China’s organ transplant industry saw explosive growth and came to perform the most transplants in the world in just a few years after the year 2000 despite the absence of a voluntary organ donation system. Just one or two of China’s hospitals could have matched the average of about 6,000 liver transplants performed annually in the entire United States since 2000.¹

While Chinese officials claim that the country performs about 10,000 transplants a year, this annual figure is easily surpassed by just a few hospitals. Based on government-imposed minimum capacity requirements, the 164 approved transplant hospitals could have conducted more than 70,000 transplants per year. This translates to a total capacity of more than one million transplants since 2000 for approved hospitals.² However, this is far from the full picture. More than 1,000 hospitals applied for permits in 2007 to continue performing transplants.^{3 4}

The Chinese government stated that the vast majority of organs came from death row prisoners, and later, donations. However, international organizations estimate the number of death row executions in China at thousands each year, a rate that has decreased since 2000. Chinese tradition requires that bodies remain whole after death, and the country did not start piloting organ donation systems until 2010. Even afterwards, donations have been sparse.⁵ Therefore, the organ sources identified by the Chinese government account for only a small fraction of transplants performed.

Where do the rest of the organs come from?

Researchers have found that the Chinese regime is systematically killing prisoners of conscience on demand to supply its vast organ transplant industry. The victims are mostly practitioners of Falun Gong, as well as Uyghurs, Tibetans, and House Christians.⁶

Researchers examined hundreds of transplant hospitals in China and their revenue, bed counts, bed utilization rates, surgical expertise, training programs, state funding, and more. Their sources include media reports, official statements, medical journals, hospital websites, and web archives.

These sources are supplemented by first-hand testimony of witnesses (relatives of organ harvesting victims, missing persons and survivors who were detained and tortured for their religious beliefs but escaped organ harvesting), previously published interviews of Chinese medical staff, and whistleblower testimony to piece together the system of state, military, and civilian institutions that have been mobilized to carry out this medical genocide.