The pandemic is prompting countries around the world to rethink their relationship with communist China. One of the most controversial areas in cooperating with China is the organ transplant industry.
China’s organ transplant industry has long been controversial for its extraordinarily short waiting periods. In the United States, although 156 million people have registered as donors, they might have to wait for years to get a transplant.
Authorities in China say there are 1.9 million registered donors. The waiting time can be as little as two weeks.
In 2018, a BBC reporter raised a question to the head of China’s national organ transplant committee Huang Jiefu.
“How come I rang up and was offered a liver very quickly from a hospital in China, how is that possible?” the reporter asked.
“I don’t want to answer the question of someone with political agendas,” said Huang.
Last year, an independent people’s tribunal in London found that the Chinese regime has been—and continues to be—harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.
“We, the tribunal members, are all certain, unanimously, and sure beyond reasonable doubt, that in China, forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time, involving a very substantial number of victims,” said Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, chair of China Tribunal.
Yet over the years, China has been getting international help with its organ transplant system. One notable example is Spain.
According to a 2018 report by state media Global Times, China’s National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee Head, Huang Jiefu, praised Spain for the help it’s given China’s organ transplant industry over the years.
He said, “Right now, over 2,000 front line organ transplant coordinators in (China’s) organ donation and transplant industry were trained with the help of Spain.”
Spain has the most organ donors worldwide.
One of its top transplant experts, Marti Manyalich, has worked with China for many years.
The Spanish surgeon is the president of Spain’s Donation and Transplant Institute, a non-profit group that promotes organ donations.
China’s state media reported that in 2013, the Institute signed a five-year contract, which requires it to help China train medical staff to coordinate organ transplants.
Spain also helped push China’s organ transplant industry onto the international stage.
In 2010, the head of China’s organ transplant committee was invited to speak at a major international organ transplant conference in Madrid.
In 2013, a team of Spanish experts, including Manyalich, went to Beijing’s You’an hospital to speak about Spain’s experience in organ donation and transplant.
Manyalich’s organ transplant institute has also been offering training sessions at the First Hospital of Kunming since 2014.
The hospital is listed as a suspected source of forced organ harvesting by an overseas watchdog on China’s organ transplants.
In 2019, Manyalich told Chinese state media that China’s organ transplants are “good enough to become the model of the world.”
Chinese authorities say the country conducted over 20,000 organ transplants in 2018. But the China Tribunal found that the real number of transplants in China is between 60,000 and 90,000 a year. The main source of the organ is the practitioners of the spiritual group Falun Gong.
It also says China’s Muslim minority—up to 1.5 million of whom are now kept in concentration camps—are at risk of becoming the next “organ bank.”
In a 2017 interview by state media, the head of China’s National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee spoke frankly about China’s ambition to lead the world in organ transplants.
“We are confident that in just a few years, China will become the No. 1 organ transplant country in the world,” said Huang.
And China is ready to export that model to other countries. Last December, China held an international conference, called The Belt and Road Organ Donation International Cooperation Development Forum.
China said that it will actively promote international exchanges and cooperation in organ transplantation among countries along its Belt and Road initiative.
But author and lead researcher of a 2018 study on China’s organ transplant abuse Grace Yin warned that “By expanding agreements to share organs with other parts of Asia, Belt and Road regions, and beyond, the Chinese regime also risks implicating the international community in its crimes.”
Spain’s organ transplant world is not alone in voicing support for China.
Jose Nunez, a World Health Organization officer who oversees global organ transplantation, told Chinese state media last year that China’s organ transplants are on the right path and in line with the guiding principles of the WHO.
He also said that “as long as China follows its current path. All the anti-China voice and disinformation will disappear by itself.”
The Chinese authorities have so far denied all allegations of forced organ harvesting. The head of China’s National Organ Transplant Committee told state media that instead, organ trade is the most rampant in the United States.
There has been no evidence supporting his accusation, and organ trafficking is illegal in the United States, as in many other countries.
Last year’s China tribunal was chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, a British barrister and part-time judge.
Sir Geoffrey Nice strikes a similar note in the tribunal’s final judgment.
“Any who interact, in any substantial way with the PRC, including doctors and medical institutions, industries and businesses, most specifically airlines, travel companies, financial services businesses, law firms, pharmaceutical insurance companies, together with individual tourists, educational establishments and art establishments, should now recognize, that they are, to the extent revealed in this judgment, interacting with a criminal state,” he said.
