The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) practice of forced organ harvesting has been called one of the most horrifying and inhumane acts in the modern world. Some experts and lawmakers now argue that the time has come for the United States to use this crime as a powerful tool against China’s broader campaign of “unrestricted warfare.” They say this is a moral issue that cannot be ignored and a strategic weapon that can be used to expose the brutal reality of the CCP’s rule.

A Crime Too Horrible to Defend

The forced organ harvesting in China involves killing prisoners of conscience so their organs can be sold for transplants. According to an independent tribunal in London, this has been happening on a large scale for many years. “The darkest crime they’re doing right now is organ harvesting,” said Dr. Sean Lin, a former U.S. Army microbiologist who is also a contributor to The Epoch Times. “Maybe there are even darker crimes, more vicious, darker than organ harvesting. We don’t know. And so the CCP is very afraid of this being further exposed, further recognized by the international community.”

The tribunal concluded that the organs for China’s booming transplant industry have come mainly from imprisoned practitioners of Falun Gong, a peaceful spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions that the Chinese government has called a threat. Cheng Pei Ming, who practiced Falun Gong, shared his own story of being a victim of forced organ harvesting. In 2004, while he was imprisoned for his faith, Cheng was taken to a hospital, sedated against his will, and woke up shackled to a bed with a long bloody incision on his chest. Later, when he finally made it to the United States in 2020, medical tests confirmed that part of his liver and left lung had been removed without his consent.

Cheng’s story is rare because almost all prisoners who are used for forced organ harvesting do not survive. “This is the first case we have found of a survivor,” said Professor Sen Nieh, who spent years helping Cheng escape to the United States. “Nobody knows what we meant by a survivor of forced organ harvesting because 99.9 percent die after being organ harvested.”

Mobile Death Vans: A Grim Symbol of State Power

The forced organ harvesting system is made even more terrifying by China’s use of mobile death vans. These vehicles, which look like regular buses, are equipped inside to perform lethal injections and remove organs immediately. “Imagine a bus roaming around New York or Miami that picks people up and executes them on the spot—and then drops them off for organ harvesting,” the report noted. There is no due process, no trial, and no lawyer—just death.

These vans began to be used in the late 1990s. Chinese officials claimed that they made executions more “humane” because they are cheaper and supposedly less traumatic than traditional methods. But human rights groups have pointed out that the vans are perfect for quickly harvesting organs in secret. The exact number of people executed in these mobile chambers is unknown, but rights groups estimate that China executes thousands of people every year, far more than any other country.

The U.S. Response and New Bills

For many years, Western governments did not take the reports of forced organ harvesting seriously. “They were still wishfully thinking that if we bring economic freedom to China, then eventually China will change its political system,” said Nan Su, a senior editor with The Epoch Times. But several recent events have changed that view. The COVID-19 pandemic, China’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s independence, and Beijing’s support for Russia in Ukraine have all made it clear that the CCP does not play by the same rules as other nations.

In response, the U.S. Congress has begun to take real action. In May 2025, the House passed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act, which would punish anyone involved in this crime with fines up to $250,000 and prison sentences up to 20 years. It would also block Chinese officials involved in forced organ harvesting from entering the U.S. and freeze their assets. Senator Marco Rubio pledged to support the bill in the Senate. “We would obviously be helpful in any way we can in helping you pass that in the Senate,” Rubio told Rep. Chris Smith, one of the bill’s sponsors.

Rep. Smith compared forced organ harvesting to Nazi medical experiments. “The act of killing for organs is right out of Nazi Germany and Joseph Mengele,” he said. “It’s gone on far too long, and without accountability, it will continue to get worse.”

The House also passed the Falun Gong Protection Act, which would use U.S. sanctions to protect Falun Gong practitioners from this deadly persecution. Texas became the first state to ban health insurance coverage for transplants that use organs from China, and Tennessee passed a law in 2025 that does the same, also adding restrictions on using Chinese genetic sequencing companies.

Critics of China’s Practice Speak Out

Human rights groups, including the United Nations, have condemned China’s forced organ harvesting as one of the worst abuses of human dignity in the world. In 2021, UN experts said they were “deeply concerned by reports of discriminatory treatment of the prisoners or detainees based on their ethnicity and religion or belief.” These prisoners often include Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Falun Gong practitioners.

David Matas, an international human rights lawyer and co-founder of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China, said, “This particular issue required intensive research, as there are no surviving victims, no bodies to autopsy, and no easily accessible crime scenes or documents.” He said that Cheng’s case is so important because it provides “a speaking victim that we’ve never seen before with that type of abuse.”

The CCP’s Desperate Response

The CCP knows that forced organ harvesting cannot be defended in any moral system. “Even if the CCP invaded Taiwan or started a war with the Philippines, somebody can still defend China, find excuses for China,” said Heng He, an expert on Chinese politics. “But for organ harvesting, nobody can.” That is why, instead of trying to defend what they are doing, the CCP has tried to discredit Falun Gong itself. According to The Epoch Times, Chinese leader Xi Jinping launched a new campaign in 2022 to smear Falun Gong’s reputation overseas and spread false stories about them in Western media and social media. “They want to take down Falun Gong’s reputation in the United States so the U.S. government would hesitate to collaborate with the Falun Gong group to expose CCP crimes,” said Lin.

A Test of Will for the United States

The question now is whether the U.S. government has the will to fully expose and condemn this practice. “The issue is whether the U.S. government has a strong will to do it, to expose it, to take action,” said Lin. “The CCP now realizes that they are at a critical junction because the current Trump administration has one of the strongest teams, you can say the most hawkish team against the CCP.”

For experts and survivors like Cheng Pei Ming, this is a matter of human rights and morality. “I am one of the lucky ones—I survived,” Cheng said. “But there are countless others who did not. Their voices were silenced, but I will continue to speak for them. The world needs to know what is happening in China. This evil cannot be allowed to continue.”

Is it time to bring this up?