House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the conversation adds new urgency for the United States to address forced organ harvesting.
As China and Russia’s leaders walked shoulder to shoulder on Sept. 3, a hot mic captured them discussing increasing longevity through organ transplants, possibly living to be 150 years old.
The conversation, livestreamed through Chinese state media to billions online and on television, made international headlines as China watchers scrutinized the implications, with many pointing to longstanding concerns about forced organ harvesting.
The moment came as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ascended the Tiananmen rostrum for a massive World War II military parade.
“Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days at 70 you are still a child,” Xi said through a translator in Russian.
“As biotechnology advances, human organs can be continuously transplanted, allowing us to become younger and younger, perhaps even achieve immortality,” Putin replied through his interpreter in Mandarin, gesturing with his fingers as he spoke.
The feed then cuts to a wide shot of Tiananmen Square.
“Predictions are that in this century, there’s a chance of living to 150,” Xi said off camera just before the audio faded.
Both Xi and Putin are 72 years old.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) shook his head when he heard about the exchange Wednesday morning.
“I will tell you that we’ve heard some horrific stories of these organ transplants and all of this in China, that they take it from unwilling donors, OK, to put it mildly,” he told NTD, The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet, in a press briefing.
“The fact that they were caught in a hot mic … is very telling.”
“It tells you where their worldview is, in contrast to ours.”
Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute and a seven-term commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, echoed Johnson’s view.
“This unguarded conversation between these two tyrants lends credence to our concerns that they are creating a real-life science fiction dystopia by forced organ harvesting from those they see as political enemies,” she told The Epoch Times.
A human rights group in 2022 found hundreds of Chinese doctors to have trained at U.S. institutions. Shea urges Congress to take action and end such activities immediately.
“That Xi and Putin are scheming to live forever through organ transplantation only adds to the urgency,” she said.
By Eva Fu
