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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 4, 2026

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This article from 2020 claims that China conducts in excess of 60,000 organ transplants a year, including for vital organs like hearts. Given that this is vastly in excess of the number of people on the voluntary transplant list, and the number of people killed in traffic accidents or executed in conventional prisons isn't sufficient to meet demand, it logically follows that China must be killing, at the minimum, thousands of Uyghurs every year in order to harvest their organs.

Taking Falun Gong complaints seriously makes me immediately distrustful of any numbers the article wants to throw out. Falun Gong claims that they are being harvested by extra dimensional aliens who have taken over and corrupted society in order to use human bodies (which are the best bodies in all the dimensions apparently) and they are especially targeted because their bodies are extra perfect. It is impossible to trust their numbers and claims about organ harvesting.

And yes that is seriously what they believe https://time.com/archive/6954898/interview-with-li-hongzhi-2/

TIME: Where do they come from?

Li: The aliens come from other planets. The names that I use for these planets are different . Some are from dimensions that human beings have not yet discovered. The key is how they have corrupted mankind. Everyone knows that from the beginning until now, there has never been a development of culture like today. Although it has been several thousand years, it has never been like now.

TIME: But what is the alien purpose?

Li: The human body is the most perfect in the universe. It is the most perfect form. The aliens want the human body.

If someone is saying Falun Gong complaints around organ harvesting are serious and truthful, there is no reason to believe they have a good epistemic hygiene and solid sourcing with their claims about Ughyurs.

Especially when it's not backed up by any other mainstream claimers of genocide! That's the important thing here, the only claim of mass organ harvesting of Uyghurs is also from a dude stupid enough to fall for "the extra dimension aliens are harvesting our organs". Maybe he's just stupid.

Does the data about the number of organ transplants per year come from Falun Gong?

Why should I trust the numbers from a guy who thinks believing in extradimensional shape shifting aliens trying to take organs from people who actively claim to do telekinesis and water walking is credible?

Like he literally says calling them a cult is "mainland propaganda"

The temptation has been to swallow the mainland propaganda, dismissing the group as a cult.

But what else can you describe their wacky religious practices as?

And yet despite this, even the article still acknowledges that actual mainstream organizations do not believe in the organ harvesting claims.

One reason could be that the international community has already made up its mind about this issue. The Transplantation Society and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have both stated that criticism of the Chinese human transplant system is unwarranted,22 and as the Tribunal’s Judgement admits, many separate governments and international organisations have also expressed their doubts concerning the allegations.

...

The doubts of the international community may not result solely from a distaste for the Falun Gong. The British government has stated on several occasions that the evidence is insufficient to prove that forced organ harvesting has taken place

So even in this article where we are supposed to take the shape shifting aliens who suppress our natural superpowers that can be unlocked through joining the totally not cult of Falun Gong as a normal thing only discredited by mainland propagandists, it still acknowledges that these claims of organ harvesting are not supported in the mainstream.

It may be that they die in custody without being actively executed, though I agree that there's a certain level of "herding people like cattle and torturing them to such an extent that they die in droves" that becomes indistinguishable from mass murder whether or not gas chambers and firing squads are involved.

The article also alleges that people have been told, in effect, "go to this hospital on this date and there will be a heart waiting for you", which is the kind of specificity that implies people are being executed.