A Taiwanese doctor who is part of a medical ethics nonprofit has expressed concerns about China’s organ industry, especially regarding children.
Huang Shiwei, vice chairman of the medical ethics nonprofit Taiwan International Organ Transplant Care Association, told NTD’s Health 1+1 program that he was troubled by an alleged order that a hospital gave medical student Luo Shuaiyu.
The medical student, Luo Shuaiyu, specialized in kidney transplantation at the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. Authorities said Luo fell to his death from a building in May 2024, just weeks before his graduation.
According to audio recordings released by his parents after his death, Luo had been asked to locate 12 child donors aged 3 to 9, ostensibly for medical purposes.
Huang said this is concerning given China’s record of forced organ harvesting.
“They asked [Luo] to find child donors. Where was he supposed to look?” Huang said.
Pediatric Organs
On May 21, 2024, Fudan University Medical College in Shanghai established a pediatric organ transplant center.
According to the university, Li Qian, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) secretary at the pediatric hospital, said that “in just over a year, [pediatric organ transplants] have exceeded 100 cases.” State media outlet Sina reported that the hospital has performed highly complex surgeries, including kidney transplants from donors weighing less than 5 kg (11 pounds), indicating that newborns are among the donors.
In 2017, the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou reported that 90 percent of pediatric kidney donors were allocated to adult patients.
A 2023 study by doctors from Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Renji Hospital, published in the American Journal of Transplantation, detailed two cases of kidney transplants from newborns born at 29 weeks and 29 weeks, 5 days to adult women aged 34 and 25 with end-stage kidney disease. The kidneys were harvested on the second and third days after birth, prompting ethical scrutiny.
Shabih Manzar, associate professor of clinical pediatrics at Louisiana State University, questioned the procedure in the same journal, noting that one of the 29-week preterm infants had no apparent life-threatening conditions, casting doubt on the decision to withdraw life-sustaining treatment.
Huang noted the high survival rates of 29-week preterm infants with modern medical technology.
“Whether it’s the parents or the medical system, everyone would typically do everything possible to save these preterm newborns,” he said. “No one would give up and simply designate them as organ donors. Yet, we see that they are using 29-week preterm infants as organ donors.”
China’s Organ Harvesting Industry
China began using organs from executed prisoners following a 1984 regulation allowing the practice. After 1999, when the regime began persecuting the spiritual group Falun Gong, China’s organ transplant industry exponentially increased.
Huang noted that when former CCP leader Jiang Zemin initiated the persecution campaign against Falun Gong, practitioners were branded as “class enemies,” making them prime targets for forced organ harvesting.
This period marked an unprecedented surge in organ transplants. According to data from the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, compiled from Chinese state media reports, only 135 liver transplants were recorded in China over more than two decades before 1999, averaging five to six cases annually. From 1999 to 2006, liver transplants skyrocketed to 14,085 cases over the eight-year period, averaging more than 1,700 cases per year—a 180-fold increase.
“Organ transplantation in China suddenly became a massive industry,” Huang said. “With countless patients in China and worldwide needing organs, there are enormous commercial interests at play.”
In March 2006, a whistleblower using the pseudonym Annie, a former employee of Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, revealed to The Epoch Times the CCP’s horrific practice of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners. This exposure had a significant impact on China’s organ transplant industry.
According to the China Liver Transplant Registry, cited by state media People’s Daily, liver transplants peaked at 2,970 cases in 2005 and 2,781 in 2006 but fell by roughly one-third to 1,822 cases in 2007.
Huang attributed this decline to the 2006 revelations.
“The reason for the decrease in organ transplants in China in 2007 was the exposure of the CCP’s forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners,” Huang said.
“As relatives relentlessly searched for family members detained for practicing Falun Gong, it became increasingly difficult for the CCP’s public security and medical personnel to continue using Falun Gong practitioners’ organs on such a large scale.”
He said the drop in transplant numbers underscores the international scrutiny and domestic pressure that began to disrupt the CCP’s organ harvesting operations.
Concerns
“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,” according to a 2021 joint statement from the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Huang said: “In most countries, organ donors tend to be older, 50, 60, or even 70 years old. But in China, the organ transplant industry operates differently. When organs are supplied to wealthy individuals, they naturally demand those from younger people.”
Huang said he believes in China there is now an increasing focus on obtaining organs from young individuals, including children.
Mysterious disappearances of adolescents across multiple Chinese provinces in recent years have fueled public suspicion of organ trafficking, especially because of China’s extensive surveillance infrastructure.
In October 2022, Hu Xinyu, a first-year high school student in eastern China’s Jiangxi Province, mysteriously disappeared from school. In August 2023, 8-year-old Wang Sijun, who had a rare Rh-negative blood type, died unexpectedly while receiving treatment at Yunnan Red Cross Hospital.
According to viral videos posted by her family on platforms such as Douyin, Wang was admitted for a routine examination while accompanying a relative, only to die in the nephrology ward. Her autopsy cited hemorrhagic shock as the cause of death, with traces of the anticoagulant enoxaparin sodium detected, leading her family to suspect blood extraction and organ theft.
Although no definitive evidence confirms organ harvesting in the case, Huang noted that widespread allegations of hospitals engaging in such practices have created a climate of heightened anxiety.
Documented cases, such as a fraudulent organ donation scandal in Anhui Province’s Bengbu City, lend credence to these concerns. Between 2017 and 2018, six defendants, including four doctors, were convicted of deceiving families and illegally harvesting organs from at least 11 patients.
“China’s organ transplant industry, driven by the Communist Party’s ideology, has evolved into a vast commercial enterprise,“ Huang said. ”These cases show it has become an unregulated beast, with rampant, unchecked organ harvesting.”
