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ORGAN HARVESTING: AN EXAMINATION OF A

BRUTAL PRACTICE

JOINT HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, 

GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND 

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

AND THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND 

EMERGING THREATS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JUNE 23, 2016

Serial No. 114–170

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/ or

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

MATT SALMON, Arizona 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

TED S. YOHO, Florida 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan 

LEE M. ZELDIN, New York 

DANIEL DONOVAN, New York 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

ALAN GRAYSON, Florida 

AMI BERA, California 

ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California 

GRACE MENG, New York 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania

AMY PORTER, Chief of Staff THOMAS SHEEHY, Staff Director

JASON STEINBAUM, Democratic Staff Director 

(III)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

CURT CLAWSON, Florida 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

DANIEL DONOVAN, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

AMI BERA, California

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS

DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman 

TED POE, Texas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

PAUL COOK, California 

RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

LOIS FRANKEL, Florida 

TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii 

(V)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

Mr. David Matas, senior legal counsel, B’nai Brith Canada ................................ 4

Mr. Ethan Gutmann, journalist ............................................................................. 12

Francis L. Delmonico, M.D, professor of surgery, Harvard Medical School ....... 18

Charles Lee, M.D., director of public awareness, World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong ................................................................. 22

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

Mr. David Matas: Prepared statement .................................................................. 7

Mr. Ethan Gutmann: Prepared statement ............................................................ 15

Francis L. Delmonico, M.D: Prepared statement .................................................. 20

Charles Lee, M.D.: Prepared statement ................................................................ 26

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 54

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 55

Francis L. Delmonico, M.D: Statement for the record .......................................... 56

Charles Lee, M.D.: Internet link to material submitted for the record .............. 58

(1)

ORGAN HARVESTING: AN EXAMINATION OF A 

BRUTAL PRACTICE 

THURSDAY, JUNE 23, 2016

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL HUMAN RIGHTS, AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EUROPE, EURASIA, AND EMERGING THREATS,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS,

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 o’clock p.m., in 

room 2200 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Dana T. Rohrabacher (chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and 

Emerging Threats) presiding. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I call this joint hearing of the Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats Subcommittee and the Subcommittee 

on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International 

Organizations to order. 

Thank you, Chairman Smith, for agreeing to hold this hearing. 

The Chinese Communist Party has one of the largest forces for evil 

in the world today. The systematic government-sponsored harvesting of organs is a monstrous crime. 

The Chinese regime not only deprives its people of their basic 

rights on a daily basis but literally steals their body parts for a 

profit. 

Due to the tireless work of human rights defenders, journalists 

and investigators, the truth about what the Chinese have been 

doing for years is now becoming known to the world. 

Just last week, the House passed a resolution specifically on this 

target. Today, we have some of those very researchers and investigators here with us and they will bring up to date about what is 

going on inside China. 

Their updated report, ‘‘Bloody Harvest: The Slaughter,’’ just released yesterday tips the scale at nearly 600 pages in length and 

it is truly an impressive work. 

I am pleased to hear that European parliaments will be holding 

similar events to what we are doing today to discuss organ harvesting and this report. 

It is significant to highlight that while the Falun Gong practitioners, a peaceful and holy Chinese movement, continue to suffer 

greatly at the hands of the CCP, they are not the only victims of 

forced organ harvesting. 

Organ harvesting is just one of many techniques the Chinese 

state security uses. But there are other groups who use this and 

2

other groups that have been victimized other than just the Falun 

Gong. 

Lastly, the problem of organ theft and organ trafficking is a global one. The state-sponsored nature of what happens in China is especially unsavory but the practice takes place worldwide. The black market for organs is estimated to be worth over $1 billion a year and it is vital that we hold the Chinese Government accountable. If we don’t, the wrong message will be sent all over the 

world, undermining efforts to prevent organ trafficking where it is 

done. 

In a moment, I will introduce our witnesses. But I also want to 

take this moment to recognize some of the distinguished guests in 

our audience and especially David Kilgour, who is a member of the 

Canadian Parliament. 

We have been working on this together for many years. He is a 

true leader in this issue and a truly moral giant in this era. He 

has played a key role in producing the updated report and David, 

we all thank you for the hard work that you put into this. 

And without objection, all members will have 5 legislative days 

to submit additional questions or extraneous material. We will 

then—I will have—Mr. Smith will make his opening remarks and 

then we will introduce the witnesses and go on from there. 

Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. I would like to say to my dear 

friend and colleague, Dana Rohrabacher, for organizing this important hearing. 

There are far too few people willing to speak out about human 

rights abuses with such clarity and consistency. As a former 

speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, Dana Rohrabacher 

knows how to cut right to the heart of the matter. 

He has done so with excellence since I have been here in Congress. I have been now serving 36 years as a Member. So I want 

to thank him for his extraordinary leadership on human rights 

issues around the world and including and especially in China. 

As Chairman Rohrabacher mentioned, we co-chaired a similar 

hearing in September 2012. It is disheartening in the extreme that 

we are here again, 4 years later, with the issue and this terrible 

horrific human rights abuse getting worse. 

The scope of organ trafficking is much larger now, a worldwide 

problem. The conflict in Syria has created a black market for 

human organs. ISIS has sanctioned the harvesting and sale of organs from a ‘‘apostate’s body into a Muslim’s body’’ even if the 

donor is still alive during harvesting. 

We have also seen horrific evidence of Eritrean victims in Sinai 

whose organs are brutally removed and sold if their families are 

unable to pay the traffickers’ ransom. 

However, the biggest problem is, by far, China, where government-sanctioned harvesting of organs from executed prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, has gone on for decades. 

Twenty years ago, working with the great and now late Harry 

Wu, I chaired a human rights hearing in my subcommittee with a 

Chinese security official who testified that he and other security 

agents were executing prisoners with doctors and ambulances there 

in order to steal their organs for transplant. 

3

Since then, this horrific practice has skyrocketed. Organ trafficking is a global problem where trafficking gangs, terrorist organizations, and government entities sell organs for profit. A global 

problem requires a global response. 

The U.S. Congress is taking steps to address the problem. The 

House passed H.R. 3694, two weeks ago, the Strategy To Oppose 

Predatory Organ Trafficking Act, amending the Trafficking Victims 

Protection Act of 2000 and requiring more diplomatic action in reporting on the issue. The bill also denies visas to doctors and officials complicit in organ trafficking. 

This is a start, and it is only a start, and hopefully the Senate 

will pass the bill soon. 

Four years ago, we asked for more evidence of organ harvesting 

in China and we are now getting some very serious evidence. The 

Chinese Government said it is moving toward adherence to ethical 

standards and accepted procedural guidelines. 

But in the absence of accurate information and any semblance of 

transparency and with a history of repression and censorship to 

cover past abuses can their assurances be in any way believed? 

It is important to remember that the Chinese Government has 

been trafficking in organs for profit for decades. Let me just say 

many things have changed in China over the past 20 years, but as 

witness testimony today shows, maybe not so much as changed in 

the area of organ harvesting. 

The Falun Gong repression is especially brutal, ugly, and vicious. 

I strongly believe that the 17-year campaign to eradicate Falun 

Gong will be seen as one of the great shames of recent Chinese history. 

That more people are not crying out for change, accountability 

and justice on the issue of organ harvesting or the repression of the 

Falun Gong is sad. But that has to change, too. This hearing helps 

to bring these issues into sharp light and to bring scrutiny to them. 

What adjectives do we use to describe what Chinese doctors and 

hospitals have been doing these past decades? How can we describe 

doctors who engage in forced abortions and sterilizations and 

gendercide, the extermination of the girl child, as we have seen in 

China? 

How can we understand doctors who experiment on prisoners of 

conscience detained in psychiatric hospitals? It is all reminiscent of 

what happened during World War II in some of the camps including Camp 731 when people were horrifically abused, in that case 

by Chinese conquerors in China. And now the Chinese Government 

and the doctors are doing it themselves. 

Ordinary words like concerned, disturbed, or shocking just don’t 

seem to be adequate. We tend to reserve words like barbaric for 

truly horrible crimes and this is barbaric. 

The Department of State and the international medical community must do a detailed analysis and studies on the claims made 

by respected researchers here today and by Falun Gong practitioners. Our State Department has done far too little. That, too, 

has to change. 

I yield back and I thank my friend for calling this hearing. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Chris, and I would 

like to now introduce our witnesses. 

4

David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in 

Canada. He has written extensively on organ harvesting in China 

including co-authoring ‘‘Bloody Harvest’’ with David Kilgour, who 

I just mentioned. He is one of the co-authors of the updated report 

and we will be hearing more about that in just a moment. 

Also, Ethan Gutmann, who is—is it Gutmann or Gutmann? 

Whichever. You know, like Rohrabacher—they say how do you pronounce Rohrabacher. 

As a China analyst and a human rights investigatory, he has 

written widely on China including the book ‘‘Losing the New 

China: The Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal.’’ He 

is a former policy analyst at the Brookings Institute and is a frequent television news commentator. 

We have with us Dr. Francis Delmonico, who is a professor of 

surgery at Harvard Medical School and chief medical officer for the 

New England Organ Bank and an advisor to the World Health Organization. 

He is also immediate past president of the Transplantation Society, the leading international association for professionals who are 

involved with the transplantation of human organs and tissues. 

Finally, we have Dr. Charles Lee. He is the director of public 

awareness for the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong. 

He received his medical education in China and later came to the 

United States where he passed the U.S. Medical Board exams and 

during a visit to China in 2003 he was arrested and sentenced to 

3 years in prison. 

Since his return to the United States in 2006, he has continued 

his work to expose the crimes of the CCP, especially those crimes 

against the Falun Gong. 

I would ask each of you if possible to limit your verbal remarks 

to 5 minutes and then to have whatever extraneous material or 

supporting material to be put into the record and they will be automatically done—will be automatically put into the record. 

So Dr. Matas, you may proceed. 

STATEMENT OF MR. DAVID MATAS, SENIOR LEGAL COUNSEL, 

B’NAI BRITH CANADA 

Mr. MATAS. Yes. Well, first of all, I want to thank the two committees for convening this hearing and I want to commend the cochairs, Representatives Smith and Rohrabacher, for their—your 

leadership in this issue. 

David Kilgour, who is behind me, and I have been researching, 

writing and speaking on the killing of Falun Gong for their organs 

now for over 10 years. 

Ethan Gutmann is the journalist who interviewed us on our 

work and then did his own. Since David Kilgour and I published 

‘‘Blood Harvest,’’ the third version of our report in book form and 

Ethan Gutmann published his book, ‘‘The Slaughter,’’ we three 

have remained active in writing, researching, investigating and 

speaking on organ transplant abuse in China. 

Yesterday at the National Press Club, we released a 600-page 

update with over 2,300 footnotes to update this work and it is now 

available online at endorganpillaging.org. 

5

With the update, we make our own assessment of transplant 

abuses and our own assessment of transplant volumes. In looking 

at the sources for organ transplants from China in the past we 

have taken Chinese Government official statements of overall 

transplant volume to 10,000 a year at face value and focused on 

attempting to identify the sources for these asserted volumes. 

However, the Chinese Government statistics for transplant volumes are not necessarily reliable. One effort which needed to be 

made and which we find we have made is to determine on our own 

what Chinese transplant volumes are. 

We did that by looking at and accumulating the data from individual hospitals where transplants occur, almost 900 in all. Some 

hospitals state their transplant volumes. For those who do not, we 

can from their bed counts, personnel strength, the rate of growth, 

technological development, academic publications, newsletters, 

media reports and so on come to a conclusion on their transplant 

volumes. 

We had in the past concluded that the Chinese Communist Party 

was engaged in the mass killing of innocents, primarily practitioners of the spiritually-based set of exercises Falun Gong but also 

Uyghurs, Tibetans and select House Christians in order to obtain 

organs for transplants. 

The fact that the evidence we have now examined shows a much 

larger volume of transplants than the Government of China has assured us points us to a larger discrepancy between transplant volumes and the Government of China identified sources than we had 

previously thought existed. 

The increased discrepancy leads us to conclude there has been a 

far larger slaughter of practitioners of Falun Gong for their organs 

than we had originally estimated. 

What is the volume of organ transplantation in China now when 

we add up all the data from the transplant centers and hospitals? 

Instead of 10,000 a year, we would say that the range is between 

60,000 to 100,000 transplants a year with an emphasis on the higher number. The update at great length indicates how we calculate 

that range. 

Well, what is to be done? We have to commend the House of Representatives for what they have already done, which you have referred to, Mr. Chairs—the stop organ trafficking act proposal as 

well as the resolution condemning a week ago the practice of statesanctioned organ harvesting in the People’s Republic of China. 

We welcome the provision in the U.S. code which bars provision 

of visas to Chinese—other nationals engaged in coerced organ or 

bodily tissue transplantation. 

Yet, there is more that could be done. Organ transplant abuse in 

China is primarily a donor source problem, not a supply problem, 

not a patient demand problem. We could end transplant tourism 

into China entirely and organ transplant abuse in China would 

still continue. Yet, we must do what we can to avoid complicity in 

that abuse. 

House Resolution 343 calls on the United States Department of 

State to conduct a detailed analysis on state-sanctioned organ harvesting from nonconsenting prisoners of conscience in the annual 

human rights report. 

6

I would suggest that this analysis must be more than just a presentation of the work that we and other researchers have done coupled with empty Chinese Government denials. 

The Department of State Bureau of Human Rights to fulfil the 

mandate given by the House should come to its own conclusions. 

There also needs to be a more direct confrontation of transplant 

tourism. U.S. legislation should make organ transplant abuse and 

brokerage extraterritorial crimes. 

The legislation should require compulsory medical and hospital 

reporting of all out of country transplantation. That sort of reporting is necessary to make a law against complicity and foreign 

transplant abuse workable. Insurers should be prevented from covering and paying for abusive transplantation abroad. 

Pharmaceutical companies should not be allowed to participate 

in drug trials with patients using organs from improper sources. 

In conclusion, let me say when it comes to abusive transplantation, we have to think not only of the patient in need of an organ 

but also the source of the organ. It is unconscionable to kill a 

healthy innocent person so that a sick person can live. The U.S. 

must do everything in its power to stop that from happening. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Matas follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. Gutmann. 

STATEMENT OF MR. ETHAN GUTMANN, JOURNALIST 

Mr. GUTMANN. Thank you. 

Fourteen years ago, the chairman of AmCham China gave testimony on Chinese intellectual property rights violations to the 

CECC. He testified the Chinese leadership was finally saying exactly what we wanted them to. 

Yet, for U.S. companies selling to the Chinese market, 15 to 20 

percent of revenue is lost due to counterfeiting. In other words, the 

problem was worse than ever. 

That was Chris Murck. He is my former boss. He taught me that 

reform in China can take time. Eight years later, Murck came back 

to the CECC and testified that counterfeiting was present but it 

was receding and perhaps that is why when I was writing my book 

7 years after the Kilgour-Matas report I assumed I was writing 

about history. 

How naive. After decades of Western legal exchanges with China, 

Chinese lawyers now face mass arrests. How strangely idealistic 

the words free the Chinese Internet sound today in part because 

we know some American companies have dirty hands. 

So yes, if money is the main issue, you might scratch out a stalemate with the Chinese Communist Party. But if the party feels 

threatened, take all the time you like. You will probably lose. 

Our update is essentially a balance sheet of organ harvesting. 

Are we winning or losing? The Chinese medical establishment commonly claims that China performs 10,000 transplants per year. 

Yet imagine a typical state-licensed transplant center in China. 

Three or four transplant teams, 30 or 40 beds for transplant patients, a 20- to 30-day recovery period. Patient demand—300 Chinese waitlisted for organs, not counting foreign organ tourists. 

Would it be plausible to suggest that such a facility might do one 

transplant a day? One hundred and forty-six transplant facilities 

ministry-approved meet that general description. That yields a 

back of the envelope answer. You can do it right here. Not 10,000 

but over 50,000 transplants per year. 

Suppose we actually hold those same hospitals and transplant 

centers to the actual state minimum requirement of transplant activity, beds, surgical staff and so on—80,000 to 90,000 transplants 

per year. 

Yet, how should we account for the emergency of Tianjin First 

Central Hospital, easily capable of 5,000 transplants per year? PLA 

309 Military Hospital in Beijing, similar. Zhongshan Hospital—the 

list is extraordinary. A detailed examination yields an average of 

up to two transplants per day—over 100,000 transplants per year. 

Now, the figures I have given you are based on Chinese numbers. 

Not from official statements but sources like Nurses Weekly. 

To understand why organs are readily available we need to briefly examine how harvesting evolved over time. In the 1980s, it was 

an opportunistic afterthought to a convict’s execution. 

In the mid-1990s, medical vans on execution grounds became 

routine. Experimental live organ harvests were carried out on the 

execution grounds of Xinjiang. 

13

In 1997, following the Ghulja massacre, a handful of political 

prisoners, Uyghur activists were harvested for a handful of aging 

Chinese Communist Party cadres. 

Now, perhaps those organs were simply prizes seized in the fog 

of war. Perhaps the harvesting of prisoners of conscience could 

have ended there. 

But in 1999, state security launched the campaign to eliminate 

Falun Gong. By 2001, over 1 million Falun Gong incarcerated within the Laogai system were subject to retail organ testing and Chinese military and civilian hospitals were ramping up their transplant facilities. By 2002, it was select House Christians. By 2003, 

it was the Tibetans. 

By 2005, economic opportunism had been replaced by two hidden 

hands—5-year plan capitalism and the party’s desire to kill off its 

internal enemies. The result was that a foreign organ tourist of 

means could purchase a tissue-matched organ within 2 weeks. 

Hardened criminals were harvested for organs; transplant centers 

stood to make $60,000, $100,000 or more but the rise of the Chinese transplant industry was built on the foundation of Falun 

Gong incarceration. 

In early 2006, the Kilgour-Matas report was published and then 

we get into the business with Wang Lijun and the fatal exposure 

of the Chinese medical establishment. 

In 2012, they promised to move to voluntary sourcing within 3 

to 5 years. Yet, they wrapped it in a semantic trick. The phrase 

‘‘end organ harvesting of prisoners’’ was acceptable. The phrase 

‘‘end organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience’’ was unacceptable. 

Thus, the Chinese could avoid speaking about a vast caught captive population that doesn’t officially exist while the acceptable 

phrase allowed Westerners to hope that prisoners of conscience was 

just a subset of prisoners. 

By avoiding the taboo phrase, both sides could maintain their illusions. Yet, throughout all the gyrations of the Chinese medical 

establishment’s supposed reform, the inconsistent numbers, the 

dithering over whether a prisoner could volunteer their organs, the 

claim that a voluntary organ donation system was magically in 

place, our update finds only continuity. Transplant wings under 

construction, business as usual. 

Now, in conclusion, as I turn to policy, let me begin with what 

can’t be done. We cannot solve this problem by pretending that 

prisoners of conscience have not been harvested. 

A Chinese doctor testified to Congress on the harvesting of death 

row prisoners in 2001 from Harry Wu. It caused a ripple, not a 

wave. We are here today, side by side, because the people in this 

room are concerned about prisoners of conscience. 

We cannot verify self-proclaimed medical reform by arranged visits to a few Chinese transplant hospitals. In the words of Dr. Jacob 

Levee from the TTS ethics committee and Doctors Against Forced 

Organ Harvesting: ‘‘As the son of a Holocaust survivor I feel 

obliged to not repeat the dreadful mistake made by the International Red Cross visit to the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration 

camp in 1944 in which it was reported to be a pleasant recreation 

camp.’’

14

In short, the medical community cannot solve this problem alone. 

They need House Resolution 343. They need our research. And 

they need new investigations. They need to have oversight over 

Americans going to China for organs and they need the support of 

the American people. 

According to Levee, not a single Israeli has gone to China for a 

transplant since Israel took a stand against organ tourism in 2008. 

Cutting off HMO funding wasn’t enough. 

The Israeli surgeons needed to make the point publically that no 

matter how much Chinese money was invested in Israeli software, 

doctors have a special interest in the phrase ‘‘never again.’’

Now, for Taiwan rejecting organ tourism to China was even more 

courageous, given the Chinese military threat. But if the Taiwanese medical establishment and the political sector can join 

hands, we can too. 

I have been told that this is a Falun Gong issue. No. This is the 

familiar spectre of human genocide. It is cloaked in modern scrubs. 

And even with the united effort we may lose the patient. Yet, let 

us at least enter the operating room with clean hands. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gutmann follows:]

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STATEMENT OF FRANCIS L. DELMONICO, M.D, PROFESSOR OF 

SURGERY, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL 

Dr. DELMONICO. Thank, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to 

make these comments. 

I would like you both to know that I agree with the other individuals that are making testimony today. The use of organs from the 

executed prisoners is condemnable. It is a reprehensible practice. 

It is a disgraceful practice because of the corruption. It is a corruption intended to acquire money and not provide care. 

I want to share with you an anecdote that is illustrative and I 

would like to say to both of you that I have been to 70 countries 

around this world in the last decade to combat organ trafficking. 

In a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the physician who is sitting 

next to me at dinner tells me of this incident—the mother of a 14-

year-old—14-year-old—who undergoes a kidney transplant in 

Tianjin, China and returns home to Saudi Arabia and ill within 

days of the transplant. 

This patient undergoes a biopsy of the kidney because the kidney 

is not working, to discover that the kidney is scarred. It is obsolescent. It is not going to function. It never can function, and it has 

been at that time removed from an individual that is an executed 

prisoner. 

This patient, Mr. Chairman, then develops a viral infection, this 

14-year-old, and that infection should have been prevented by 

medicines that should have been administered at the time of the 

transplant. And the end of the story is that she dies. It cost the 

mother $200,000 in cash for her child to die. 

That is why I am in the midst of this issue of organ trafficking 

as a professional not to enable that to happen not only in China 

but anyplace else in this world. 

So it becomes a very corrupt practice by the chain from the prison to the patient ward. But I think you both have to know that it 

is not just from within China. 

Patients from the United States and Israel and Canada and yes, 

I know Mr. Gutmann is talking about J. Levee, who is a good 

friend of mine, and I know what the Israelis have done to prevent 

Israelis from going to other locations in this world. But it has been 

there and it has been from Saudi Arabia and Canada and Japan 

that patients go into China. 

That practice is now stopping. Over the course of this last decade 

I have gotten to know someone within China that you know in the 

media—Jiefu Huang—and I want to say to you that from my perspective he’s a courageous leader because change is occurring in 

China. 

And I know of this by Mr. Gutmann’s comment. I have been to 

many cities now within China and been with the younger people 

who are doing the transplants and their future is not to use organs 

from the executed because the transplantation community of the 

world will not let them make presentations about those data and 

they, in their interest to propel their careers, are coming away 

from that practice. 

They are no longer using that organ source, and the alternative 

of having deceased donors within the intensive care units is becoming the source of organ donors. 

19

I know of this as well because of the risk that has been personal 

risk to Jiefu Huang to stay within China and make for that change 

to occur. I know of that personal risk as well for his mentee, his 

young leader that he has mentored who was under house arrest for 

months, that we weren’t able to reach him. 

He’s a member of the same committee that Mr. Gutmann is talking about. Jay Levee is in that committee of the Transplantation 

Society. Jiefu Huang is a member of that committee. We couldn’t 

have at him for months. 

But the practice is now changing and he was released. It was 

also through an effort that we wrote to President Xi Jinping an 

open letter that was published in the medical literature to call 

upon China to stop the corrupt practice. 

So I am with the presenters to say to you we agree completely 

on this being a condemnable practice. But it is my responsibility 

and the leadership of the international transplant community to go 

there and try and make change, and we are trying to do that. 

And so in my visits and having patient contact, being in the 

wards to see what’s going on, I can say to you that that experience 

is not with the use of executed prisoners any longer and I have 

some then hope and optimism that the practice will come about to 

stop and change. 

Can I assure you that it is completely eradicated? No, I can’t. 

But that is not my job here to make that assurance to you. My job 

is to say to you that the international community does not accept 

that practice. 

The international community must work with its Chinese colleagues to change that practice and that is what has been our objective. 

And to make this system of organ donation and transplantation 

in China consistent with the guiding principles of the World Health 

Organization that yours truly helped to write and develop, and 

with the Declaration of Istanbul. 

Again, as you’ve mentioned, Mr. Chairman, the practice of organ 

trafficking is not isolated to China. You can read last week of the 

revelation in India and I can tell you about it in Egypt and in the 

Philippines and in other locations of the world. 

So I would agree with Dr. Matas about his request for China to 

consider extraterritorial jurisdiction about the crime of organ trafficking that has now been made plain, clear as a money transaction 

by the Council of Europe. 

We need to help the State Department to organize its TIP report—its annual report on the trafficking of human persons. We 

need to make certain that the organ trafficking component is made 

in that edition as well. 

And lastly, I wish to say that if Congress wants to stop—combat 

organ trafficking, it can sustain a resolve not to permit organ sales 

in the United States. 

So thank you for the opportunity to make these comments. I look 

forward to your questions and to elaborate further upon what has 

been a decade of experience in this issue. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Delmonico follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you, sir. 

And Dr. Lee. 

STATEMENT OF CHARLES LEE, M.D., DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC 

AWARENESS, WORLD ORGANIZATION TO INVESTIGATE THE 

PERSECUTION OF FALUN GONG 

Dr. LEE. Thank you, Chairman Smith and Rohrabacher, members of the committees and the staff members. My testimony has 

four sections. 

Section one is WOIPFG and its investigations into organ harvesting. World Organization to Investigate and Persecution of 

Falun Gong was established on January 20th, 2003. 

Up to May 2016 we have published 331 investigative reports and 

have compiled a list of more than 76,000 individual perpetrators. 

We have systematically investigated on the crimes on the forced 

organ harvesting over the last 10 years and we have published 43 

reports. 

In June 2015, we published a comprehensive report over here in 

which we laid out 1,628 pieces of evidence proving that more than 

865 hospitals and more than 9,500 surgeons in China who have 

been involved in these huge number of transplant operations. 

We have conducted more than 10,000 telephone interviews with 

Chinese Government officials and the surgeons, procured 60 recording testimonies from high-ranking government officials including 

five CCP Politburo standing committee members. 

These testimonies reveal that the majority of the extracted organs were from leading Falun Gong practitioners and that the 

order came from the CCP’s highest level. 

Since then, we have published another nine additional reports 

confirming that the organ harvesting on Falun Gong practitioners 

is still happening and in some places might be accelerating. 

We have another report over here. We would like to submit these 

two reports to the Congress for the record. So far we have—actually, my focus today will be the academic papers published by the 

doctors inside of China, mostly from year 2000 through 2012. 

So far, we have collected more than 3,000 academic papers. 

Three hundred of them have descriptions on donors. We have found 

evidence proving the existence of the large organ living donor pool, 

strengthening the previous conclusion of harvesting organs from 

living persons by the CCP. 

They are the written testimonies in the public domain provided 

by those doctors who have been involved in this heinous crime. 

Section two—medical papers and publications indicate that a 

huge living donor pool exists. Number one, very short waiting time; 

number two, in April 2006, one hospital in Hunan offered 20 livers 

and kidneys for free to lure more business. They have access to a 

very large donor pool. 

Number three, the abundance of the donors have even made the 

Chinese medicine hospitals—forensic hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, to conduct organ transplant operations. 

Number four—a large number of emergency transplant operations. China’s Liver Transplant Registration Project was started 

in early 2005. More than 8,000 cases have been collected up to December 2006. Among 4,300 cases with available data for a timing 

23

manner, 1,150 cases were of emergency operations which was as 

high as 27 percent. 

The shortest time to start the operation was 4 hours after the patient was admitted. The same database provides that only 2 percent of the donors were living donors. All the others were dead. 

By contrast, only 61⁄2 percent of liver transplants performed at 

a leading transplant center in Canada from 1994 to 2008 was for 

acute liver failure, which needs emergency transplant in 48 to 72 

hours. 

Canada has a matching system supposed to be much more efficient than anything legitimate for matching up in China. A more 

plausible explanation is that it is the donors wait for the recipients 

in China. 

Number five, abundance of donors provide to multiple stand-by 

donors for transplantation surgeons. One typical case was Huang 

Jiefu—Huang Jiefu’s liver transplant operation in Xinjiang on September 28th, 2005. The first donor’s liver was discarded after 

Huang opened the abdominal cavity of a cancer patient and he discovered that it happened to meet to the criteria for a autologous 

liver transplant. 

He then closed it and contacted Guangzhou City and Chongqing 

City requesting a spare liver in case the autologous transplant 

failed. 

Matching livers were found in both cities in several hours and 

arrived in Xinjiang almost at the same time at 6:30 p.m. on September 29th. Another—also another spare liver was found in 

Xinjiang. The operation lasted from 7 o’clock p.m. on September 

29th to 10 o’clock a.m. next day. 

After 24 hours of observation, Huang announced the spare livers 

were no longer needed. The acceptable cold ischemic time for liver 

was less than 15 hours even in China. Therefore, one can safely 

say that the two spare livers brought from Chongqing and 

Guangzhou City could only be two intact living persons. 

Otherwise, the extraction, the flight, the operation and the observation time would be at least 50 hours. The spare livers would 

have no value. 

Section three—medical papers indicate that large scale kill on 

demand organ transplant system. Number one, abnormal descriptions on the donors. 

One hundred three papers have information about the donors. 

The total number mentioned was 8,710. Eighty papers had the 

ages, from 20 to 40 years old with average in the 20s, while in the 

U.S. average age of deceased donors in 2006 was a little over 40. 

The vast majority of the descriptions regarding the health condition of the donors are perfectly healthy. There is no history of contagious disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer or drug abuse, et 

cetera. 

One might wonder why these young and perfectly healthy people 

would donate their organs and die. Number two, brain death in 

China—a simplified definition of brain death is the death of all 

central neurological tissue, resulting in the loss of cerebral functions. 

Strict procedures and long-term observing should be implemented before announcing the brain death. In the U.S., there were 

24

about 6,700 living donors and 8,000 deceased donors in 2006. The 

three major causes of deaths were cerebral vascular stroke, head 

trauma and anoxia, anoxia brain deaths. 

B, in China there is no legal definition or procedure to follow to 

announce a person is brain dead. One article on Tengxun net in 

2014 cited Huang Jiefu, stating that 90 percent of the doctors in 

China don’t know the criteria for brain deaths. 

It was still not a good time for China to enact a brain death law. 

One hundred thirty-seven papers described the causes of the 

deaths in over 5,000 donors. Fifty-nine percent were brain deaths. 

Further analysis and review that the vast majority of these brain 

deaths were actually living people. 

C, China’s leading expert on brain death, Chen Zhonghua from 

Tongji Medical College, has been exploring using internationally 

accepted brain death criteria in organ transplantations. 

An article by his group in Journal of Organ Transplant in July 

2010 stating that 60 cases of organ extractions were conducted 

from brain death donors in China since 2001. That’s 10 years period of time. 

In July 2006, they conducted the first ever heart transplantation 

using a brain death donor in the country. Chen Zhonghua’s numbers clearly indicated that to the vast majority of these cases of extractions are not from truly brain death donors. 

Because it is not a legal practice at all in China to announce a 

patient is brain dead and that there is no formal training or certifications for the doctors, they should be still alive when the organs 

were taken. 

D, we found five papers with 22 cases describing the procedure 

of tracheal intubination after the brain deaths. This makes no medical sense. The diagnosis of brain death needs hours of observation 

and the testings. 

Tracheal intubation should be—and the tracheal intubation 

should be done in the process or before that in order to save the 

life of the patient. 

These doctors have confirmed that they didn’t—they did not understand the criteria for brain deaths nor did they care if the donors were brain dead. The donors were actually living people. 

E, the other three major causes of death in the papers—cadaver, 

sudden death and no heart beating—did not give any information 

on how these donors died either. 

Number three, extremely short ischemic time. Warm ischemic 

time here refers to the amount of time that an organ remains 

warm after its blood supply has been stopped or reduced. 

Eighty-nine papers had close to 7,000 cases on the warm 

ischemic time from donors with brain death, cadaver or sudden 

death. Most of them is under 10 minutes. Some mentioned the 

cause of the deaths. 

Six hundred eighty-eight cases were brain dead—brain death. 

One had 117 cases of fresh cadavers with heart beats just stopped. 

With brain death not practicable and almost no explainable legitimate cause of death, then why almost all organ documents have 

such short one ischemic time? The most plausible explanation is 

that these donors have been arranged to die when the organ procurements need to happen. This is mass murder. 

25

Section four—in six papers 42 doctors admittedly have killed at 

least 677 living people for their organs. Number one, general transplants, May 2011, Yang Shou-guo, et cetera, from a transplantation 

center in Shanghai described 298 cases of heart transplantation in 

11 years from May 2000. 

On donor descriptions it reads 291 hearts were from cadavers. 

Seven hearts were from brain dead donors 18 to 45 years old, average 27. All donors had no obvious history of cardiovascular disease 

or other major organ diseases. 

Among these 298 cases, after year 2007, 60 hearts were extracted 

when the donors had ventricle fibrillation, or after the heart 

stopped beating and that the rest were extracted while the hearts 

were still beating. 

The authors admitted here that at least 231 healthy young people while not brain dead and that their hearts were still beating 

were killed for their hearts. 

Number two—Chinese general practice December 2007, Li Yaofeng, et cetera, talked about 103 liver transplantations beginning 

in 2004 in the center. It reads, the donors of both groups of recipients were healthy young people. 

One of them was brain dead. All others were same blood type, 

cadaveric livers. All ischemic times were between 0 and 5 minutes. 

The conclusion should be easy to draw. At least 102 young people 

had been killed for their organs. 

Number three—Chinese Journal Hepatobiliary——

Mr. SMITH. Dr. Lee——

(Off mic comments) 

Dr. LEE. Okay. That’s fine. I have, you know, three more but 

these are the published academic papers in which those doctors actually, you know, admit they have killed people while they are 

alive. 

The accounts show that the practice of forced organ harvest is 

real and is done on a very large scale. I am going to submit these 

six papers to the Congress for the record and we are going to take 

some time to translate all of them. But these are real published papers. 

Thank you very much. Actually, we have——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Without objection, they will be put into the 

record. 

Dr. LEE. All right. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Lee follows:]

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. You know, some of us we had a rather tumultuous night last night and there was—so we didn’t get much sleep 

so I apologize for being a little groggy here. 

Let’s go into some questions and answers. Now, I am going to get 

an understanding of what we are talking about here, the basis, and 

Dr. Delmonico, you might tell me how long does it—you have when 

someone dies, whether they are killed or whether they just died, 

how long do you—do you have before that organ is no longer transmittable to another person? 

Dr. DELMONICO. Depends on the organ. Depends on the organ, 

Mr. Chairman. So the heart is very sensitive. Once it arrests, it becomes complicated for you to be able to transplant it. 

The kidneys can last an hour without circulation and still be recovered and transplanted. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So it is 1 hour for a kidney? 

Dr. DELMONICO. For kidneys. But that is why I am saying to you 

it depends on the organ. So the heart is very sensitive. Once it arrests and has no circulation it becomes complicated to make a successful transplant. But there is research that is being done now to 

do them. 

But in terms of China and what has been practiced, once the 

heart arrests it becomes very difficult to transplant it—unpredictable. The lungs can last for a couple of hours because there is oxygen retained within the lung even after circulation subsides. The 

liver can be no more than about 30 minutes without sufficient circulation and it has to be transplanted, otherwise it won’t function. 

So there is a sensitivity of each organ to ischemia, or an absence 

of circulation, that makes it different from one organ to another. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. How about the——

Dr. DELMONICO. Yes, sir. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. The cornea in your eyes? 

Dr. DELMONICO. The corneas can be—that is a tissue and that 

is a different matter. It doesn’t require circulation. It can be recovered many hours after the individual has died. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And how long will it last before it has to be 

transplanted? 

Dr. DELMONICO. They can be preserved and transplanted days or 

months later—the cornea. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And but the other organs you were talking 

about have to be transplanted in a matter of hours. 

Dr. DELMONICO. They have to be transplanted in some proximity. 

Now, we are—we are in a research way these days of preserving 

organs that could last for a couple of days and done by placing 

these organs on a machine that can give the organs blood and oxygen or cold perfusate and it enables them to last for hours and then 

a couple of days. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Does Dr. Delmonico’s analysis—do you have 

any comment on it from the rest of the panel? Is that accurate? 

Mr. MATAS. In terms of the times, I mean, that is scientific evidence. 

Dr. DELMONICO. This has been a practice for 40 years. 

Mr. MATAS. Yes. But my comment on it is that it shows that, 

well, except for corneas there has to be a pretty quick turnaround 

between the death of a source and the transplantation. We can’t 

36

even have several hours. We’re looking at minutes—60 minutes, 

maybe 2 hours in the case of one type of organ. 

So and what we see in China is sometimes transplantation is 

scheduled on demand of the patient, short waiting times, so that—

we do not have patients waiting for organs very often but rather 

organs waiting for patients, which means, especially in the case of 

vital organs, that people are being killed for their organs. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. So the—what we should be looking at 

then is not necessarily organs that are put into the icebox and 

flown somewhere but instead should be looking to people who are 

being recruited throughout the Western world and other countries 

but places where people have money who are recruited to go to 

China and perhaps elsewhere with other——

Dr. DELMONICO. Without question. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. So that should be a major focus as to 

people who are in a state of need because their own organs are 

being—you know, going to hell and they’re giving out, and we need 

to be able to make sure that when they are offered here, this is 

your—here, how we can save you is that we are not saving them 

by condemning a prisoner who might be in jail for saying something bad about the Communist Party of China. 

Mr. MATAS. Yes. I think all of us would agree with that statement completely. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me just note, I am happy to hear this. 

I have been worried about this because there are transplant centers in Orange County, California and I have been very concerned 

that there might be some kind of organs being brought in from 

China. Now, is that a possibility that we——

Dr. DELMONICO. No, that is not—I should say to you, if I 

may——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Sure. 

Dr. DELMONICO. I had the opportunity to oversee the practice of 

organ donation and transplantation in this country as the president of UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing, that runs 

the practice of transplantation in the country. 

Every transplant that is performed in the United States must be 

reported to the network—to the government, to the Department of 

Human Health—of Health Human Services. 

So I can make some assurance to you from the system that is in 

the United States every transplant must be reported and there 

would be no opportunity of bringing organs in from China to California for a successful transplantation. Were that to be known, the 

centers in Orange County would be closed down that night. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Let me—again, I am not an expert on this 

and what about the organ of the skin? Can skin be sent and transported? 

Dr. DELMONICO. That is a tissue. So, you know, an organ is a 

vital structure that has blood supply, et cetera, right. But there are 

vital organs that require circulation for their maintenance and viability. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. 

Dr. DELMONICO. There are tissues such as skin and bone and cornea, valves, that do not need continuous circulation for their viabilVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:00 Jul 20, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\062316\20533 SHIRL
37

ity. So they can be preserved for an extended period of time or they 

can be processed. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. So skin is not considered an organ. For some 

reason back in high——

Mr. MATAS. It is a tissue, yes. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. Back in my days when I got a 

D——

Dr. DELMONICO. It is under the—it is under the——

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. In health in high school, I think. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Mr. Chairman, that is fine. We don’t know about 

legislation. I will just say to you it is categorized as a tissue. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. And so whether you’re saying whether 

it is a tissue or an organ, is there—are there cases—do we have 

cases where skin is being removed and being sold on a market by 

the Chinese Government? 

Mr. MATAS. Yes. Well, that is what the plastination is. We see 

these body exhibits and there is some skin involved in them as well 

as vital organs. But, I mean, whole bodies are plastinated coming 

from China. 

And in our update we talk about this plastination as similar fact 

evidence. Many of these plastinated bodies, from our conclusions, 

come from Falun Gong practitioners. But it is—the plastination occurs within China and the skin grafts and whatever, they occur 

within China. 

The exportation of particular organs we don’t—I mean, we have 

heard rumours about it. We haven’t seen any evidence of it. 

I wanted to pick up on what the——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Before we go on, okay. So we haven’t seen 

any evidence of particular organs because they—it does require 

time and care and it is quick. But have we seen evidence of skin 

transplants coming from China, the skin being transplanted and 

the corneas and other——

Mr. GUTMANN. I don’t know. I mean, the BBC——

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. And other—these other tissue 

type things? 

Mr. GUTMANN. The BBC comes out with a story of a collagenbased product—you know, various makeup products that use tissue 

from executed prisoners. They come out with that story every 3 

years. It is kind of regular. 

Mr. MATAS. Yes, what I wanted to say though is Dr. Delmonico 

had mentioned that there is compulsory reporting of all transplants 

within China—within the U.S.—within the U.S. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes, that is—the fact is is that people go to 

China——

Mr. MATAS. And that is right. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. Specifically and they are—and 

we have all the evidence in the world of people going there, actually perhaps as part of an organized business venture by someone 

who said, hey, we can get you organs and come on our—on this 

tour and end up at this hospital and then you have got your organ 

and even—and they do not know—even they have no idea——

Mr. MATAS. That is right. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. That their—that this is coming 

from an involuntary donor. 

38

Mr. MATAS. And that is not—there is no compulsory reporting for 

that. Once you leave and come back there is no compulsory reporting. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, maybe one thing that could be done 

that could have an impact is that people are coming back, Chris, 

from China who have had some kind of organ transplant operations 

have to in some way show that they were in some way confident 

that this was not—be coming to them from an involuntary contributor. 

Mr. MATAS. Well, even just at the very start at least they should 

be required to report—doctors and the hospitals should be required 

to report that this travel occurred and then there could be some investigation afterwards. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes. Is there any reason why we shouldn’t do 

that? 

Dr. DELMONICO. No, no. This is fine. I am very in agreement on 

this one. If a patient goes to a foreign destination for a transplant 

and they are coming back into the United States, that is going to 

require sophisticated care. 

Immunosuppression—the gamut of medications that have to be 

applied to make that organ transplant successful is sophisticated. 

So they are going to come home to a physician at one of our transplant centers that knows how to take care of those patients. 

So our people in the United States will know if they have gone 

to China or to India or to Pakistan or to any location that now is 

doing foreign patients for money. Okay. Could even be Mexico. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. Well, this is—I will yield to Mr. Smith 

now and we will have a second round of questions. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for your 

testimonies. Very, very helpful to the subcommittees. 

Just a couple of opening questions. First, to Dr. Delmonico. You 

mentioned Huang Jiefu and we know that he’s the former Deputy 

Health Minister and chairman of the Human Organ Donation and 

Transplant Committee, among other things, and my question is—

and before I get to it, I have worked human rights issues in China 

for 36 years, from my very first election in 1980 during the Ronald 

Reagan years. 

Obviously Tiananmen Square was a game-changer and then, 

sadly, it was a major reversal for democracy and universally recognized human rights. The students were repressed. 

But throughout it all, beginning of 1982, 1983 I began raising the 

issue of forced abortion and forced sterilization in China only to be 

met with aggressive denials by the Chinese Government, by the 

UNFPA, by many pro-abortion activists in the United States and 

in Europe. And in 1985, in this room, we had a hearing. 

I wasn’t the chairman at the time. The Democrats ran the 

House. And we had Foreign Service Officers telling us that it is 

over—it is finished, gone, and I put exclamation points on that because it was largely a 1983 high-tide experience, as they called it, 

and then Michael Weisskopf of the Washington Post did a threepart expose, Page 1—he was the bureau chief for the Washington 

Post—who absolutely blew the lid off the apologists who were out 

there saying there is nothing to worry about here, there is no 

forced abortion and no forced sterilization. 

39

I travelled to China many times. I met with Peng Peiyun, the 

woman who ran the program—a face to face meeting with State 

Department personnel sitting there and she said these are all lies. 

There is no coercion whatsoever in the People’s Republic of China, 

despite the evidence that is absolutely overwhelming and verified 

by all the major human rights organizations. 

After Tiananmen Square I went to a gulag—a Laogai called Beijing Prison Number 1 and the Chinese Government told me that 

there were no political prisoners, as they have said throughout 

every meeting I have ever had with them. 

I saw them. There were 40 of them there and the warden said 

40 of these people were on the Square and they wouldn’t let us talk 

to them. 

So when Chi Haotian, the operational commander, came to the 

United States got a 19-gun salute by President Bill Clinton, which 

I thought was an abomination—here is a man who sent in the killers that crushed the dissent at Tiananmen Square 

He went to the Army War College and said no one died at 

Tiananmen Square. In 2 days, I put together a hearing in room 

2172 of the Rayburn building as chairman of the Human Rights 

committee. We invited several people who gave compelling testimony that students and others were killed at Tiananmen Square—

that he was a liar. 

So we invited the Embassy to send somebody. We invited Chi 

Haotian to come. Obviously, we had an empty chair. We had that 

very prominently displayed. 

But we had people from Time magazine, the People’s Daily—a 

journalist who actually went to prison for trying to expose what 

was happening because he sided with the students—all tell their 

stories and some of the students themselves. 

So Chi Haotian, in the light of all the glare here in Washington, 

DC, said nobody died at Tiananmen Square. A couple weeks ago I 

had another hearing on torture in China. There have been two horrific reports—horrific in terms of what they found—by the special 

rapporteur for torture in China. 

This is the U.N. special rapporteur, and we had people at this 

hearing including one Tibetan Buddhist who told us how he sat in 

the tiger torture chair for 1 month and 22 days. Had a large picture of what it looked like and we’ve had Christians, Pentecostals, 

Falun Gong, and others all tell us how they had been subjected to 

this horrific torture chair. 

It is only one of many tools—horrible tools used by the Chinese 

Government. Previously, 20 years before that, I had a hearing of 

six survivors of the Laogai including a Tibetan Buddhist monk, 

Palden Gyatso, who brought in the cattle prods that were used 

under his arms, on his genitals, in his mouth, and when he tried 

to get in through security here in the Rayburn building they 

stopped him. 

I had to come down and escort him and he said this is what they 

do to us every single day. I have raised that issue with the Chinese 

Government in Beijing, in Shanghai, and here in the United States 

through hearings, through meetings, over and over again and they 

categorically deny that there is any torture, and that the torture 

chair—the tiger chair—does not exist. 

40

On human trafficking I have written four major laws—the major 

law on human trafficking known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. China is a basketcase when it comes to labor trafficking 

and sex trafficking, a magnet in large part because of the missing 

girls, tens of millions of girls who don’t exist because of 

gendercide—the direct killing through sex-selection abortion of the 

girl child—and that has led to a magnet effect of trafficking. Plus, 

they announced that they were getting rid of the Laogai system 

and it was another subterfuge because they didn’t. They just transferred that whole process. 

I chair the Congressional-Executive Commission on China as 

well. We were hopeful that this was real and durable. It was actually not real and durable. It was just a transfer of how they deal 

with this idea of reform through labor and it is just as egregious 

as it was before. 

I could go on in every category of human rights. There is censorship. I held the hearings with Google, Microsoft, and Cisco sitting 

here under oath saying that they are not part of the censorship. 

So if you put ‘‘Tiananmen Square’’ in what was then google.cn, 

you got wonderful pictures of happy tourists. If you put it into 

Google here in the United States you got pictures of tanks. So censorship is very real and I tried it a Beijing Internet cafe and I 

couldn’t get my name. When I put in anything about torture I got 

Guantanamo and I got what the Japanese did, and it was horrible, 

to the Chinese during World War II. 

But nothing about Manfred Nowak’s report as the Special 

Rapporteur on torture, which was a scathing indictment of the Chinese’s systematic use of torture against Falun Gong, against Christians, against Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghurs, and others. 

So my question is about credibility. You mentioned in your testimony that Dr. Huang Jiefu spent time under house arrest. 

Dr. LEE. That was Wang Haibo. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. So he was not under house—but he works for 

the government. He does work for the government. He’s right hand 

to Xi Jinping. He was Deputy Health Minister. Was he not Deputy 

Health Minister? No, let me ask you. Was he Deputy Health Minister? 

Mr. MATAS. That’s the question—was he Deputy Health Minister. 

Mr. SMITH. That is the first question. Is he aligned or part of the 

Government of China? 

Dr. DELMONICO. Jiefu Huang has been part of the government, 

obviously. 

Mr. SMITH. Has been. Okay. 

Mr. GUTMANN. If I may just respond——

Mr. SMITH. No, let me finish it. Then I’ll ask you. 

Mr. GUTMANN. After you then, please. 

Mr. SMITH. Please. Thank you. 

He has been part of the government and he may be a very sincere upright very focused man and wants to get this right. But he 

works for a government that systematically says things don’t happen. 

Now, my question would be how do you independently verify? In 

a country that is closed as it is, I don’t know if you have access 

41

to the military hospitals where this practice appears to have happened. 

They won’t allow teams to go into their prisons from the International Red Cross to look at prison conditions. They won’t allow 

it. How do you independently verify that even though he may be 

very sincere that anything he says, zero foreign customers for 

organ trafficking in 2016, how do you independently verify that 

when there has been such a backdrop of terrible duplicity, lies, and 

deception on the part of the government? Trust and verify. How do 

you do it? 

Dr. DELMONICO. I am not an apologist. I am not here to tell you 

not to worry. I am not here to verify. That is not my job. 

My job is to say to you that the international community is trying to make change within China and work with those professionals that want to develop a system that conforms with the guiding principles of the World Health Organization and the Declaration of Istanbul. 

That is my job. So let me say to you candidly I respect you greatly, Congressman Smith. I know of all the things that you recited 

for us this afternoon in your efforts. I have been in the midst of 

those for the last decade hearing the same things that you have 

heard. 

The people of China said the very same things—we are not using 

the organs from the executed. They denied it. However, in this past 

decade, what has happened? 

The state council no longer officially sanctions that practice. 

Whether it is going on or not, I can say to you that is a change. 

I have met with the Minister of Health and said to her that if 

she wants China to ascend in the leadership of organ donation and 

transplantation in this world, they must stop the use of organs 

from the executed because there will be no presentations of such 

an experience in international fora or in the medical literature 

such as the New England Journal of Medicine or the transplantation literature. It won’t happen, Madam Minister. It is not going 

to happen. 

So I have been just as candid in my relationship with the Chinese as you have been, sir, and I am not here to verify or make 

credible. 

I am here to say to you that there is a move within the country 

to change and the transplantation community recognizes what has 

been an abhorrent practice and was told that it wasn’t happening. 

Did not believe it and continued to work with the Chinese to 

make something different. In that regard, Jiefu Huang has indeed 

most recently been courageous, been at peril and the fight is going 

on even on this day as to who is going to succeed, whether the old 

system and the old guard will return to power or not. 

Mr. SMITH. Could I ask you, are there zero cases of——

Dr. DELMONICO. I don’t know that. Well, let me say this to you. 

I know about a month ago—and I get all of these anecdotes 

through the Declaration of Istanbul—a woman from Vancouver, 

Canada went to Tianjin and got herself a transplant. 

So we do know that it is occurring still within China. But it is 

not my—it is not my job to say to you that it is eradicated or completely stopped. 

42

Mr. SMITH. Could I ask you—and this is strongly for the record 

to know this—are there any—I wrote a letter to Dr.——

Dr. DELMONICO. You wrote a letter to Philip O’Connell. We responded to you. I responded to you. 

Mr. SMITH. Did we get a response? 

Dr. DELMONICO. Yes, you did. No, there is a letter there. 

Mr. SMITH. This is 10 questions. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Mr. Smith, there is a letter from the Transplantation Society and I wrote to you as well personally, which we got 

no response—which we got no response. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, we will respond to you. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Before we move on to the second round, with regard 

to the military hospitals—People’s Liberation Army Hospital—do 

you have any access to that, those hospitals? 

Dr. DELMONICO. No. I don’t have access. 

Mr. SMITH. So we have no idea. I mean, that is where many of 

these—I mean——

Dr. DELMONICO. Sure, it could be going on there. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. 

Dr. DELMONICO. I cannot assure you of that. What I can assure 

is that the young people that are going to be the future transplant 

people of the country they are not in tune with that practice any 

longer. I have met them. I have been with them. 

Now, I recognize Mr. Gutmann is going to say this is anecdotal 

and et cetera. 

Mr. GUTMANN. I love anecdotes. 

Dr. DELMONICO. No, no. But I can only present to you—Mr. 

Smith, I can only present to you my experience, right, and say to 

you that we are trying to change it. 

Mr. SMITH. I don’t question your motives. In fact, you want to 

change it and you’re part of the agent of reform. The concern is no 

one does duplicity better than the Chinese Communist Party and 

I gave you just a few examples and, again, when I had my hearing 

20 years ago it was the military that was part of this process and 

security guards and we vetted the guard that came and gave this 

testimony, we protected his identity big time. He ended up getting 

asylum here, and Harry Wu helped to facilitate all of that, the 

great human rights leader. 

But, frankly, when I read the documentation it was overwhelming and the military was up to its gills in making money 

through this. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If the other witnesses have a comment? 

Dr. LEE. Yes, can I have one. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Then go for a second round? Everybody can 

have—everybody can have a comment. So we will start with Mr. 

Lee. 

Dr. LEE. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Chairman. 

We have heard that Dr. Delmonico talked about the organ trafficking and it is not limited in China. It is also happening in India, 

Egypt, within other countries as well. And also the Congress has 

introduced the H.R. 3694 regarding the organ trafficking. 

What I wanted to say is that in China the problem is much bigger than the organ trafficking and the numbers of these transplanVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:00 Jul 20, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\062316\20533 SHIRL
43

tation operations much bigger than the executed prisoners can be 

explained because if you look at the history between 1995 and 

1990, executed prisoners is about 1,600 or 1,700 a year. Then after 

the persecution of Falun Gongs, these numbers stays the same or 

even a little less. 

However, the transplantation numbers exploded. So we have tons 

of evidence showing that the majority of these donors were Falun 

Gong practitioners. And also, this is not just organ trafficking for, 

like, organ——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. It is very, very clear what you’re saying. 

There is evidence——

Dr. LEE. Yes, yes. But——

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. That the Falun Gong prisoners 

are a—there is a large—there is evidence to suggest they are way 

more representative than they are in the population in the number 

of donors supposedly that they are. 

Dr. LEE. I think the point is that we cannot, like, shift the focus 

because what we are talking about is a state-sponsored crimes. It 

is organized by the Communist Party. It is not like the Mafia or 

some underground organized crime. This is like the entire country 

is organized—summoned to do these crimes, and you cannot compare this crime to any organ trafficking in other countries, even 

those also, you know, should be condemned and prevented. 

So I think also for the communist regime to admit that they have 

been using executed prisoners it is not because they have found 

their conscience. 

It is because the evidence about this harvesting of Falun Gong 

practitioners is too big and they cannot deny it so they can—they 

use the excuse of, you know, executed prisoners as kind of a lie, 

you know, to that they are not harvesting organs from a Falun 

Gong practitioner. 

So this is—this must be made clear that we cannot just condemn 

organ trafficking instead of, you know, losing the big picture. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Gutmann. 

Mr. GUTMANN. What is the question exactly? 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Do you have a comment? And then we are 

going to go to a second round and then——

Mr. GUTMANN. Well, nothing really. I would just point out sort 

of, I guess, supporting Congressman Smith’s point, I am holding 

this document. Actually, it was just given to me today but these 

kinds of things keep turning up. This is the China Red Cross and 

this is—it is on the eve of New Year’s so 12/30/2015. This is the 

year that supposedly China went kosher and stopped harvesting 

any prisoners at all. 

The voluntary donors go up in one single day from the 30th of 

December to the night of the 31st of December of 25,000 exactly—

25,000 voluntary donors in a single day. That’s the kind of thing 

that—you know, it is all very well to talk about—and I take your 

point about anecdotes because I write a lot of anecdotes too. 

But, you know, when you start to sift through this kind of data 

this is the kind of thing you keep turning up. These numbers are 

fictional. They are flat out lies. This is a government that lies as 

it breathes. 

44

So I think, you know, the point is I don’t really agree with Dr. 

Delmonico that it is not at all their responsibility to do verification. 

I do believe that, you know, Jeremy Chapman, he’s—wait a second—Jeremy Chapman has a right to say anything he likes about 

us but he basically said we were completely—had no credibility 

whatsoever. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. You made your point and——

Mr. GUTMANN. We have a right to—you know, I think, you know, 

the point is we are supposed to be working together on trying to 

verify these issues. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And Mr. Matas, do you have a comment? 

Your microphone is not on. 

Mr. MATAS. Yes. I had a couple comments. 

First of all, Representative Smith, I appreciate your—the context 

in which you put everything because I think this issue has to be 

approached contextually about what’s generally happening in 

China now and in Chinese immediate history. 

Dr. Delmonico and I were on a panel a month ago in Rome together and I’ll repeat here what I said then, that it is impossible 

to have an island of respect for the rule of law and human rights 

in the transplant field in a raging sea of tyranny and dishonesty 

everywhere else in the system—that in order to get the transplant 

system to work you have to have respect for the rule of law and 

human rights generally. 

That doesn’t mean that the transplant profession is powerless 

and I think peer pressure is useful as leverage and it has worked 

in the past. 

Two years ago, the Transplantation Society had their international conference here in the United States, San Francisco. They 

rejected 35 papers from China and they didn’t go to an international conference in China to which they were invited 2 years 

ago and that had an impact in China. 

This year, the Transplantation Society is meeting in Hong Kong. 

They haven’t rejected the papers coming from China. Well, there 

certainly has been a lot more of them accepted and, again, than 

what happened 2 years ago. It hasn’t been as systematic and I 

have looked and others have looked at the papers that are accepted 

and there is problems with those papers. 

And the point is not to argue about which papers should be accepted or not but to point out that the transplantation can be—

transplantation profession can be useful but in order to be useful 

in exercising peer pressure they have to develop the kind of contextual approach that you, Representative Smith, has presented—to 

know that there is lack of access, that there is bamboozlement, that 

there is denial, that there is dishonesty and be able—not to be too 

easily beguiled. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. To be fair, we are going to give you 30 seconds to answer the comments and then we’ll go to the second round 

of questions. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Transplantation is a noble act. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. What is that now? 

Dr. DELMONICO. Transplant—organ donation and transplantation 

is a noble act. It has been my whole life and in all of our community it is a noble act. It is a giving of one person to another. 

45

So when David says it is a human rights issue, it is a human 

rights issue. And why is that? Because it must be for the community to safeguard the well-being of the living donor and for us to 

make certain that organs that are recovering from the deceased are 

fairly justly distributed throughout the society. 

So I completely agree with David’s objectives of making this a 

human rights issue. It has been for the Transplantation Society 

and the World Health Organization of which I have representation 

and in this country to assure that. So please know of that. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. All right. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Please know of it. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. Thank you very much. 

This is for a second round which we will try to make a little bit 

quicker. Let me just note when you have an operation on someone 

and you’re cutting them open to cut out a piece of cancer, that is 

a noble act. 

When you stick a bayonet in somebody and cut them open in 

order to suppress them or to create a feeling among a population 

that they are going to be—that you are now able to do a horrible 

thing like cutting somebody’s head off like we see with ISIL, that 

is—okay, they are both cutting—they are both cutting somebody 

open. 

And in this particular case what we are talking about is cutting 

somebody open, okay, and from what I have heard—just from what 

I have heard, the verification is coming from—and to be very fair 

to you, sir, you are basing your policies which you wanted policies 

on what will happen in the future after the era of reform that is 

going to take place in China. 

And, frankly, I have been hearing about that for the last 25 

years, longer than that—that there is going to be this nirvana in 

China if we keep treating them much more openly and we open up 

the communications with us, as long as we can talk to some of the 

young people there and give them some of the skills they need, 

which sometimes when they turn around are able to use to build 

weapons or to build things that actually repress their own people. 

I have been hearing this for 25—we are going to have by just 

more interaction with them officially and telling them our expectations that they will be reformed. 

I don’t see the reform in China. I see them making a lot more 

money. I see them building better systems of repression. You were 

talking about the old gang returning. I am sorry. 

I don’t see the current gang to be so laudatory. We just—what 

have we talked about here, infanticide—you know, where we—babies have been killed and now they say that is only going to be—

people can have two babies before they mass slaughter all the rest 

of them. There has been, of course, forced abortion and as we mentioned—or infanticide against people with—even if babies are born, 

if they are born with defects—am I wrong here—that in China 

today babies born with defects end up not getting home. 

How about the fact that there are no labor unions. There are no 

opposition newspapers. There are no opposition parties. There are 

none of these things, and what there is is torture. What there is 

is all these evil things that we have noted and the nirvana that I 

have been promised all of these years and we, Congress, has been 

46

promised will happen because if we just engage with them and get 

them into our economy they are going to become more noble people 

and accept the values of what, I guess, the establishment that 

you’re talking about is going to be very happy with them and being 

happy with the establishment is what will get them to change their 

behavior. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Chairman, I am not—I am not here to promise 

you anything and I am not here to have a conclusion. All of the 

comments that you made about reprehensible activity is something 

that I condone. 

Please, I want to make that clear in the record. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes, sir. 

Dr. DELMONICO. I don’t condone any of that and I am not here 

to promise you anything and I am not here to assure you nirvana. 

I am only here to say that the international community has recognized this terrible practice in China and it wishes to change it and 

it has been asked to help to change it and instead of sitting on the 

sideline we are going there to develop an infrastructure of organ 

donation and transplantation that would be consistent with World 

Health Organization principles. That is my job. That is my job. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes, and you——

Dr. DELMONICO. And I receive no funds for that, right. This isn’t 

something which I am selling for. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All I can tell you is setting up systems—setting up systems——

Dr. DELMONICO. They are trying to set up systems that you, sir, 

would——

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. In which—setting up systems in 

which a—in which you are one of the participants of the system is 

a Nazi. 

You could expect that there would be some things coming out of 

that system that you don’t like or the whole system will actually 

be perverted and used in a way that no one intended it to be used. 

For example, today people can be lulled to sleep in the United 

States as we have been for 20 years, lulled to sleep in to thinking 

there is a fundamental change in China. It is coming, there is an 

era coming, we can work with them now. Their new generation is 

so much different. 

I am sorry. I don’t think the new generation is that much different in China today except maybe they are different from Mao 

and—but anyway, with that said I think that this is—thank you 

for—by the way, just thank the whole panel but thank you especially, Dr. Delmonico. You have been a real trooper to express your 

points of view here and I take it all in good faith and trust——

Dr. DELMONICO. Yes, let us all just sleep and we are working 

hard. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. By the way, I get the same criticism when I am talking about trying to work with Russia to defeat 

radical Islam. 

But you know what? There has been reform in Russia. There has 

been no opposition parties, no opposition papers—all of that stuff 

I just mentioned. A lot of that stuff has happened at least part way 

in Russia. In China, there is no—they haven’t had any of that. 

47

And also, you go to China and you notice that people, you know, 

there is an underground church movement there. But in Russia, 

they actually allow them now. They don’t have to be an underground church in Russia. 

(Off mic comments) 

Well, I think that there has been some change in Russia and 

there hasn’t been in China, and I think that is what it comes down 

to. And I think that the—it is the old thing. I say this all the time, 

for people who haven’t heard it, is that the theory that if we treat 

them well and we let them into our markets and we increase their 

standard of living by allowing technology transfer and our marketplace is open that the people who run China and have been responsible for this infanticide and the forced abortions and all of these 

things that we are talking about here—organ transplants and then 

the rest—that those people will change their ways. 

They will become decent people and you will now have—hugging 

them like they are liberals will change their heart. It won’t, and 

I just—I call it the hug a Nazi, make a liberal theory and it just 

hasn’t worked. 

And that is why today I believe in we need to be tough, really 

tough on these issues instead of going about it just to be really cooperative with them and I think that is the essence of it. 

Chris, would you like to take over? 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I am glad Chairman Rohrabacher mentioned labor unions. Again, 

another example of the country of China with its state-run labor 

union, which is a farce, and no way comports with ILO standards. 

I have chaired hearings on that as well. 

Our annual report looks at that, at the Congressional-Executive 

Commission on China, in great depth and there is no sense that—

and I say that because there is right now an all-out effort by Xi 

Jinping and others who would love to be part of the TPP to somehow suggest that they will conform or are conforming now even to 

those standards. 

I went and read the TPP. It leaves the enforcement mechanism 

to the country itself. So we would have to count on Chinese courts 

to say they do or do not have labor rights. There is no collective 

bargaining. 

Arrearages is a problem. OSHA-type protections are nonexistent 

and, again, we get this big tsunami of disinformation out of China 

about they have a state labor union, but it is not protected. 

So it is another example in a long series of examples of the context that Mr. Matas mentioned earlier, which I think is so important. 

So maybe another question would be Dr. Wong Jiefu, how many 

others do you have—remember, he is a former—I don’t know who 

pays his salary now because usually it is the government for something like this but maybe not——

Dr. DELMONICO. He’s the head of a—can I mention——

Mr. SMITH. Yes. 

Dr. DELMONICO. He’s the head of a foundation that has received 

funding from a benefactor independent of China to now make—for 

the support for this change. So——

48

Mr. SMITH. Now, do you work with others too and could you 

name any of those individuals, any other docs? 

Dr. DELMONICO. Oh, yes. 

Mr. SMITH. Who you would believe can tell us, for example, what 

is going on in the military hospitals? 

Dr. DELMONICO. I can’t tell you about the military hospitals. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. But that is a big point that needs to be emphasized here because that is where we believe a lot of this is happening. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Let us emphasize it together. I can’t tell you 

about the military hospitals. That is fine. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. And maybe our other witnesses would want to 

elaborate on that. 

You know, Xi Jinping, you know, this group that is supporting 

him and the foundation you mentioned has a draft NGO law that 

severs ties with——

Dr. DELMONICO. This is a foundation in organ donation and 

transplantation. It——

Mr. SMITH. But you are outside the country, right? 

Dr. DELMONICO. No, no. It was a benefactor hotel magnate who 

supported this foundation. 

Mr. SMITH. Is it a Chinese foundation or——

Dr. DELMONICO. It is a Chinese foundation, yes. 

Mr. SMITH. Oh, it is in-country. 

Dr. DELMONICO. It exists in Beijing but it is not a matter of the 

government and now Jiefu Huang is the head of that foundation 

and that is what supporting the infrastructure of developing organ 

procurement organizations similar to what we have in the United 

States. 

I can’t, again, guarantee this is going to happen. We have to try, 

however. We have to try. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask you, I did ask—and maybe through 

Mr. Gutmann and Mr. Matas—Dr. Jeremy Chapman, as we know 

the former president of the Transplantation Society, called the estimates in your report ‘‘pure imagination piled upon political interest.’’

I know because I work on human rights across the board around 

the world then when the B’nai Brith or the American Jewish Committee or some other organization dealing with Catholics or other, 

when we get information on Tibetan Buddhists we, obviously, try 

to do our due diligence and Congressmen and Senators to ensure 

that the information is accurate. 

But to single out the Falun Gong and the others who are victims 

of this in the way—in such a dismissive way, I mean, it is beyond 

insulting. I wonder what you think of that dismissal of your work. 

Mr. MATAS. Well, I am a litigation lawyer so I am used to people 

disagreeing with me. In fact, that is my daily fare. So and but, certainly, this is not a work of my imagination. 

We, as I said, had in this report 2,400 footnotes. Everything we 

have done anybody can see. Every piece of evidence that we have 

looked at anybody else can look at. Anybody else who wants to look 

at it and has done the independent research has come to the same 

conclusion we had. In terms of political interest, I have none. 

49

I am not—I did want to comment about what Representative 

Rohrabacher said earlier, which—I mean, obviously, I agree with 

everything you said but I did want to point out that this isn’t a 

China problem. It is a communism problem. 

This is the way communist—because I have been involved in 

human rights a lot of places around the world and I see this pattern behavior with the Soviet Union, with North Korea and so on. 

And, of course, the victims here are almost entirely if not entirely 

Chinese. 

I mean, we, who are standing for the victims, are doing more—

we are more pro-China, more standing up for China than the Communist Party of China is and——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I am really happy that you brought that up 

because I, obviously, have taken some very tough stands against 

the Chinese Government and I just—our greatest ally in the fight 

to create a better world is—are the people of China. 

And this is all—in fact, the motive here between Chris and myself, we are motivated by—we want to help the people of China. So 

thank you for making that distinction. We don’t want anybody to 

think otherwise. 

By the way, but about communism—you know, I have studied 

communism from the time I was a kid. I mean, I actually read 

Marx and Lenin and all these things. This is certainly not a Marxist government there. I mean, when you have—this is more like a 

fascist—a Leninist fascism. 

But it is not—it is no longer the idea that they are going to create this new man, as Marx was suggesting, by ridding us of this 

profit motive and property rights to own things. But it is fascism 

of some kind. 

Mr. MATAS. Well, and——

Mr. ROHRABACHER. But your point stands true. We are not—we 

are against these Chinese dictatorships and the Chinese people 

they are our greatest ally in making a more peaceful world. 

Mr. MATAS. And my primary focus as a human rights advocate 

has been the victims, not the perpetrators. Those have to be our 

primary concern. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Right. Right. 

Mr. MATAS. You know, if Jeremy Chapman wants to insult me, 

I am not going to insult him back. I would just say look at our 

work. You don’t have to—I don’t care what people think of me. Just 

look at the stuff we have done. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me ask you if I could, Dr. Delmonico, then Mr. 

Gutmann, if you wanted to comment as well. 

You were chairman of the TTS, what, between 2012 to 2014? 

Dr. DELMONICO. To the present. 

Mr. SMITH. To the present? Okay. Has TTS ever requested evidence that sourcing organs for transplant from prisoners came from 

military hospitals and whether or not it has ceased? 

Has that inquiry been made? Was it made under your watch? 

Has it been made since? 

Dr. DELMONICO. I have gone to China and asked for a transparency of practice that is consistent with the World Health Organization principles. 

50

That means that every transplant, every donor should be recorded. That’s what our—that is what our policy is. So I have 

looked at the Minister of Health——

Mr. SMITH. I know, but did you ask the military——

Dr. DELMONICO. I have looked at the Minister of Health just like 

we are looking at each other right now, sir, and I have said to the 

Minister, we must have a transparency of practice that says recording of every single transplant with every donor to know——

Mr. SMITH. Did you get it? 

Dr. DELMONICO. What we got was—what we got was in response 

that was unacceptable and upon that unacceptability of knowing 

that the practice was still continuing I wrote an open letter with 

Jeremy Chapman and other members of the international community, which I can submit to you, and it has been, it should be before 

you—an open letter to President Xi Jinping to stop the corrupt 

practice because just as you we were not at all satisfied with the 

response that we got and we said in that letter that until there was 

some move of transparency which now is under the COTR system—there is a China Organ Transplant Registry system that is 

now in place—there will be no presentation of papers or in the 

medical literature of the China experience, and that was our position statement. 

Mr. SMITH. But there was no delineation or anything by way of 

response that was going on in the military. Here’s another reason 

why I am stressing the military. 

Xi Jinping and his crackdown on religion and this crackdown on 

NGOs—on religion NGOs now have to report to public security and 

not to what was a Communist Party apparatchik group before that. 

So he has militarized it even further, and since that is an area 

where we have an absolute dearth of information—you don’t know 

it, I don’t know it, we don’t know what’s going on there—I think—

does he even suggest that there might be zero or——

Dr. DELMONICO. That doesn’t mean that I condone it. 

Mr. SMITH. I know, but I think we have to insist on getting that 

and wonder why we are not getting the data. What are they hiding 

in the military hospitals? 

Dr. DELMONICO. Agreed. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. Let me ask one final question, if I could, and 

this is, again, to just make sure this is absolutely on the record, 

are there any financial incentives or business dealings between individuals in the TTS leadership and mainland China’s medical 

companies or any other mainland entities that could possibly create 

the appearance of a conflict of interest? 

Dr. DELMONICO. I can only answer—my travel to China was supported—my travel to support—to go to China was paid for by the 

China Foundation. 

Mr. SMITH. Is that a government foundation or not? 

Dr. DELMONICO. It comes from—I am telling you that the foundation paid for my travel. That’s who paid for the travel. 

Mr. SMITH. But is that an entity of the Chinese Government? 

Dr. DELMONICO. I am not aware that that is an entity of the Chinese Government. As I told you earlier, Mr. Smith, my understanding is that this foundation has been established by a beneVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:00 Jul 20, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\_AGH\062316\20533 SHIRL
51

factor who is a hotel magnate and that is how the foundation has 

been established. 

And the objective is to develop infrastructure for organ procurement organizations within the country that would comply with 

WHO principles. That’s what we are up to and that is the truth 

of it. 

Mr. SMITH. Would anybody else like to go? And thank you, Dr. 

Delmonico. 

Mr. MATAS. Well, I don’t want to comment on his—he is answering for himself. But I want to comment on the fact that he is only 

answering for himself because——

Dr. DELMONICO. Well, it is not for me to answer for everybody 

else. 

Mr. MATAS. Fair enough. 

Mr. SMITH. When you were present. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Well, during my—no, there was none. So if 

that—thank you for that question of clarification. There was none. 

Mr. SMITH. We have asked that question in a letter that was 

dated on April 7th to Dr. O’Connell and we are awaiting that answer. Thank you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, I think this has been a good hearing 

and, again, let me first of all congratulate—you knew, Dr. Delmonico, you knew there would be—this would be—you would be in 

the hot seat and——

Dr. DELMONICO. I don’t mind that. We are working hard to make 

some change. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I know. I know you don’t and that is why I 

am thanking you for coming today. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Came here on my own—at my own cost. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes. I have—again, I have had to withstand—I honestly believe that——

Dr. DELMONICO. China is not paying for me to be here today. 

Thank you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Yes. I actually believe that we need to have 

better relations with Russia and I was—I have always been a big 

enemy of the Soviet Union from the time I was a kid and I at times 

stand alone like you do and the secret is, however, we have to be 

scrupulously honest with each other and we have to trust each other’s points of view. 

But we need to express things and specifics and make sure that 

they make sense and that we as decision makers are getting a 

truthful view and an accurate view. 

I don’t think that we have had the reform in China that we were 

promised. 

Dr. DELMONICO. I am not alone, though, Mr. Chairman. I am 

here with the World Health Organization as well. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Sure. Well, all I can——

Dr. DELMONICO. That is not alone. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, you know, all I can tell you is that 

when you talk about certain people in the establishment who want 

this and that I would just have to say that, for example, the people 

would like to say there is a difference between corrupt practices 

and official corrupt practices. 

52

And in fact in places like China they are just meshed together 

because you have got an establishment. And again, it is not communism because these are millionaires. 

These guys who are—the supposed communist bosses are millionaires and own hotels and things and they get involved in that 

way. They have their own little—they have their establishment. 

Well, with that said, this is—what is important is that we have 

sent a message out that this issue, first of all, we have sent a lot 

of messages about China but in particular we have sent a message 

out that the issue of taking organs from a person who does not 

want to be a donor of an organ, especially if that person is a prisoner, especially if that person is a prisoner of conscience like the 

Falun Gong, that we are aware that that is happening in China 

today and that we are—we will not tolerate it and it is on our 

radar scope. That is what our message is today. Hopefully, that 

message will get in Beijing but also to other countries——

Dr. DELMONICO. India. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER [continuing]. Where these things are happening. 

Dr. DELMONICO. Mr. Smith, I hope you can include that in the 

TIP report. I hope that category can be—that is something I would 

ask you directly. 

Mr. SMITH. If that legislation passes the Senate, it will. 

Dr. DELMONICO. That is a reassuring comment. Thank you. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. All right. So with that, thank you, and Chris, 

I am going to give you the last——

Mr. SMITH. Oh, I think you have said it. 

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. There it is. Thank you all very much. 

This hearing is adjourned. 

(Applause) 

[Whereupon, at 3:46 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

(53)

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

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NOTE: Material submitted for the hearing record by the witness Charles Lee, M.D., 

director of public awareness, World Organization to Investigate the Persecution

of Falun Gong, is not reprinted here but is available on the Internet at:

http://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=105116

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