‘Willing to pay the price’: Whistleblower exposes China’s grisly body-snatching scandal

Outrage is growing after sick details of the harvesting of human body parts – without the deceased’s consent – emerged out of China.

A Beijing lawyer who blew the whistle on a grisly body-snatching scheme to supply a nationwide human transplant trade has been removed from the law firm he founded.

Yi Shenghua unleashed social media outrage last week after he revealed details of the co-ordinated harvesting of human body parts – without the deceased’s consent or their family’s knowledge – to a shocked Chinese public.

“After the remains are sent to the funeral homes, the ashes the relatives receive may not be those of their relatives, or their remains may be incomplete,” Yi reported, adding the discovery had been made by a member of the legal firm he founded and confirmed by others across the country.

But his dramatic expose’ has displeased the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“I can still see my Weibo post but nobody else can,” Yi said in a post on August 9.

“It seems that moves are afoot from higher up.”

The topic then quickly disappeared from social media “trend” reports, official media reports of the allegations were deleted and attempts to further discuss the scandal suppressed.

Yi said he had been summoned before the Beijing Bureau of Judicial Affairs, a regulatory body overseeing the conduct of lawyers and other legal practitioners.

A picture of Beijing law firm owner Yi Shenghua posted to his social media account. Source: RFA/Weibo

He said he had been ordered to not go public with the revelations.

“I am willing to pay the price to expose this enraging truth,” Yi posted a short time after.

That price now appears to have been high.

All of his Chinese-based Weibo social media posts have disappeared.

He has been removed as director and founder of his private company, the Beijing Yongzhe Law Firm.

And his whereabouts are unknown.

Shaping the message

China’s state-controlled media at first leapt upon the scandal.

After all, Chairman Xi Jinping has made a big deal of tackling corruption – especially when it’s found among his political opponents.

Radio Free Asia reports a now-deleted article from the Communist Party-controlled news service The Paper as stating investigators in Shanxi Province had delivered their findings into the body-parts network to the State Prosecutor back in May.

Shanxi Aorui Biomaterials had been accused of the “theft of, insult to, or intentional destruction of human remains”. This involved “illegally purchasing human remains and body parts from Sichuan, Guangxi, Shandong and other places for processing into bone grafts worth 380 million yuan ($A80 million) between January 2015 and July 2023,” the censored The Paper report said.

It added police had seized “more than 18 tonnes of human bones and more than 34,000 articles of finished product from the company”.

It detailed that just one suspect, identified only by the surname Su, had co-ordinated the theft of more than 4000 body parts from four funeral homes in Yunnan, Chongqing, Guizhou and Sichuan between 2017 and 2019.

Party games … Yi has been removed as the head of the company he founded and replaced by a junior partner. Source: RFA/Beijing Yongzhe Law Firm

The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, under Communist Party control after Beijing abandoned its staged handover process in 2020, also took up the story.

Crematorium staff had “roughly dismembered the bodies so they could be transported to Su’s company for further processing,” it states in an undeleted account.

The snowballing revelations, however, have proved unacceptable to the CCP.

Reports have been removed from mainland state-controlled news services, and the Party’s powerful social media censorship mechanisms activated.

Any attempt to search keywords and hashtags related to the scandal now triggers the following message: “Sorry, but content related to this topic cannot be displayed”.

And, since Wednesday, state-controlled media has taken up a somewhat modified slant on the story.

The scandal, the English language China Daily insists, is all about funeral home overcharging.

The party line

The Beijing Bureau of Judicial Affairs issued a statement this week saying Yi had “stepped down” from his position as director and founder of the Beijing Yongzhe Law Firm.

A short time later, his picture and profile were removed from his company’s website.

But the fingerprints of his revelations remain in internet archive services and screenshots worldwide.

Yi’s specific allegation was that the bodies were being harvested for bones suited to dental transplant procedures.

But state-controlled media now only admits investigations have “uncovered widespread corruption in its funeral services industry”.

This includes illegal fees, excessive charges and the establishment of illegal cemeteries.

“The website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervision Commission has repeatedly emphasised the importance of maintaining a strong stance against ‘petty corruption and small-scale malfeasance’ this year,” the China Daily report states.

Yi Shenghua reports he had attracted the attention of the Beijing Bureau of Judicial Affairs. (Screenshot from Weibo/provided by reporter Huang Chunmei)

“Several regions have also launched targeted operations to combat corruption in the funeral industry.”

It quotes law professor Peng Xinlin as saying the revelation of “petty corruption” in the funeral industry was just part of a broader anti-corruption drive.

“While county-level funeral homes and officials in funeral management may not have significant authority, corruption in this sector undermines the credibility of the Party and government, disrupts public order and erodes social norms,” Peng is quoted as saying.

The party-controlled Global Times news service editorialised that the funeral public services sector should not be “profit-oriented”.

“Zhu Lijia, a professor of public management at the Chinese Academy of Governance, told the Global Times on Monday that the misconduct of these ‘flies’, or corrupt low-ranking officials, not only directly affects people’s lives but also undermines Chinese tradition,” the report states.

“Chinese people pay great respect to the deceased, therefore the corruption in the funeral industry harms public interests and the social custom,” Zhu said.

‘Chinese people pay great respect to the deceased, therefore the corruption in the funeral industry harms public interests and the social custom’. Picture: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

It’s not the first time the Communist Party has been linked to human organ harvesting.

A UN tribunal in 2021 said it was “extremely alarmed” at evidence suggesting “organ harvesting” among minority group prisoners, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians.

It called on Beijing to “allow independent monitoring by international human rights mechanisms”.

The Chinese government has categorically denied the allegations.

In March this year, US Congressional-Executive Commission on China chair Chris Smith stated, “forced organ harvesting on an industrial scale in China is an atrocity unmatched in its wickedness. The numbers of those executed for their organs – some even before they are brain dead – is staggering … state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting in China amounts to crimes against humanity”.

But other Commission members urged caution, stating Beijing’s reticence to open up its human transplant system to scrutiny did not constitute an admission of guilt.

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel