The United States has for decades had to confront the Chinese Communist Party’s human rights record and strategic ambitions. Among the most disturbing allegations is the claim that China operates a state-backed organ harvesting system targeting prisoners of conscience. Jan Jekielek argues that understanding this practice provides a window into how the Chinese Communist Party operates and why democratic governments must rethink their approach to Beijing.
Jekielek is a senior editor at The Epoch Times and host of the long-running interview program American Thought Leaders. His career spans journalism, documentary filmmaking, and human rights advocacy. He has interviewed hundreds of policymakers, scholars, and dissidents about major global issues. His new book, Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary, examines the evidence behind allegations of forced organ harvesting and what it suggests about the Chinese political system.
Jekielek says his path toward investigating China began with a personal experience that changed his life. During graduate studies in evolutionary biology, he became seriously ill with Guillain-Barré syndrome. After discovering the Falun Gong meditation practice, he says his health improved dramatically. Soon afterward, he learned that practitioners in China were being persecuted by the Communist Party. “I understood at this moment… this is communism. This is what happens,” he says, recalling a conversation with a woman whose family members were imprisoned and tortured for refusing to renounce their beliefs. “I knew at that moment that my service would have to be helping these people.”
That experience launched years of work documenting abuses against religious dissidents. Jekielek says one of the most shocking allegations he encountered involved a system of organ transplantation tied to the detention of Falun Gong practitioners. Unlike traditional organ trafficking, he argues, the Chinese system depends on state power. “You need to have a state actor… you need to be able to push massive propaganda into a system… and you need to have the power to incarcerate a massive group of people,” he says.
According to Jekielek, large numbers of detainees were subjected to medical testing that had little relevance to their imprisonment but significant relevance to transplantation. “You can blood type, tissue type organs… put that into a database,” he says. When a transplant patient pays for an organ, he argues, a matching prisoner can be selected. “That person can be shipped and killed to order,” he says, explaining the title of his book.
He emphasizes that the allegations initially seemed unbelievable even to him. “The moment you really realize what’s happening… it’s kind of nuts,” he says. Human psychology often resists accepting such atrocities. Yet he believes the available evidence has accumulated over many years. Early questions centered on how China could perform large numbers of transplants without a transparent organ donation system. “The Chinese Communist Party has never answered that question credibly in any manner, shape, or form,” he says.
Jekielek also argues that international institutions and financial relationships helped obscure the issue. Governments, hospitals, and research institutions often maintained partnerships with Chinese counterparts. “The CCP is really, really good… at making people complicit with its realities,” he says, describing how economic ties can discourage scrutiny or criticism.
Demand for organs, he notes, comes from many places. Patients facing life-threatening conditions often search globally for faster transplants. “Anybody who has the cash… who becomes aware,” he says, may consider traveling abroad for the procedure. Some transplant tourists have come from Asia, Europe, and elsewhere, though exact numbers remain difficult to determine because of limited transparency.
Forced organ harvesting illustrates what Jekielek calls a defining characteristic of the Chinese Communist Party: its willingness to instrumentalize people and institutions to preserve power. “The Chinese Communist Party… will instrumentalize anything and everything,” he says. Recognizing that dynamic, he argues, changes how policymakers should view economic partnerships and geopolitical competition with Beijing.
Jekielek points to proposed legislation in the United States designed to combat forced organ harvesting and prevent American complicity. “Awareness makes a massive difference,” he says, arguing that informed citizens can push governments to act.
Jekielek says confronting the practice provides insight into the nature of the Chinese regime itself. “It becomes this perfect lens to understand how they operate,” he says.
