According to the report, this is the first time China has officially confessed that it sold organs from executed convicts to other countries for organ transplants.

In China last year there were more than 2,700 liver transplant surgeries and nearly 6,000 kidney transplant surgeries respectively. As reported, due to various reasons, less than five percent of the organs were from live humans, while over 90 percent came from corpses, and almost all of them were convicts sentenced to death.

In addition, a UK newspaper, The Guardian, reported in September of this year a Chinese cosmetic company developed a product and advertised it in the European market. The raw materials for the cosmetics were from the skin of the corpses of executed convicts.

In the past few years, the issue of selling the organs from deceased persons has drawn international attention. Laogai Research Foundation cited a report from Canjing (Finance and Economics) Magazine that said in May 2000, after a farmer named Fu was executed by firing squad, Fu's kidney was sold privately by the local court to a large hospital in Jiangxi. Upon learning this, Fu's father committed suicide, while the victim's sister sued in the court. In recent years' persecution of Falun Gong in China, many Falun Gong practitioners were tortured to death by policeman and their organs were removed. The Epoch Times reported some cases in August 2004 ( Illegal Organ Business Booms ). For example, Ren Pengwu was arrested by the Hulan County police for distributing flyers and detained in the Hulan County Second Detention Center. Before dawn on February 21, only five days after his detention, he was dead from torture. Without obtaining the family's permission, and under the guise of a " post mortem examination," the Hulan County authorities completely removed all of Ren Pengwu's organs, from his pharynx and larynx to his penis, then hastily cremated his body.