Rep. Smith on Putin–Xi Organ Transplant Revelation: ‘Cruelty Knows No Bounds’

The Chinese regime is ‘committing genocide’ to sustain its made-to-order organ transplant industry, the congressman says.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, listens during a press conference about the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act passed by the House, on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 7, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The hot mic moment of China and Russia’s top leaders musing about immortality through organ transplants speaks to more than their mutual desire to stay in power.

It touches on a sensitive topic for the regime—forced organ harvesting—the very mention of which Beijing has striven to erase even in the West.

In a country with longstanding concerns about the abuse, the off-the-cuff exchange—and the casual way organ transplants came up—was unsettling to Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), a lawmaker who monitors human rights abuses abroad.

“It shows how cruelty knows no bounds,” Smith told The Epoch Times.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, in walking up the Tiananmen Gate for a military parade on Sept. 3, had discussed becoming younger with continued organ transplants, with Xi suggesting the possibility of living to 150 years of age in this century.

The conversation signals a seeming abundance of organs for China’s top political echelon, known for extravagant privileges inaccessible to the Chinese public. How and where to source the organs seemed an afterthought.

Independent investigations from the London-based China Tribunal and others have found the killing-for-organs scheme widespread in China, often targeting prisoners of conscience such as detained practitioners of Falun Gong, a meditation practice for mental and physical wellbeing taken up by almost one in 13 Chinese during the 1990s.

That Beijing has no desire for the publicity of the conversation was clear. Chinese media have taken down videos containing the clip or covered the sound with music in replays.

A display shows Chinese leader Xi Jinping (C) walking alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin (center L) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (center R) before a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Japan and the end of World War II, in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, on Sept. 3, 2025. Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images

But Putin confirmed the talk quickly later in the day.

“The modern means of health support, medicine, even some surgeries involving organ transplantation, allow humanity to hope that the active life span will not be like today,” he told reporters, adding that “it differs from country to country.”

What came across in these remarks seems to be, “I don’t care,” said Smith.

The top-down power structure in communist China makes this possible, and the regime has proven that it is willing to go to any lengths to maintain its rule.

“My own argument has been that from Xi Jinping on down, anybody in the higher echelon, especially in the Chinese Communist Party, will look to steal somebody else’s internal organs, through coercion, through death, to extend their life. I can’t think of a more selfish and barbaric act to do that,” Smith said.

“They’re so brazen about abusing other people for their own will and for their own longevity,” and “they have secret police and the ability to jail anybody they want,” he added.

Putin, the congressman said, “may or may not be in ill health, so he'll want to have any new organ that he thinks he requires.” And it would be fine “if they do it through voluntary organ transplantation,“ which he noted is ”completely ethical.”

“There’s nothing voluntary about this.”

A Genocide

Smith first began noticing the Chinese regime taking organs from executed prisoners around 1998, before the organ trade grew into what he called “industrial size.”

The organ transplant industry has since experienced a boom, paralleling the persecution of Falun Gong that began in 1999. Hospitals there have advertised waiting times as short as days or weeks, a major draw for tourists from countries such as the United States with developed organ donation systems, where getting an organ could take much longer.

And that’s because in China, “they go and they kill somebody who matches up with your antigens and everything else, so that there’s no or less likely to be a rejection of the organ,” Smith said. “I’ve never seen anything like it, except in Nazi Germany, and I think that’s what we’re talking about here—it’s Nazi like.”

The “most perverse thing,” he said, is that the persecutors will turn to the persecuted to help extend their lives. And Falun Gong practitioners’ healthy lifestyle—meditating, not smoking or drinking, and adhering to their practice’s moral tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance—makes them an ideal target for organ procurement.

“It’s a genocide against the Falun Gong, like it’s a genocide against the Uyghurs,” he said. “There are so many horrible human rights abuses in the world today. This is right at the top.”

Smith is 72, the same age as Xi and Putin. But what appears to appeal to the two only revolts him.

“There’s no way—let me say it again—no way on Earth that I would want somebody else’s organs through coercion to extend my life if I ever needed them,” he said. “No way.”

“That is such an atrocity, I can’t get over it.”

Protesters hold a banner outside Government House prior to an official welcome ceremony for CCP Premier Li Qiang in Wellington, New Zealand on June 13, 2024. Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

While hospitalized three years ago for some ailments, Smith said, he thought about the contrast between the role of the doctors treating him and those in China.

“Everybody here is trying to make my life better and to get me back to health,” whereas in China, doctors could become an “oppressor,” “stealing your organs” under state order, he said.

For such cruelty, he said, the regime’s leader “should be at The Hague for crimes against humanity, rather than being lifted up with big parades.”

Five U.S. states have passed laws to stop health insurance coverage on organ transplants linked to China. Smith leads the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act that aims at punishing “end game abusers,” brokers, and others implicated in forced organ harvesting or organ trafficking schemes. The bipartisan bill passed 406–1 in the House in May.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Sept. 3 said that the overheard remarks have brought new urgency to addressing the Chinese regime’s organ transplant abuses and suggested putting relevant legislation “at the top of the priority list.”

Smith, likewise, called for the Senate to “act fast” and move the bill up.

“Why the delay?” he asked.