Rep. Chris Smith Shines Spotlight on Communist China’s Live Organ Harvesting

Communist China is producing a real horror show.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., recently convened a special session of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China and solicited stunning testimony from experts and eyewitnesses on the horrific practice of live organ harvesting—hearts, livers, lungs, kidneys, corneas—in Communist China. The unlucky cohort of living “donors”—men and women murdered for their body parts—is comprised of various dissidents as well as politically persecuted ethnic and religious minorities.

This latest congressional inquiry follows in the wake of the Heritage Foundation’s public conference on the topic, which featured Jan Jekielek, author of the New York Times best seller, “Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary.”Jekielek also appeared as a witness before the commission’s panel.

In his opening remarks, Rep. Smith noted a hot mic exchange between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping where the two autocrats were casually discussing the potential of organ donation contributing to greater longevity, with Xi speculating that humans this century could possibly live as long as 150 years.

Ethical organ transplantation, Smith emphasized, is “noble and lifesaving … But forced organ harvesting is not healing. It is murder masquerading as medicine.”

This horrific practice, notes Smith, is a logical consequence of the Orwellian assumptions underlying communism: “a system where human beings are reduced to commodities, and the state controls the body as well as the mind.”

Ethan Gutmann, a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told the commission that, as early as 2013, government agents started to come into people’s homes and draw blood from those deemed to be at odds with China’s Communist regime. Those found guilty of practicing an “unsanctioned faith” were arrested, imprisoned, often tortured, kept in harsh conditions in cells and internment camps.

Based on camp medical files in 2017, Gutmann said, a red check mark next to a blood sample meant that the person had been “pre-selected” for harvesting. Gutman says that when youths ripen to an average age of 28, prison guards drag them—whether kicking and screaming or resigned and hopeless—to a transplant hospital where, under anesthesia, organ removal occurs. They start removing different organs, one after another, until they excise the heart.

Religious Persecution

The target populations for this practice have been expanding.

Originally, the victims were death row prisoners. Today, the enlarged “donor” class includes the practitioners of Falun Gong—mostly virtuous contemplatives—but also Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Christians.

Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., observed that the “targeting of Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs reflects … a broader campaign of religious persecution that includes Christians in China, ethnic repression, and dehumanization carried out by the PRC (People’s Republic of China).”

Jekielek told the commission that the Communist regime has launched an aggressive propaganda campaign against certain minorities, painting them as “black classes.” Jekielek said that this enables the regime to designate them as subhuman so that the Chinese people, assuming they become aware of it, are “psychologically prepared for the atrocities against the target group.”

Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback reminded the commission that China’s totalitarian regime, regardless of any of its protestations to the contrary, cannot and will not tolerate genuine religious liberty. For the Communist regime, religious liberty is the equivalent of “kryptonite,” and they fear such liberty more than they fear our aircraft carriers or nuclear weapons.”

A Global Problem

There is a growing global demand for organs, especially among wealthy Middle Eastern patients. China’s Communist regime can profit from such a lucrative international market.

The policy question for the U.S. and its allies is how to ensure that medical researchers, practitioners, and medical institutions in the West are not complicit in this unethical practice. During his testimony before the commission, Gutmann specifically called for an investigation of Thermo Fisher Scientific, a company that supplied DNA testing used on millions of Uyghurs and Kazakhs. Likewise, Jekielek called for oversight over American institutions training practitioners as transplant surgeons who return to Communist China.

There is bipartisan interest in tackling the problem. Rep. Smith’s bill, the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2025 (H.R.1503), would criminalize trafficking in forcibly donated organs and impose penalties of up to 20 years in prison and up to $1 million in fines for knowing complicity with this unethical practice.

“Tyrants will continue to seek immortality,” said Smith, “but not with our expertise or money. Not with a dollar of American complicity.”

The House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 406 to 1. The Senate has yet to act.

Curiously, the Chinese Communist Party’s organ harvesting program is another case of life imitating art. In 1978, Michael Crichton directed “Coma”, a high-class horror film starring a young Michael Douglas and the beautiful Geneviève Bujold. Bujold’s character, a young surgeon, discovers that hospital patients are being induced into a coma and their bodies are being transported to a remote location for live organ harvesting. Initially, her colleagues are skeptical.

In the movie, the culprit is a sophisticated transnational criminal organization. In real life, it still is.