in Organ Transplant Abuse Abroad
[End Transplant Abuse 9/1/25 by David Matas]

I have heard from various sources that Falun Gong women are raped, they get pregnant, then they give birth and the baby is killed for its body parts! 😱 for the Chinese “mafia”, i.e. the CCP.

REFORM Puzzle Piece