Child Organ Donation Campaign Spurs Concern Among Parents in China

Forced organ harvesting in China has been a subject of international condemnation for years.

Playing cards showing details of missing children are displayed in Beijing on March 31, 2007. China Photos/Getty Images

An organ donation campaign, recently implemented by authorities in the Chinese city of Xi’an has sparked public outcry.

The campaign—featuring the slogan “Let Life Go On” and a young boy holding a piece of paper with a cartoon illustration of lungs—is spearheaded by Shaanxi Province’s Red Cross Society and the Organ Donation Administration Center.

While the campaign is framed as a voluntary donation campaign, in a country rife with organ transplant abuse, critics say the use of a child symbol reflects deeper ideological concerns.

CCP Propaganda Targeting Minors

Zhang Qing, an independent economic and political commentator and a contributor to the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times, analyzed posts on Chinese social media from angry netizens, particularly parents who accused the CCP of covertly indoctrinating children and pushing the idea of organ donation among youths.

Zhang also shared the story of one mother in Xi'an, whom he described as being taken aback when her child, a third-grade student, expressed a desire to donate his eyes. He said she later found out that the school had introduced the concept of organ donation without obtaining parental consent.

This is not an isolated case.

Zhang noted that as early as 2023, Chinese state media had published propaganda pieces promoting organ donations in public schools, and parents of high schoolers reported that their children were being exposed to such content.

One English textbook featured a student proudly stating that turning 18 allowed him to sign an organ donation agreement without requiring his parents’ permission.

In Zhejiang Province, a social science textbook describes the act of registering for organ donation as a “rite of passage” for high school seniors, encouraging them to donate their organs.

In communist China, all school curricula must be approved by the state, and the education system is known for centering its instructions on loyalty to the CCP and asking students to pledge allegiance to it.

Elementary school students attend a class on the first day of the new semester in Wuhan, central Hubei Province, China, on Sept. 1, 2020. STR/AFP via Getty Images

Zhang said that some elementary school textbooks feature what he described as emotionally charged stories about children who donated their organs, often presenting them as heroes.

On the Chinese internet, users circulated a third-grade reading comprehension workbook asking students to list the organs donated by a deceased 6-year-old boy.

Other examples include fourth-grade reading materials with stories of children donating their corneas, presenting them as moral lessons.

The CCP issued a national directive in 2020 to promote organ donation in colleges, prompting a wave of campus campaigns, according to Zhang. College students began taking donor pledges en masse, and even primary school students were roped into promotional events, he said.

For example, in 2023, Putian University hosted a concert and presentation on voluntary organ donation.

The university could not be reached for comment.

One viral video posted initially on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, shows a group of young Chinese students reciting an oath pledging to serve the cause of organ donation.

The normalization of the organ donation campaign in the classroom has painted the act as virtuous and patriotic.

On the backdrop of concerns over the new organ donation campaigns are years of credible reports highlighting abuses in China’s organ transplant industry.

In 2019, an independent people’s tribunal has unanimously concluded that prisoners of conscience have been—and continue to be—killed in China for their organs “on a significant scale,” after a year-long investigation.

“Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale,” said chair of the tribunal, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC in a judgment delivered on June 17 in London.

The panel further concluded that adherents of the spiritual practice Falun Gong have been one of the main sources of organ supply. Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline consisting of meditation exercises and moral teachings based on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, has been brutally persecuted by the Chinese regime for the past two decades.

“The Tribunal has had no evidence that the significant infrastructure associated with China’s transplantation industry has been dismantled—and absent a satisfactory explanation as to the source of readily available organs—concludes that forced organ harvesting continues till today,” he added.

The State Department has cited concerns about forced organ harvesting in its annual reports in the past.

A 2024 trafficking in persons report by the department cited a statement from a group of United Nations human rights experts, saying that “Forced organ harvesting in China appears to be targeting specific ethnic, linguistic, or religious minorities held in detention, often without being explained the reasons for arrest or given arrest warrants, at different locations.”

The experts in 2021 had said they were “deeply concerned by reports of discriminatory treatment of the prisoners or detainees based on their ethnicity and religion or belief.”

The practice of state sanctioned organ harvesting in China, has spurred calls for legislation in Congress.

On May 5, the House of Representatives passed the Falun Gong Protection Act (HR 1540) by voice vote with no objections. The bill includes provisions to impose sanctions on individuals involved in the forced harvesting of organs from Falun Gong practitioners.

Zhang Qing, Cathy He, and Eva Fu contributed to this report.