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On this episode of China Uncensored: how much can you really trust math, anyway?
Hello and welcome to China Uncensored, I'm your host Chris Chappell.
For decades now, people have known that Chinese authorities have used the organs of executed prisoners for organ transplants.
In fact, it's become so widely known that in 2009 Chinese authorities finally decided to stop covering it up, and publicly copped to it.
And then--to make sure they looked like reformers--they promised to set up a voluntary organ donation network.
Former Vice-Minister of Health Huang Jiefu is the guy in charge of China's new organ donation program.
And he's been on a publicity blitz for this new system.
Back in December 2014, Huang made a bold announcement--a new year's resolution, of sorts.
He said China would stop using organs from executed prisoners on January 1, 2015.
But it's like the guy who promises every year that he's gonna lose weight and start go to the gym every day...
Let's just say I'm not optimistic.
You know, since they didn't stop after the last time Huang made that promise. Or the time before that.
Now despite its promises to reform its organ transplant system, there's one issue that the Chinese regime has never acknowledged:
For more than a decade, they've been harvesting organs from prisoners of conscience.
I'm not talking about people who've been convicted of a crime and executed under the death penalty.
Nope, these are people like Tibetans, house Christians, and the largest group, practitioners of Falun Gong, the meditation practice persecuted in China.
This forced organ harvesting has been the subject of an independent investigation.
Books have been written on it.
There are accounts from doctors and prison guards who have been involved in it.
But it's an issue that's still largely ignored.
Here with more on organ harvesting in China, China Uncensored copy editor, Shelley Zhang.
Chris: What about these announcements from Huang Jiefu on stopping organ harvesting from executed prisoners?
Shelley: As a copy editor, I was pretty disappointed when reading Western media coverage of Huang's announcement, Chris.
I expected better of those reporters.
Chris: You mean, why didn't the reporters mention the alleged organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, instead just repeating verbatim what a Chinese official said?
Shelley: I mean, why can't they do basic math? Now on one hand, I sympathize.
Trying to analyze data from the Chinese government is like looking for your keys in the middle of the night in a field of haystacks made out of keys.
By contrast, if you want to see organ transplant data for the US, you can go to this website, run by the US government
Get statistical breakdowns by region and even by hospital.
This is the kind of national transplant network that the Chinese government wants to build.
Minus the transparency part.
So the only way to get data on China's organ transplants is to find comments made by Chinese officials or reported in state-run media.
And that's a problem.
Chris: You mean you can't trust what Chinese officials say?
Shelley: Here's an ancient Chinese government secret, Chris. Statistics.
If you throw numbers in there, people will publish them without questioning whether they even make sense.
That's how China's gotten away with inflated economic growth numbers all these years.
The fact is, that 87.3 percent of people will believe anything if you add statistics it.
Chris: Really?
Shelley: No Chris, I literally just made that up.
Chris: But that many people?!
Shelley: I made it up!
Chris: Ah. But surely that doesn't work on professional journalists.
Shelley: Let's look at this BBC article from last year.
It says China does 10,000 organ transplants a year.
That's the figure Chinese authorities have been using for a while now.
Then it says that two-thirds of those organs "used to" come from executed prisoners.
Let's say the actual percentage is 65%, which is what state-run China Daily said in 2009.
So that's six-thousand five-hundred organs from executed prisoners.
Chris: So 65% of organ transplants were from executed prisoners.
What about the other 35%?
Shelley: Good question.
It turns out that the 35% of organ transplants are from living donors, like if you donated a kidney to a family member.
It doesn't really affect the organs taken from executed prisoners.
Chris: But we have no idea how many prisoners are executed in China every year.
Shelley: Right, it's a state secret.
This BBC article cites an estimate from the Dui Hua foundation, 2400 executions in 2013.
Let's use that number.
That would mean that each prisoner would have to donate an average of 2.7 organs.
Now, this part is theoretically possible.
That's roughly the same average number of organs taken from each deceased donor in the US.
But Chinese officials claim that they only harvest organs from prisoners with their consent.
For these numbers to work, that means that almost all executed prisoners would have to give their consent.
Chris: Doesn't that sound a bit suspicious?
I mean, there are huge cultural barriers to organ donation in China, because most people want to keep their bodies whole after death.
Shelley: Yes. In the same BBC article, it says that China's voluntary organ donation rate is 0.6 in 1 million.
In other words, if this donation rate is correct, in the entire country of one-point-three billion people, only 780 of them donated organs.
For comparison, the US has 43 times that organ donation rate.
So that would mean zero-point-zero-zero-zero-zero-six percent of ordinary Chinese voluntarily donate their organs, but nearly one hundred percent of death row inmates do.
And also one hundred percent of them are in excellent health, nonsmokers, and match the blood types of the recipients.
Chris: And you're telling me the BBC didn't question this at all?
Shelley: Cut them some slack, Chris.
Asking questions doesn't come easily for some journalists.
Chris: That's British state-run media for you.
So what's the real explanation for this?
Shelley: Well, basically that there's no possible way all the organ donors are from executed criminals.
The reality is, thousands of additional people are being killed every year.
Prisoners of conscience who disappear into the prison system, like Falun Gong practitioners.
So on one hand China wants to brag about having a big organ transplant system where they do 10,000 transplants a year.
But on the other hand they're extremely secretive about the source of the organs.
Chris: So how can it be possible for China to suddenly move to a voluntary organ donation system? Wouldn't there be a shortage?
Shelley: Well, that's where the "statistics with Chinese characteristics" come in.
Huang Jiefu appeared during the Two Sessions last month to announce that organ donations in China are skyrocketing.
And that there would absolutely not be an organ shortage.
To support his claim, he gave a bunch of contradicting statistics about how organ donations have doubled so far this year, but he also said that the organ donation rate is the same as last year.
Chris: I'm...confused now.
Shelley: The point is, Chris, we don't know how Huang gets his numbers! And nobody seems to be asking any questions.
So Huang can just make his numbers suddenly rise when he needs to prove there won't be an organ shortage.
But here's one thing that might explain how the numbers rose.
At the end of last year, Huang said that prisoners on death row can still contribute their organs to the national donation system.
As long as they are voluntary donations.
Chris: So those "voluntary donation" numbers might still include organs from executed prisoners, even though he's saying they're going to stop using organs from executed prisoners.
So are they serious about setting up this national donation network?
Shelley: Are they actually setting up an organ donation network and having people register? Yes they are, Chris.
And that's because this entire thing has been a massive attempt by Party officials to cover its tracks.
Every time Huang Jiefu comes out to talk about the organ donation program, he talks about what a difficult process it was to reform the system, how he and his colleagues really struggled to solve this human rights problem.
And now, in his latest interview with Phoenix TV, he's tried to pin the blame for the whole thing on former securities head Zhou Yongkang.
Zhou was taken down last year by Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign and just charged with bribery last week.
I think you can see which way the wind is blowing here.
Chris: That's clever.
So the current leadership gets to look like the heroes that are reforming the system, and meanwhile piling the blame for taking organs from prisoners on to Zhou Yongkang, and by extension, former leader Jiang Zemin.
Shelley: And if at some point it all hits the fan, the Party is going to try to come out clean.
If you blame it only on certain corrupt officials, it wasn't really the Party's fault.
But Chris, there are other numbers that mean this reform is going to be hard to pull off.
And those are the ones attached to dollar signs.
Hospitals and prisons use organ transplants to make income.
You can go to China, pay tens of thousands of dollars for a kidney, and get the transplant in two weeks, whereas it would take months or years in other countries.
Some websites even advertised pricing online, like this one from 2006.
Now transplant tourism has been banned in China since 2007.
But like most things banned in China, it's still going on.
For example, here's a website that was only taken down in 2014.
This new organ donation network is supposed to end the practice of buying and selling organs completely.
But whether it can really stop this profit stream remains to be seen.
In the end, instead of rebuilding the organ transplant system, Chinese officials may just be putting up some shiny new wallpaper. Chris.
Chris: Thanks, Shelley. What do you think of China's organ donation numbers?
Don't forget to like and subscribe for more China Uncensored, once again, I'm Chris Chappell. See you next time.