China’s sinister organ harvesting industry as Xi promises Putin he can live forever

The Chinese leader’s promise to the Russian President has reignited concerns over China’s organ harvesting industry after a ‘hot mic’ moment captured a sinister conversation

A hot mic at Beijing’s “Axis of Evil” military parade caught a candid conversation between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. They were heard discussing the possibility of reaching eternal life.

Xi’s Russian translator was caught telling Putin: “With the development of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted, and people can live younger and younger, and even achieve immortality.

“Predictions are, this century, there’s a chance of also living to 150.”

The exchange might seem a moment of dystopian, movie-villain malevolence from the terrible two, but Xi’s offer of everlasting organ transplants touches on a grim ongoing reality: that organs are being forcibly transplanted from persecuted populations to meet macabre medical needs.

The claim might sound like a conspiracy theory. However, human rights experts and organisations have long warned of the terrible practice taking place in the Asian powerhouse.

Accusations have been circulating since the 1970s that China has been harvesting organs from its prisoner populations.

However, concerns ramped up when transplant operations rapidly expanded during the 2000s. This period coincided with rising waves of repression against “dissident” populations like Falun Gong practitioners and the Uyghur people.

China twice denied these claims to the United Nations during the 2000s, and again in 2014. In 2015, the practice was officially banned, but evidence of its continuation soon surfaced.

In 2019, a large-scale tribunal was held in the UK by human rights experts and investigators. Prosecutors “confirmed beyond reasonable doubt” that China was still executing prisoners and that a “very many people had died indescribably hideous deaths” at the regime’s hands.

It stated: “In the long-term practice in [China] of forced organ harvesting it was indeed Falun Gong practitioners who were used as a source – probably the principle source – of organs for forced organ harvesting”.

It further concluded that there was no evidence that the practice had been stopped. The tribunal estimated that 90,000 organ transplant operations were carried out in China per year, including for foreign “medical tourists”. This was almost triple the number officially registered by the Chinese government.

In 2021, the UN released a further statement condemning Chinese organ harvesting against persecuted populations. In 2022, a medical journal study found at least 71 cases of Chinese prisoners having their organs removed without “brain-death” being recorded. This means that victims may have still been alive at the time of the organs’ removal.

China has continued to deny all such accusations. However, it also remains the country with the second-largest organ transplant program in the world and the shortest organ transplant wait times. It is common for necessary organs to be received in weeks.

By way of comparison, the average wait time for an organ transplant in the UK is three years.

Although China now claims that all its organs come from voluntary sources – with registered donor numbers increasing from a mere 5,734 voluntary donors in 2015 to 7.05 million today – studies suggest that these numbers have been “systematically manipulated and falsified.”

Experts, meanwhile, have warned that an estimated 25,000 people go missing in China every year without explanation. Online speculation in the country often linking cases to illicit harvesting schemes.

Rushan Abbas, an Uyghur American activist testified to the US Congress that: “People disappear overnight, and their hearts, lungs and kidneys are sold to the highest bidder.”

Another stated that Uyghurs were treated as human “organ banks.” As many as 50,000 per year might be executed for their organs, experts estimate.

In July this year, it was announced that Chinese authorities would be opening six new organ transplant centres in the Xinjiang region, the historical home of the Uyghurs.

Flags were raised after it was noted that the rate of voluntary organ donations in the region lagged 5 times below the national average. This reignited concerns over illegal harvesting being conducted on prisoners populations.

China, though, continues to deny all accusations of organ harvesting – despite Xi’s sinister, off-hand offer of organ-transplant immortality to the Russian leader.