Traditional Chinese custom requires bodies to be preserved intact after death. China did not start piloting organ donation systems until 2010,1 2 and a national system was not established until late 2013.3 Nevertheless, two years later, it still had not produced donations on any meaningful scale.4

The international community generally believes that the number of death-row executions in China has decreased since 2000, when it was around 10,000 per year.5 6 7 In addition, the government promised to stop using organs from death-row prisoners beginning in 2015.8

Therefore, since the year 2000, when the Chinese organ transplant system began to take off, the organ sources identified by the government —voluntary donors and executed death-row prisoners—account for only a small fraction of all transplants performed in China.

“We carry out kidney transplants from living sources. It’s completely different from cadaveric kidney transplants …”

—Archived web page of the China International Transplantation Network Assistance Center

References

1
"Huang Jiefu: I only watched once the organ extraction procedure and felt changed needed Phoenix TV 2015-01-11"
Original: http://news.ifeng.com/a/20150111/42906812_0.shtml
Archived: https://archive.is/YxJwf
黄洁夫：我只看过一次摘取器官 觉得需要改变 凤凰卫视 2015年01月11日
2
"Sharing System Moves Chinese Organ Transplantation into the Public Welfare Era China Economic Weekly, 2013, Issue 34 Liu, Yanqing"
Original: http://paper.people.com.cn/zgjjzk/html/2013-09/06/content_1295101.htm
Archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20160116163206/http://paper.people.com.cn/zgjjzk/html/2013-09/06/content_1295101.htm
共享系统推动中国器官移植进入公益化时代, 《中国经济周刊》 记者 刘砚青
3
"Issuing Notice on Management Regulations for Human Organ procurements and Distribution (Trial) Issued by National Health and Family Planning Commission August 21, 2013"
Original: http://www.moh.gov.cn/zhuzhan/zcjd/201308/c18f349814984f44a71361426f3eec0d.shtml
Archived: https://archive.is/zz8Hn
国家卫生计生委关于印发《人体捐献器官获取与分配管理规定（试行）》的通知 2013年8月21日
4
"“Huang Jiefu: ‘Can death-row prisoners donate organ?’ is a pseudo-proposition” Beijing Youth Daily. November 23, 2015"
Original: http://epaper.ynet.com/html/2015-11/23/content_167300.htm?div=-1
Archived: https://archive.is/hSlEd
黄洁夫：死囚可否捐器官是伪命题 《北京青年报》, 2015年11月23日
5
"People’s Republic of China Executed “according to law”? – The death penalty in China Amnesty International, AI Index: ASA 17/003/2004"
6
"Roger Hood – ‘Abolition of the Death Penalty China in World Perspective’ (2009) 1CityUHKLRev1"
7
"The Next Frontier National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia Studies in Crime and Public Policy David T Johnson, Franklin E Zimring"
8
"Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update page 400~405 David Kilgour, Ethan Gutmann, and David Matas, June 22, 2016"
Original: http://endorganpillaging.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Bloody_Harvest-The_Slaughter-June-23-V2.pdf