Medical experts are calling for transparency into the Chinese regime’s organ transplant system.
A popular Taiwanese singer’s revelation of recently receiving a heart-liver transplant in China raised alarms, with critics viewing the celebrity endorsement as part of the regime’s propaganda effort to detract from its organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience.
Singer and songwriter Lü Jianzhong, better known by his stage name “Tank,” who has struggled for most of his life with an inherited heart defect, emerged five months after his surgery at an April 7 press conference praising doctors from mainland China for what he called a “perfectly smooth operation.” He released a lengthy post the same day on Chinese social media Weibo to update his fans, thanking mainland China—his “motherland”—for being the “most staunch backing” during his health crisis.
Images and clips of the Taiwanese singer expressing gratitude with a throng of Chinese doctors around him quickly circulated on the internet, making him the latest public figure to endorse communist China’s organ transplant system.
China’s state media and local government websites amplified the news; many carried headlines touting the case as an “Asia first,” noting the complexity of the surgery compounded by the fragility of Lü’s condition.
The glowing accounts by China’s state media marked a sharp contrast from the reactions in Lü’s birthplace of Taiwan, where many are questioning the motives behind the enthusiasm.
Many Taiwanese, including medical doctors, wrote on social media about the case, with some citing the award-winning documentary “State Organs,” which highlights the crimes of state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience in mainland China. The film is currently screening in theaters across Taiwan.
“The way mainland China gets human organs is problematic; this is well known internationally,” Huang Shi-wei, vice chairman of the medical ethics nonprofit Taiwan Association for International Care of Organ Transplants, told The Epoch Times.
It is thus not surprising that the Chinese regime would promote an operation involving a celebrity to lend credibility to its transplant industry, he said.
“As long as you go to China for organ transplantation, you’d help the Chinese Communist Party promote it, you’d be thankful and help the Party prove it’s good,” he said.
By Eva Fu
