Transplant Facilities Greatly Expanded in Xinjiang—For More Organ Harvesting?

By 2030, Xinjiang will build six more specialized hospitals. Why, given that the region has a very low organ donation rate?

By Lin Lanfen

July 4, 2025

A hospital in Urumqi. Credits.

On July 3, the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC) raised alarms about a worrying trend: the potential increase in forced organ harvesting from Uyghurs. This concern follows a recent announcement by health officials in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region about plans to greatly expand their organ transplant facilities.

The official announcement details a new plan to build six more organ transplant hospitals in Xinjiang by the year 2030. Critics are worried that this expansion is excessive and lacks the necessary transparency, especially given China’s troubling history of forced organ harvesting.

With this new plan, the number of transplant centers in Xinjiang will more than triple, bringing the total to nine. This expansion suggests an alarming push in China’s forced organ harvesting practices. The new hospitals will offer different types of organ transplants, including heart, lung, liver, kidney, and pancreas/small intestine transplants. By the end of the decade, seven of these centers are expected to perform heart transplants, and five will handle lung transplants.

This development has drawn significant attention from the ETAC observers, who are concerned about the ongoing abuses happening in China, including the mass detention of people, collection of biometrics, and forced organ harvesting from individuals imprisoned for their beliefs. Since 2006, practitioners of Falun Gong have been the primary victims, but now the Uyghur community seems to be facing similar threats.

“This massive expansion in Xinjiang—a region already under scrutiny for systematic repression—raises deeply troubling questions about the source of the organs,” stated Wendy Rogers, Chair of the International Advisory Board of ETAC. “There is simply no justification for such growth in transplant capacity given the region’s official organ donation rate, which is far below the national average.”

In Xinjiang, the official rate of organ donation is very low, at just 0.69 donations per million people. This is significantly lower than the national average in China, which is 4.6 donations per million. Despite this, Xinjiang is planning to expand its capacity for organ transplants, even more than some other provinces that have larger populations and economies, like Gansu, Jilin, Shanxi, and Guizhou.

In an environment marked by intense surveillance, forced labor, and the large-scale detention of ethnic minorities, ETAC believes that true voluntary organ donation is virtually impossible. Reports from Uyghur detainees indicate that while in custody, they have undergone forced blood tests, ultrasounds, and other medical scans focused on their organs. These procedures could be linked to testing for organ compatibility, which adds to the alarming concerns about how organ donations might be approached in such a context.

“The concept of informed, voluntary consent is meaningless in Xinjiang’s carceral environment,” stated David Matas, an international human rights lawyer and investigator of forced organ harvesting in China. “Given the systemic repression, any claim that donations are voluntary should be treated with the utmost skepticism.”

David Matas. Credits.

Reports from independent investigations have revealed serious issues related to organ harvesting practices in China. In 2020, the China Tribunal confirmed that the Chinese government had been involved in the forced removal of organs from prisoners of conscience, primarily targeting groups like Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs. This practice was deemed a crime against humanity. It is estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 organ transplants are performed each year, which is significantly higher than what the government has officially reported.

On May 5, 2022, the European Parliament passed a resolution, which “calls for the EU and its Member States to raise the issue of organ harvesting in China at every Human Rights Dialogue; insists that the EU and its Member States publicly condemn organ transplant abuses in China; calls on the Member States to take the necessary actions in order to prevent transplant tourism to China by their citizens and to raise awareness of this issue among their citizens travelling to China.”

The China Tribunal in session.

Despite the Chinese government claiming in 2015 that it had stopped using organs from executed prisoners, no laws were put in place to enforce this change, and there is still no clear ban on taking organs from prisoners of conscience.

ETAC legal and medical experts are calling on governments and human rights organizations to press China for clarification and to demand transparency about the plans for expanding organ transplants in Xinjiang.

Source: bitterwinter.org