By Li Muzi, Vision Times
Reports across China of teenagers and young adults declared “brain dead” after accidents, then immediately followed by rapid, multi-organ procurement, continue to draw scrutiny and outrage across the country. Now, a doctor’s admission that vital organs “must be alive” at the moment they are removed is fueling new alarm over the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) organ transplantation practices and long track record of human rights abuses.
A video posted to X on Nov. 22 shows a Chinese doctor challenging a widely held public assumption about organ donation. In the clip, he states plainly: “You definitely don’t know this truth that will overturn your understanding. We usually think organs can be donated after a person dies. Today I must tell everyone this truth: the premise of organ transplantation is that the organs must be alive when they leave the original body.”
Doctor: The patient must still be alive
He continues: “You heard correctly. Organs must be supplied by blood, and the heart must still be beating when the chest is opened. Aside from corneas and a few others, such as bone and skin, most organs — liver, heart, spleen, lungs, kidneys — cannot be used after death.”
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The doctor concludes with a stark reminder: “So the premise of organ transplantation is that his heart is still beating. There simply is no such thing as donating organs after accidental death the way we imagine. Do you understand now?”
The comments struck a nerve in a country where “brain death” — a diagnosis the CCP treats as equivalent to death — is not legally defined, widely understood, or culturally accepted.
A disturbing pattern
Chinese media reports reveal a troublingly consistent pattern: a young victim suffers an accident, is declared “brain dead” shortly afterward, and undergoes multi-organ removal within hours. Recent cases include:
Dec. 3, 2025 – Hunan:
Liu Guoping, a 25-year-old medical graduate, was declared brain dead after a car crash. At Nanhua University’s Second Affiliated Hospital, he donated four organs and two tissues, said to benefit six patients.
Oct. 13, 2025 – Wuhan:
A 28-year-old woman named Minmin was declared brain dead after a sudden traffic accident. At Tongji Hospital, she donated her liver, kidneys, heart, pancreas, and corneas.
Oct. 11–31, 2025 – Henan:
14-year-old Ni Haichao fell from a building and spent more than 20 days in ICU. He was declared brain dead on Oct. 30. On Oct. 31, his mother signed the consent form. By Nov. 1 — within 24 hours — his liver, kidneys, lungs, and corneas had been removed and transplanted to six recipients.
Oct. 14, 2024 – Fujian:
16-year-old Lu Qile was declared brain dead after a car crash during Golden Week. He donated his heart, liver, kidneys, and corneas.
July 2024 – Guizhou:
17-year-old Guo Jiayi was declared brain dead after a crash and donated five vital organs on July 20.
Nov. 2023 – Fujian:
A 13-year-old boy (alias Xiaokun) suffered a sudden brain hemorrhage and cardiac arrest. Eight days later, he was declared brain dead. His parents signed a donation form allowing removal of “one heart, one liver, one lung, two kidneys, and a pair of corneas.”
Nov. 14, 2023 – Henan:
An 11-year-old girl known as Niuniu had her ventilator removed. In a widely shared video, her mother stroked her daughter’s forehead and cried, “My child, don’t be afraid…” That afternoon the girl’s heart, liver, and kidneys were removed and sent to several hospitals.
Oct. 27–Nov. 5, 2023 – Guangxi:
Twenty-year-old college student Deng Xingyan was declared brain dead one week after a car accident. Her family consented to donate her heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys.
June 7, 2019 – Guangdong:
A 21-year-old man, Zeng Xiaokang, was declared brain dead days after a crash and donated six major organs in a single day.
As one netizen warned: “Since May 1, 2024, organ transplantation has been legalized. Watch your children, protect yourself! How can there be so many brain deaths? All transplants require live organs.” Another wrote: “Organs from sick patients or corpses cannot be used. Only healthy organs from living people can. Behind organ transplantation is the disregard for human life.”
A history of ‘brain death’ technology
Concerns about China’s transplant system are not new — and they are deeply tied to the CCP’s persecution of Falun Gong, a peaceful spiritual discipline that’s been persecuted in China since 1999. Former Chongqing police chief and vice mayor Wang Lijun, who had no medical background, registered 254 patents during his tenure. One of them was a disturbing medical device: the “primary brainstem injury impactor,” known popularly as the “brain death machine.”
A 2019 Minghui report (a U.S.-based website that tracks the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China), stated that Wang and others used the device during human experimentation. The machine delivers a forceful blow with a metal ball, generating an instant brainstem impact that produces immediate “brain death.”
South Korean broadcaster TV Chosun’s 2017 documentary Killed to Live revealed that since 2000, roughly 20,000 South Korean patients had traveled to China for fast-track organ transplants. Most of the organs came from prisoners of conscience, especially Falun Gong practitioners.
The documentary further reported that Chinese hospitals used Wang’s device to create “brain dead” donors and that the technology had already reached its third-generation version.
Dr. Lee Seung-won, president of the Korean Organ Transplant Ethics Association, stated bluntly:
“The ‘primary brainstem injury impactor’ has no purpose other than putting a person into a brain-dead state for organ removal. Who would deliberately cause brain death?”
Eyewitness testimony: Forced organ harvesting at Sujiatun
One of the earliest whistleblowers, nurse Annie, recounted what she witnessed at the Sujiatun hospital complex in Shenyang — the first location where CCP organ harvesting was exposed in 2006.
She stated: “My husband and I worked at this hospital between 1999 and 2004. He was a neurosurgeon. The hospital extracted large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners’ organs — livers, corneas, and more. Some practitioners who were forcibly harvested were thrown into a crematory converted from a boiler room while they were still breathing.” Her testimony helped spark the first global investigations into live organ harvesting in China.
During the CCP’s 2025 military parade, Xi Jinping reportedly joked with Russian President Vladimir Putin about organ transplantation and living “to 150 years old,” unsettling viewers around the world. Human rights investigators say the reality is no joke. Dr. Wang Zhiyuan, chairman of the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG), has repeatedly warned that:
“Since the CCP began persecuting Falun Gong in 1999, it launched large-scale live organ harvesting operations. Today this crime has spread throughout society, from prisoners of conscience to ordinary citizens, and even infants.”
The recent wave of “brain death” diagnoses among Chinese youth, paired with a doctor’s public confirmation that organs must be taken from living bodies, is renewing fears that the CCP’s transplant system has expanded far beyond political prisoners and is now reaching the general population.
