3. A Nationwide, State-Unified "Living Organ Bank" on a Massive Scale

These examples all fully demonstrate that China has an extraordinarily abundant supply of living organs. The website of the People's Armed Police General Hospital in Beijing once stated outright: "Our hospital has ample donor supply," and "our liver and kidney transplant volume ranks first in the world." One cannot help but ask: where does such an inexhaustible, readily available supply of living organs come from?

Given the difficulty of finding compatible matches for organ transplants, the fact that the heart and liver are indispensable vital organs, combined with the absence in China of any mature voluntary organ-donation system comparable to that in the United States, and the cultural reluctance of Chinese people to donate organs after death, these astonishing and abnormal figures can only point to one explanation: China has a massive, controlled "living organ bank," waiting to be matched to patients (whereas abroad, it is patients who wait for organs). This massive "living organ bank" has the following characteristics:

1. It is controlled by the government. 2. The living sources have no personal freedom and no guarantee of personal safety; their vital organs can be extracted at any time. 3. Blood tests and other preparations are completed in advance and stored in a database for use. 4. Once a patient arrives and a suitable match is found, that living person is taken away to have the organ extracted.

This "living organ bank" is an open secret to many insiders, especially doctors. A doctor at Changzheng Hospital, affiliated with the Second Military Medical University of the People's Liberation Army in Shanghai, told an international investigator posing as an inquirer: "Our [organ] source is unified and provided by the state. As for this... how should I put it... only doctors know."

The China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center, based in Shenyang, served as an international window for soliciting business. In its explanation of "the actual state of organ transplantation in China," it stated the key point outright: "At present, the number of transplant surgeries completed in China each year is second only to the United States, making it the world's second-largest transplant nation." "Being able to perform such a volume of transplant surgeries is inseparable from the support of the Chinese government. On October 9, 1984, China's 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 relevant regulations, establishing that the provision of organs is an act supported by the government. This is unparalleled anywhere else in the world..." (This passage was deleted after the organ-harvesting cover-up was exposed.)

The website of the Tianjin Oriental Organ Transplant Center, which once solicited patients worldwide in five languages, declared the same spirit: "...The sheer volume of organ transplant surgeries is entirely due to government support. The Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs jointly promulgated a law to ensure that organ donation receives the support and guarantee of the government. This is unique anywhere in the world." (This passage was deleted after the organ-harvesting cover-up was exposed.)

This tells the world, unambiguously, that such an enormous supply of organs is inseparable from the support of the Chinese government, and is "unique" in the world. So how exactly does the Chinese government provide this "support"?

4. The 1984 Regulation That Legalized Organ Transplants from Serious Offenders

The "law" concerning the provision of organs mentioned above is the Interim Regulations on the Utilization of Corpses or Organs from Executed Prisoners, jointly issued in October 1984 by the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Article 4 of this regulation reads as follows:

"The use of the corpses or organs of executed prisoners must be kept under strict confidentiality, with careful attention to public impact, and should generally be carried out internally within the utilizing unit. Where genuinely necessary, with the consent of the people's court carrying out the execution, a health department surgical vehicle may be permitted to drive to the execution ground to extract organs, but vehicles bearing health department markings must not be used, and white coats must not be worn. The security cordon at the execution ground must not be lifted until the extraction surgery is complete."

This internal regulation of the Chinese government legally resolved the problem of maintaining a massive "living organ bank," but because it required "strict confidentiality," it remained unknown to the outside world for a long time.

IV. "Voluntary Donation" at Gunpoint

It is now clear that, in the absence of any system of voluntary donation, the existence of a massive, government-controlled, "nationally unified" living organ bank is the key reason China became a major organ transplant power. So who are these people, and what circumstances led to their being controlled by the government and turned into this "living organ bank"?

1. "Voluntary Donation" by "Death-Row Prisoners" Falls Far Short of Explaining China's Actual Figures

Given China's ability to rapidly obtain large numbers of vital human organs, and its deliberate evasiveness about where these organs come from, people naturally began to question the legality of these organ sources. Under international pressure, on July 9, 2005, Huang Jiefu, then Vice Minister of Health, for the first time acknowledged on behalf of the Chinese government, at the World Congress of the Transplantation Society in Manila, that most of China's transplanted organs at that time came from death-row prisoners.

Besides ordinary criminal offenders (the first category of prisoners), Chinese prisons currently hold another category of people (the second category): various political prisoners and religious believers, most notably large numbers of qigong practitioners. This second category has no criminal record and, in Western democracies, would not be considered criminals at all; they are targeted for the harshest crackdowns solely because their thoughts, speech, or religious beliefs are not tolerated by the Communist Party.

During the Cultural Revolution, many "class enemies" among this second category -- "counter-revolutionaries" and the like -- were publicly executed. After reform and opening up, in order to avoid international repercussions and attract foreign investment, second-category prisoners were no longer executed openly. The roughly 2,000 death-row prisoners China publicly reports executing each year belong essentially to the first category.

According to Amnesty International figures, more than 3,400 death-row prisoners were executed in China in 2004, of whom only about 5 percent "voluntarily" donated their organs (the severity of human-rights violations within China's prison system is widely known internationally, so this roughly 5 percent "voluntary donation" rate obtained at gunpoint is itself questionable -- a point we will not dwell on further here). Yet China officially reported completing roughly 3,500 full-liver transplants per year, while the actual number is likely at least three times that figure -- meaning more than 10,000 full-liver transplants annually.

On October 3, 2006, the Transplant Institute of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center held a panel discussion of transplant experts. Dr. John Fung, former president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons and then director of the transplant center at the Cleveland Clinic, said that about 40 percent of those sentenced to death in mainland China today are put to death by lethal injection aboard "death vans" (mobile execution vehicles). A spokesperson for Amnesty International Hong Kong said that the increasing use of "death vans" for executions in recent years is likely mainly because they make it more convenient to carry out organ extraction.

Medically speaking, among unrelated individuals, the rate of organ compatibility is only about 1 percent; finding a matching organ generally requires a pool of three to four hundred people to locate one suitable donor. This means that even the officially reported figure of 3,500 full-liver transplants per year (with the actual number likely exceeding 10,000) would require an organ pool of at least several hundred thousand people to guarantee compatible matches for full livers. The number of executed death-row prisoners cannot explain China's actual liver-transplant figures -- let alone the even larger kidney-transplant numbers.

China's Ministry of Health says that most transplanted organs currently come from the "voluntary donation" of "death-row prisoners." But this concept of a "death-row prisoner" differs from what the international community understands the term to mean -- internationally, it is understood only as referring to ordinary criminal offenders convicted of murder, rape, and the like, that is, death-row prisoners from the first category. Western societies have no equivalent to the second category of prisoners, and so naturally have no corresponding concept. Yet on the other hand, China's Ministry of Health openly admitted that, apart from the roughly 2 percent of organ sources that come from donation, it has no control over the remaining 98 percent of organ sources. This clearly implies something left unsaid.

In other words, beyond the several thousand death-row prisoners executed each year, there must exist a massive, even more secretive "death-row prisoner" living organ bank, controlled by an authority more powerful than the Ministry of Health, from which organs are extracted on demand and supplied continuously to provide the "majority (98 percent) of transplanted organs."

The existence of this even more secretive "death-row prisoner" living organ bank, and the identity of whoever is secretly controlling this 98 percent of organ sources, is the key to understanding organ transplantation in China.

2. Cutting Live Organs from "Class Enemies" Has a Long History

Looking back at history, the CCP's practice of forcibly taking organs from living "class enemies" began as early as the last century. Whenever "revolutionary" needs called for it, their consent was simply unnecessary -- and this practice has continued ever since.

During the Cultural Revolution, many "class enemies" -- "counter-revolutionaries," "ox demons and snake spirits," "the four bad elements," "American and Kuomintang spies," and so on -- died unnatural deaths. Beyond that, some of them had their organs extracted while still alive. Well-known examples include the following:

Yu Luoke, male, 27, an apprentice at the Beijing People's Machinery Factory, was branded an "active counter-revolutionary" for writing essays such as "On Class Origin." He was executed on March 5, 1970, alongside a group of other "death-row prisoners." By the time he was taken to the execution ground, his corneas had already been removed.

According to The Price of History: A Record of Deaths in the Cultural Revolution, an 18-year-old high school student named Li Lian confided her doubts about Lin Biao's "theory of continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat" in a letter to her soldier boyfriend. Betrayed by her boyfriend, she was arrested, branded an "active counter-revolutionary," and executed in 1970. To avoid any chance of a rescue at the execution ground, Li Lian was secretly transported to another city for the execution. An ambulance followed close behind. As soon as it drew near, both vehicles stopped, and two people in white coats jumped out of the ambulance. Inside the prison van, four burly, armed police officers suddenly wrenched Li Lian around, pressing her face and body against the wall of the vehicle. Her jacket was yanked up her back, and -- with no time even to administer anesthesia -- a gleaming scalpel sliced open a palm-sized wound on her right side. Within moments, a kidney dripping with fresh crimson blood dropped, with a splash, onto a pristine white porcelain tray. In the operating room of a hospital, a dying "revolutionary cadre" was waiting to have this kidney, seized from a pool of blood, implanted into his body.

Zhong Haiyuan, a primary school teacher in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, was branded a "counter-revolutionary" and sentenced to death for writing "Down with Hua Guofeng!" on a wall. On April 30, 1978, she was bound tightly, subjected to a struggle session, had her hair pulled, and was paraded through the streets wearing a large placard around her neck. At the No. 92 Field Hospital in Nanchang, a fighter pilot -- the son of a senior cadre -- was suffering kidney failure and urgently needed a kidney transplant, one that had to come from a living donor. The hospital, through military commanders, instructed the deputy battalion commander overseeing the execution that Zhong must not be shot dead outright -- her kidney had to be removed while she was still alive. At the execution ground, once she had been positioned at the designated spot, the deputy battalion commander deliberately fired a shot into her right back. Medical personnel, who had already been waiting there, then quickly carried her into a nearby canvas-covered military truck, where, on a makeshift operating table, they cut out Zhong Haiyuan's kidney while she was still alive. Her body was then taken away by the No. 92 Field Hospital to be used by doctors as a dissection specimen.

3. The "Class Enemies" of the New Era

This massive, hidden "death-row prisoner" living organ bank, controlled by a more powerful authority, is the main source of human organs in China today.

This large group of people are not ordinary death-row criminals, but in the CCP's eyes, they are considered even more serious offenders than death-row prisoners. Because they believe in Falun Gong's principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance, the CCP regards them as "class enemies," subjecting them to a crackdown even harsher than that faced by death-row prisoners. Over the years, enormous numbers of Falun Gong practitioners have suffered every kind of torture, with at least 2,900 confirmed tortured to death. Under Jiang Zemin's secret directive to "physically eliminate" Falun Gong, the Interim Regulations on the Utilization of Corpses or Organs from Executed Prisoners, issued internally in October 1984, were naturally applied to Falun Gong practitioners as well.

As early as the beginning of 1999, relevant Chinese government departments estimated the number of Falun Gong practitioners at between 70 million and 100 million, exceeding the more than 60 million members of the Communist Party itself. This triggered extreme fear in Jiang Zemin and the CCP, who elevated Falun Gong to the status of a class enemy threatening "the death of the Party and the death of the nation." As a result, in July 1999, Jiang ordered the CCP to crack down on Falun Gong with full force, applying every tactic used against "class enemies" in past political campaigns, launching a nationwide wave of mass arrests of Falun Gong practitioners, and detaining them in labor camps, "re-education" institutions, prisons, and similar facilities without any legal process whatsoever. It is estimated that the cumulative number of Falun Gong practitioners illegally sentenced or sent to labor camps has exceeded 7.6 million.

Moreover, Falun Gong practitioners detained in labor camps, "re-education" facilities, prisons, and similar places were routinely subjected to blood draws and mass blood testing under the pretext of "physical examinations," while ordinary criminals were not. In other words, the labor camps, prisons, and other facilities across China holding Falun Gong practitioners had long since secretly established, nationwide, a database of Falun Gong practitioners' blood samples. As everyone knows, blood-type data is exactly what is required for organ-transplant matching.

Jiang Zemin repeatedly ordered the CCP to "eradicate Falun Gong within three months," so naturally, whether Falun Gong practitioners were willing to donate organs was never even a consideration. In today's China, where fraud runs rampant, forging certificates and documents is exceedingly easy. According to insiders, forging documents attesting to Falun Gong practitioners' "voluntary donation" was handled by dedicated personnel. Many doctors at organ-transplant hospitals have privately admitted that their organ sources are young, healthy Falun Gong practitioners.

So now we can clearly see: the Falun Gong practitioners detained in labor camps, "re-education" facilities, prisons, and similar places have been forcibly turned into a massive "living organ bank." When a patient needs a particular organ, a match can naturally be found quickly by searching this massive "living organ bank" using its blood-sample data. This is far more convenient than a "pregnancy machine" -- a woman must wait eight months to give birth, whereas this massive living bank can be drawn upon whenever needed. This is the key reason a suitable donor can be found so quickly and so continuously.

Ever since the crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999, the CCP has, in one stroke, created a hundred million "class enemies." China's officially reported number of organ transplants has risen sharply since 1999, and this is certainly no coincidence. For example, the organ-transplant statistics table on the website of the Tianjin Oriental Organ Transplant Center (chart below) shows unmistakably that the number of organ transplants surged in step with this crackdown.

V. The Dark Secret of the CCP's Organ Theft Is Being Torn Open

As the saying goes, if you don't want anyone to know, don't do it in the first place. No wall is entirely windproof, and paper can never contain fire forever. As early as December 22, 2000, the Minghui website (Falun Dafa Information Center) published a report stating that "certain corrupt police officers are conspiring with money-hungry, unscrupulous doctors to sell the organs of Dafa disciples, using methods so cruel and inhuman as to be utterly outrageous. It is reported that a certain traditional Chinese medicine hospital in Shijiazhuang alone has already been allotted six quotas." At the time, however, this report drew little attention. It was not until March 2006 that this dark secret was finally torn wide open.

1. Witnesses Come Forward

On March 8, 2006, a journalist using the pseudonym "Peter" revealed that a secret prison existed in the Sujiatun district of Shenyang, Liaoning Province, holding more than 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners. None of the Falun Gong practitioners taken there ever came out alive; ultimately they would be killed, and their internal organs extracted and sent to various medical facilities for enormous profit, since the trade in human kidneys, livers, and other organs had become highly lucrative in China. The bodies of the murdered practitioners were then cremated to destroy the evidence.

On March 17, another witness who had worked at the Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital of Combined Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine -- later using the pseudonym "Annie" -- further testified that, starting in 2001, 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners had been secretly imprisoned in this camp, and to this day none had survived. She said that her ex-husband, the chief surgeon at the hospital, had told her that in the two years before October 2003, he had personally removed the corneas of approximately 2,000 Falun Gong practitioners. None of these cornea "donors" survived, because their internal organs were subsequently extracted while they were still alive by other surgeons; even their bone marrow, hair, skin, and fat were harvested and sold, before their bodies were finally thrown into a crematory furnace to destroy the evidence. This "operation" began in 2001 and reached its peak in 2002.

Neither of these two witnesses was a Falun Gong practitioner.

2. Testimony from a Veteran Military Doctor of the Shenyang Military Region

Shortly afterward, on March 31, a witness identifying himself as "a veteran military doctor attached to the Logistics Department of the Shenyang Military Region" (hereafter "the veteran military doctor") came forward and stated that the underground camp in Sujiatun indeed existed, that organ removal was very common there, and that the cremation of bodies -- even the direct incineration of living people -- was likewise common, but that the Sujiatun hospital was only one of 36 similar camps nationwide.

The "veteran military doctor" disclosed: "According to the material I have access to, the largest Falun Gong detention site in China is in Jilin, known only by the code name 672-S, holding more than 120,000 people -- a concentration of Falun Gong practitioners, serious criminal offenders, and various political prisoners from across the country, though its exact location is unknown." "At present, the largest regions holding detained Falun Gong practitioners nationwide are mainly Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. In the Jiutai area of Jilin alone, China's fifth-largest Falun Gong detention site holds more than 14,000 people."

This "veteran military doctor" pointed out that the CCP has openly declared Falun Gong to be a "class enemy" -- that is, a target for the harshest crackdown, on par with serious criminal offenders. According to the latest decision, the "CCP Central Committee" has approved treating Falun Gong practitioners as "class enemies" who may be dealt with by any means serving the needs of economic development, without any need to report upward. In other words, like many serious criminal offenders in China, Falun Gong practitioners are no longer treated as human beings, but as raw material for products -- turned into commodities.

This witness from within the military system said that, under "state regulations," provincial-level governments have the authority, under the supervision of their respective military regions, to establish resource-recycling facilities for serious criminal offenders. This stems from a document issued by the Central Military Commission as far back as 1962, one still in force to this day. Under this document, offenders sentenced to death or guilty of the most heinous crimes may be subjected to "revolutionary treatment" corresponding to the needs of the state and of socialist development. During the Cultural Revolution, the most extreme form of such "revolutionary treatment" was consumption -- that is, being used as food -- followed by being used in various construction projects and production work.

The "veteran military doctor" said that, under the supplementary 1984 regulation (mentioned above), organ transplantation from serious offenders was legalized. Many local judicial, procuratorial, and public security departments essentially handled the matter in one of two ways: either transplanting the organs directly and then cremating the body, or wounding the person to stage a formal "execution," followed by direct transplantation and cremation. By 1992, the practice had effectively become entirely open, as the development of various industries turned the human body into a valuable industrial raw material -- with the living, and even corpses, becoming raw materials.

The "veteran military doctor" said: "The management system for organ transplantation is the military -- meaning that the management and institutions behind this whole matter are centered on the military system, something civilian government agencies can never match, because once something becomes a military secret, there's no way to obtain information about it -- everyone understands how the military system operates." "So attention needs to be directed toward many military installations -- those are the real concentration camps."

In later testimony, the "veteran military doctor" revealed further details about extracting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners: "During detention, Falun Gong practitioners and other prisoners are held under their real names, but when it comes time for organ transplantation, a fabricated false name is used -- that is, a fictitious person is created, but with a complete set of documents, including a signature (of course forged) on the organ-donation consent form." "Among the materials I have access to, there are more than 60,000 such forged, signed-on-behalf-of documents alone, all stating that the person voluntarily consents to a particular organ transplant and accepts full responsibility for the consequences -- even including heart transplants -- with many of the signatures clearly written in the same handwriting. These documents are kept for eighteen months and must then be destroyed. They are stored at the provincial military district level, and accessing them requires approval from a central government commissioner stationed locally."

"Many people focus their attention on organ-transplant figures only from the officially disclosed portion. In reality, the number of underground, undisclosed organ transplants carried out in China is several times greater than the disclosed figure. For example: if the officially disclosed number is 30,000 cases a year, the actual number performed is likely around 110,000 -- and this is also the fundamental reason organ-transplant prices in China have dropped so sharply. Because of this enormous supply of living sources, many hospitals with military backgrounds, even while reporting their official figures, also independently carry out large-scale transplants privately, causing the actual total to far exceed official statistics."

From the "veteran military doctor's" testimony, we can clearly see that the Chinese government no longer regards Falun Gong practitioners as human beings, but as raw material and commodities -- stealing their organs in a manner entirely consistent with how "class enemies" have always been treated.

Jiang Zemin once issued a secret order stating that "nothing is excessive when dealing with Falun Gong." The CCP's crackdown on Falun Gong operates entirely on the logic of "class struggle," and turning Falun Gong practitioners into a "living organ bank" is simply this class-struggle logic "keeping pace with the times" -- while also generating enormous profits, quietly amassing a fortune without drawing attention.

China's internal government regulations had, long before this, already permitted extracting organs from living Falun Gong practitioners -- meaning the Chinese government provided "legal" backing for hospitals to remove organs from living Falun Gong practitioners, while requiring that the source of these organs be kept under "strict confidentiality." As a result, the judicial, procuratorial, and public security organs, hospitals, and doctors colluded together, acting with impunity to blatantly murder Falun Gong practitioners, extract and sell their organs for enormous profit, and then cremate the bodies to destroy the evidence.

At the same time, some organized-crime elements and criminal gangs in society also sought to profit enormously from the organ trade; when their reach could not extend into this massive "living organ bank," they instead took to the streets to kidnap people and steal their organs -- turning women, children, and other vulnerable groups into victims of China's frenzied organ-transplant trade as well.

3. Cases of Missing Falun Gong Practitioners Whose Organs Went Missing

In recent years, numerous confirmed cases of disappearance have come to light, though the actual number of missing persons cannot currently be tallied. In some cases, bodies were discovered some time after the disappearance. For example, Fu Kexu, a retired senior teacher (age 50) from Kaiyang County No. 1 Elementary School in Guizhou Province, and her distant nephew Xu Genli went missing in Jinggangshan, Jiangxi Province, in November 2005. Their family enlisted local villagers familiar with the terrain to search every mountain, body of water, and cave where they might have gotten lost, and even sought assistance from relevant departments of the Jinggangshan municipal government -- but found no trace of them. At the end of April 2006, their skeletal remains were unexpectedly discovered on Wuzhi Peak in Jinggangshan. Both were Falun Gong practitioners; analysis suggests they were very likely killed to have their organs removed, with their bodies then dumped in the wilderness.

Others, once taken into labor camps or prisons, simply vanished without a trace, some of them sent to unknown locations. For example, Yuan Zheng, a Falun Gong practitioner from Zhuhai, Guangdong, female, in her late thirties, originally from Liaoning, was abducted by police in September 2001 while out telling people the truth about Falun Gong, and was held at Zhuhai's No. 2 Detention Center. Fearing that speaking her real name would implicate her workplace and family, Yuan Zheng refused throughout to identify herself, so the detention center simply recorded her in its roster as "Unnamed." In June 2002, Yuan Zheng was taken away, her whereabouts unknown, and there has been no news of her since. According to inmates held at the No. 2 Detention Center who learned of this through internal channels, "Unnamed" was sent to a special location. At the time, large numbers of petitioners from across the country had traveled to Beijing to appeal, and after being arrested, many of them, not wanting to implicate their workplaces or families, refused to give their names. Some of those who withheld their names were taken away by armed police to unknown locations -- that is, to concentration camps.

Although hospitals cremated the bodies of Falun Gong practitioners after extracting their organs while still alive, leaving no evidence behind, among the nearly 3,000 practitioners now known to have been tortured to death, some bodies were found with unexplained bloody wounds and knife incisions; some were autopsied without family consent; and some victims' internal organs had been removed. According to insiders, doctors at the Baiyun District drug rehabilitation center in Guangzhou openly "instructed" the enforcers torturing Falun Gong practitioners: "Don't hit the lower back -- the kidneys are useful."

On February 16, 2001, Ren Pengwu, a Falun Gong practitioner from Harbin, Heilongjiang (male, age 33), was arrested for distributing materials exposing the truth about the Tiananmen self-immolation incident, and was detained at the No. 2 Detention Center in Hulan County. He died five days later, in the early morning of February 21. Without his family's consent, police, under the pretext of a forensic examination, removed all of Ren Pengwu's organs from his throat down to his groin, then forcibly cremated his body.

Hao Runjuan of Guangzhou, female, age unknown, a Falun Gong practitioner from Guangzhou's Baiyun District, was in excellent health before her arrest. She was illegally taken into custody at a police station on February 25, 2002, and died after 22 days of brutal torture at the Baiyun Detention Center in Guangzhou. Her body was autopsied without her family's knowledge whatsoever. When the family was notified to identify the body, it was unrecognizable, still bearing fresh bloodstains. Because the body looked so unlike Hao Runjuan, the family, after viewing it twice, insisted it was not her. The family was finally forced to bring her two-year-old son in for a DNA test, which ultimately confirmed that the unrecognizable body was indeed Hao Runjuan's.