U.S. Congress Confronts China’s Forced Organ Harvesting System as Religious Prisoners Face a “Kill-to-Order” Transplant Industry
A bipartisan congressional hearing has again placed one of the darkest allegations surrounding the Chinese Communist Party before the American public: a transplant system in the People’s Republic of China that researchers, medical-ethics experts, survivors and lawmakers say has relied on the nonconsensual removal of organs from prisoners of conscience. On May 14, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China convened a hearing titled “A Market Built on Victims: Stopping Illegal Organ Trafficking in China and Beyond,” bringing together witnesses including author Jan Jekielek, former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, researcher Ethan Gutmann and camp survivor Kalbinur Sidik. The commission described systematic and widespread forced organ harvesting in China as one of the gravest human-rights concerns associated with the PRC and specifically identified Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, as well as political and religious prisoners, among groups researchers believe have been targeted within a state-enabled transplant system. For Americans, the importance of the hearing reaches beyond condemning brutality overseas: it concerns whether the United States will allow its medical institutions, universities, companies, patients and diplomatic relationships to interact normally with a Chinese transplant system that Congress has repeatedly subjected to extraordinary human-rights scrutiny.
The central danger is the alleged transformation of persecution into a supply chain for human organs. Jekielek, author of Killed to Order, told the National News Desk after testifying that the CCP’s repression of religious and ethnic groups creates the conditions in which victims can first be dehumanized and then treated as expendable. That argument fits into a broader body of congressional scrutiny developed over years. CECC has previously cited the final judgment of the Independent People’s Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China, which concluded that forced organ harvesting occurred on a large scale and characterized the abuses it examined as crimes against humanity. The commission has also warned that China’s lack of transparent, independently verifiable transplant data makes outside scrutiny especially important. Rather than an ordinary black market involving isolated criminal brokers, the concern raised before Congress is that detention, political persecution, hospitals, transplant infrastructure and state authority can intersect inside a system where vulnerable prisoners have little ability to protect their bodies or consent to medical procedures.
The religious dimension should be particularly alarming to Americans because the populations repeatedly identified in forced-organ-harvesting investigations are also groups targeted under Beijing’s broader system of ideological control. Falun Gong practitioners have endured decades of detention and persecution, while Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims have been subjected to mass detention, coercive assimilation and extensive state surveillance. Christian churches outside direct Party control have likewise faced pressure as Xi Jinping has demanded greater “Sinicization” of religion and political loyalty from religious institutions. The May hearing was explicitly structured around the relationship between religious persecution and transplant abuse, not merely around organ trafficking as a medical-crime problem. CECC itself said that newly published research had renewed attention to the connection between persecution and forced organ harvesting, and Congress has separately pursued legislation specifically targeting individuals involved in involuntary organ removal in China.
That connection makes forced organ harvesting fundamentally different from ordinary corruption in a hospital system. If people can be detained because of faith, ethnicity or political identity and subsequently become vulnerable to medical exploitation, then persecution is no longer only about imprisonment or censorship; the prisoner’s physical body becomes economically valuable. A transplant system creates powerful financial incentives because kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs can command enormous sums from recipients facing long waiting lists elsewhere. CECC has cited the China Tribunal’s estimate of an organ-trafficking industry worth roughly $1 billion, while previous congressional hearings have examined evidence that transplant volumes and unusually short waiting periods in China raise questions about the true sourcing of organs. Americans should understand what that means strategically: a one-party state accused of persecuting religious populations is simultaneously operating a transplant sector whose transparency has repeatedly been challenged by outside investigators, creating a combination of coercive state power and medical commerce that deserves sustained international isolation and scrutiny.
The issue also touches the United States directly because Americans participate in a global medical system. Patients can travel overseas for transplants, American universities can cooperate with foreign medical institutions, researchers can publish with Chinese transplant surgeons, medical-device companies can sell equipment, and professional associations can confer legitimacy through conferences and partnerships. Previous CECC proceedings have specifically examined whether American corporations, medical journals, academic institutions and professional organizations risk becoming complicit in transplant abuse through commercial or scientific relationships. The danger is therefore not abstract. If a U.S. patient travels to China for an organ without being able to verify its ethical source, American money can enter a system under serious human-rights suspicion. If an American university collaborates with a transplant center without demanding transparent donor records, American academic prestige can help normalize the institution. If medical companies supply technology without adequate human-rights due diligence, U.S. innovation can indirectly strengthen infrastructure that Congress believes warrants investigation.
Washington has increasingly recognized that this requires more than statements of concern. The 119th Congress introduced the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2025, which establishes as U.S. policy the fight against trafficking for organ removal and specifically contemplates accountability for people, including Chinese Communist Party members, implicated in forced organ harvesting. Congress has also introduced the Falun Gong Protection Act, which would require sanctions against foreign persons determined to have knowingly and directly engaged in or facilitated involuntary organ harvesting in China. These proposals matter because the economics of transplant abuse are international. Surgeons, brokers, hospitals, government officials, financial intermediaries and foreign recipients can all occupy different positions in the same system. Visa restrictions, financial sanctions, disclosure requirements and transplant-tourism controls can therefore impose costs even when the underlying abuses occur beyond U.S. jurisdiction.
The timing of the May hearing also gave the subject unusual diplomatic significance because President Donald Trump was meeting Xi Jinping in Beijing during the same period. Jekielek argued that human rights are a major vulnerability for Beijing and urged the President to raise forced organ harvesting directly with Xi. The broader Trump-Xi summit covered economic and strategic issues, and subsequent reporting described the meetings as producing limited agreements while leaving many fundamental U.S.-China disputes unresolved. The organ-harvesting issue demonstrates why U.S.-China relations cannot be reduced to tariffs, oil purchases, aircraft orders or military communication. Economic negotiation with Beijing takes place alongside a human-rights record that Congress continues to investigate at the level of alleged crimes against humanity. A stable commercial relationship does not make those issues disappear, and American diplomacy should not allow Beijing’s desire for economic normalization to push the victims of religious and political persecution outside the conversation.
The China-Iran relationship discussed in the same interview also illustrates the broader strategic problem. China has repeatedly benefited from discounted Iranian energy while maintaining a geopolitical partnership with Tehran, giving Beijing economic incentives that do not necessarily align with American efforts to pressure Iran. The specific argument offered by Jekielek—that Beijing benefits when the United States remains strategically distracted elsewhere—is his analysis, not a formal congressional finding. The larger point is nevertheless important for Americans: Beijing simultaneously engages Washington on trade, seeks strategic advantage across multiple regions, manages a vast domestic security system and fights international criticism of its human-rights record. The United States cannot afford to examine each Chinese policy in isolation. Human rights, economic leverage, intelligence activity, military competition and international partnerships all operate inside the same authoritarian political structure.
The most important American response should therefore be to deny legitimacy, money and technical support to any institution credibly connected to involuntary organ procurement. American hospitals and insurers should require verifiable sourcing before supporting overseas transplants. Universities and medical journals should scrutinize research involving Chinese transplant institutions and demand proof that donor organs were obtained voluntarily and ethically. Professional associations should refuse to provide prestigious platforms to institutions unable to establish transparent donor histories. U.S. agencies should also continue building lists of individuals and organizations connected to transplant abuse so that sanctions, visa restrictions and financial enforcement can target the people who profit from the system rather than relying only on broad diplomatic condemnation. Congress has already moved toward precisely this approach through legislation that targets those directly engaged in or facilitating forced organ harvesting.
For Americans, the underlying warning is larger than China’s transplant industry itself. The CCP’s ability to control courts, police, prisons, religious policy, hospitals and information inside one political system creates conditions that free societies should never normalize. When the same government determines which beliefs are acceptable, which communities can be detained, what medical data the outside world may inspect and how foreign criticism will be answered, transparency cannot depend solely on assurances from Beijing. The May 14 congressional hearing was important because it kept attention on victims whose experiences are easily overshadowed by trade negotiations and summit diplomacy. The United States should continue pressing for independent investigation, restricting participation in questionable transplant networks and imposing consequences on those responsible. A government accused before Congress of turning prisoners of conscience into a source of transplant organs should not be permitted to bury that issue beneath economic deals and carefully staged diplomacy.
