Preface
An investigator identified in reports as Liqide, who has spent more than a decade investigating drug trafficking and smuggling in Europe, once told the media that what increasingly troubles her is not drug trafficking or smuggling, but criminal gangs trading in human organs. Because supply and demand for human organs is severely imbalanced and the organ trade is extremely lucrative, some criminal gangs have discovered that smuggling human organs is more profitable than smuggling drugs. Liqide found that some international human traffickers often lure women by offering legitimate job opportunities. They arrange visas and airfare for these women, and once abroad, first force them into prostitution, then make them pregnant, and when the fetus is nearly due, forcibly induce labor and send the newborn to the organ market for auction. The women become "pregnancy machines," and the victims' final fate is often to be killed and have their body parts sold off.
According to an Italian refugee affairs official, there are several hundred such "pregnancy machines" in Italy, coming from Eastern Europe and other developing countries around the world. Police in Bari, Italy, once successfully cracked a Ukrainian human trafficking ring. An undercover officer, posing as a bidder, learned the full truth. At the auction, bidders called out prices for an unborn baby the way people bid at an antique auction. Once the sale was concluded, the baby was cut out of the mother's womb on the spot, and a woman severed the umbilical cord connecting mother and child with a kitchen knife. According to data from The New York Times, human organ trafficking spans four continents.
In recent years, China has rapidly become a major power in organ transplantation. Organ transplant advertisements from various hospitals can be seen everywhere, including military hospitals, provincial and municipal hospitals, and even county-level hospitals and private hospitals — all vigorously soliciting patients. These advertisements appear in newspapers, magazines, on television, online, and even posted in public places, attracting tens of thousands of patients each year from Asia, the Middle East, Australia, Europe, and elsewhere to come to China for organ transplant surgery. On April 30, 2006, a witness from the Shenyang Military Region medical system testified: "Among all export products related to living human bodies, China's output ranks first in the world. China has formed a massive organ trading network across the globe, and China has become the center of the international living-organ trade, accounting for more than 85% of the world's total living-organ transplants ever since 2000." These figures were part of material reported to the Central Military Commission, and several individuals were even promoted to the rank of general as a result.
At the same time, the theft and trafficking of human organs in China have grown increasingly rampant, with victims including not only women and children but also a large number of ordinary Chinese citizens — the criminal activity involved is shocking. What exactly lies behind this?
I. China's Increasingly Rampant Cases of Disappearances and Organ Theft
In early July 2006, a horrifying incident circulating online was reported to have occurred in Shiyan, Hubei Province: at a nursery near the Dongfeng Tire Factory in Shiyan, a young boy suddenly disappeared for three days. On the morning of the third day, the boy mysteriously reappeared. When he showed up at the nursery gate, the caretaker, puzzled, asked with concern where he had been these past few days. The boy himself could not say — he only pointed to his lower back and said, "It hurts here." A subsequent hospital examination found that one of the boy's kidneys had been removed.
On April 16, 2005, Chongqing Evening News reported that over roughly half a year starting in October 2004, about ten shocking cases of missing children occurred in Yongchuan, Chongqing, with rumors suggesting the children had been abducted by a "child kidnapping gang" to have their organs stolen.
According to disclosures from the Ministry of Public Security, cases of trafficking in women and children are rampant in China. In August 2006, an article on trafficking in women and children published on a "democratic party" website stated: "At present, the crime of child trafficking in our country displays the following characteristics: 1. The age range of abducted children is extremely broad, from newborn infants to children aged six or seven, even into their teens. 2. The fates of trafficked children are extremely tragic. Some have their organs stolen, and are even cruelly sent home again missing both kidneys or both eyes; some are deliberately disabled and used for begging; the best outcome, relatively speaking, is being sold to a family that wants a child. 3. Criminal methods are diverse, making prevention extremely difficult... 4. The frequency of occurrence is high. These incidents occur across the entire country, from small border towns to our own capital, Beijing. In some cities, the same type of incident has even occurred repeatedly within a short period!"
Besides women and children, homeless beggars and vagrants sleeping on the streets, and migrant workers who have come from the countryside to cities for work, can all become targets of gangs that abduct people to steal their organs. According to a June 1, 2006, report by The Beijing News, a man surnamed Liu, a schizophrenia patient living in Beijing's Heping Li neighborhood, returned home after being missing for ten months. His family discovered a surgical incision on his abdomen, and an ultrasound examination showed "the left lobe of the liver not visible," leading the family to suspect part of his liver had been removed and stolen.
Starting in the 1980s, China began sending emigrants to many countries around the world, including large numbers of people smuggled abroad and illegal immigrants worldwide. Along with this, some "snakeheads" (human smugglers) also began pushing organ trafficking onto the international stage.
On January 20, 2002, Voice of America reported on a large-scale human organ trafficking case involving Chinese immigrants that Italian officials were investigating. Investigators believed a tightly organized group was helping illegal immigrants reach Slovenia to undergo organ-removal surgery. An investigation into sixteen Chinese criminal gangs found they were smuggling human organs. More unfortunately, some of those forced to undergo organ-removal surgery vanished entirely afterward.
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II. The Question of Organ Sourcing in Organ Transplantation
Public records show that organ transplantation in China started relatively late, beginning in 1970. To understand the illegal and criminal conduct involved in human organ transplantation, it is necessary to have a fairly comprehensive understanding of the technical, legal, and practical realities involved in human organ transplantation in China.
In recent years, with the application of new immunosuppressive drugs and improvements in surgical technique, organ transplant technology has matured and become increasingly refined, leading to its gradual popularization. In organ transplantation, matching the blood type and white blood cell antigens of donor and patient is a critical issue — only matched organs can be transplanted.
Human organ transplantation involves the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys, pancreas, as well as the cornea, bone, muscle, skin, and so on — these can be taken from either a corpse or a living body. The popularization of organ transplantation today has turned the human body and its organs into expensive industrial raw materials. For example, organs from corpses such as bone, muscle (tendon), and skin can be sold to pharmaceutical companies to make artificial dermis for cosmetic use and artificial skin grafts, or sold to transplant companies for use in surgery. Corpses may be used for medical or other research, or turned into specimens for sale. Organs such as the heart, liver, and kidneys can be transplanted to directly save lives. In a small number of communist dictatorships, human brains have even been consumed by dictators (or high officials) as a tonic.
Medically speaking, organs such as skin and corneas can be entirely removed after death, then frozen for storage and transport. But internal organs such as the heart, kidneys, and liver are extremely sensitive to "warm ischemia time" — the key to a transplant's survival rate is keeping this time as short as possible. To ensure or improve the success rate, organs must be removed just at the moment of death or from a living body, and transplanted into the patient within an extremely short window (kidneys within 12 to 24 hours, livers within 12 hours, hearts within 4 to 6 hours), or the success rate of the transplant will be severely compromised.
In China's rise as a major organ transplant power, mature technology is only one factor — obtaining a large supply of matched organs is crucial. Since human organs, unlike chives, do not grow back after being cut, and especially since a donor cannot survive after key organs like the heart or liver are removed, forcibly harvesting organs from a person necessarily constitutes a criminal act. This is especially concerning given how chaotic China's organ management system is, which is why the source of organs draws such intense scrutiny.
1. International Norms for Organ Transplantation
Organ transplantation involves numerous social issues concerning ethics, human relations, human rights, and law. In 1991, the World Health Organization adopted Guiding Principles on Human Organ Transplantation, which stipulate that the human body and its parts must not be the subject of commercial transactions, including advertising for organs to be sought or offered, and payment or receipt of money for organs — all such practices are to be prohibited. It also prohibits any individual or institution involved in the organ transplant process from receiving compensation beyond an appropriate service fee.
In accordance with this international standard, countries around the world have enacted relevant laws prohibiting the buying and selling of organs. The United States has had sound regulations and effective systems governing organ transplantation for decades, such as the Organ Transplant Act, the Organ Donation Act, the Brain Death Act, and Ethical Guidelines for Organ Transplantation. In China, aside from a supplementary regulation secretly issued in 1984 concerning the use and harvesting of organs from executed prisoners — later exposed by sources overseas — China's laws on organ transplantation remain essentially blank. Because of China's cultural traditions and practical realities, this international standard currently cannot be implemented in China, for the following reasons:
(1) This international standard is built on the foundation of unpaid, voluntary donation. Voluntary donors fall into only two categories: the living and the dead. Since organs like the heart and the whole liver exist singly in each person, and a person cannot survive without them, legally they can only come from posthumous donation, harvested from the brain-dead. This requires a nationwide pool of volunteers, which China does not have. Because Chinese cultural tradition emphasizes "keeping the body whole," combined with factors such as medical costs, living-donor kidney transplants between relatives are very rarely performed. According to an October 22, 2004, report by Shanghai's Liberation Daily: "At present, transplants between relatives account for only 0.4% of transplant surgeries in our country, a considerable gap compared with the 50% figure in developed countries such as the United States." Statistics indicate that living-donor kidney transplants between relatives account for roughly 1.5% of transplants.
Unpaid organ donations between non-relatives in China are fewer still. Japan and South Korea, both deeply influenced by Chinese culture, show the same pattern. Japan's organ transplant center conducted an organ donation drive among 70 million Japanese several years ago, and only seven brain-dead individuals were willing to donate organs. A July 22, 2006, report in Southern Metropolis Daily confirmed this: as of that date, China had completed only 21 cases of organ donation, yielding a total of 88 donated organs, with the Guangdong region alone accounting for 50% of donors.
In the United States, by contrast, there is a huge pool of volunteer organ donors. Nearly every American adult holds a driver's license, and when applying for one, an applicant is asked to indicate whether they would be willing to donate their organs in the event of sudden death in a traffic accident, and which organs they would be willing to donate; the answer is then entered into a nationwide database. Reports indicate that 30% of Americans — about 84 million people — have already signed documents agreeing to donate their organs after death.
(2) In technical terms, matching the blood type and white blood cell antigens of the donor and patient is a critical issue. Because organs like the heart, liver, and kidneys need to be transplanted within a short window of time, a pre-established nationwide database of blood samples is required. China has no such nationwide database covering its entire population.
The United States has highly advanced and widely accessible medical technology, keeping blood sample records and related data for nearly every individual, all stored in databases that can be retrieved at any time. In practice, America's voluntary organ donations rely primarily on people who die in accidental traffic accidents. So whenever a traffic accident occurs in the US, police first check whether anyone has died; once death is confirmed, they immediately check the deceased's driver's license, and if the deceased is found to be a registered organ donor, the police's very first call is to the hospital's helicopter team. Medical staff on the helicopter will remove the deceased's organs as quickly as possible and rush them to a hospital where a dying patient awaits an organ donation. This requires rapid coordination nationwide between police and hospitals, along with advanced, high-speed transportation and a nationwide corps of highly skilled medical personnel — none of which China has.
Although hundreds of thousands of people die each year in China from traffic accidents and other accidental deaths, such deaths are, by nature, unpredictable in advance. Internal organs like the heart, liver, and kidneys must be removed from a body and transplanted into a patient as quickly as possible. But because China's relevant infrastructure and management systems cannot keep pace, its operational timeliness falls far short of that in the United States. There are indeed no shortage of people who die instantly in traffic accidents nationwide, but after death, what is first needed is for police to arrive on the scene immediately; second, a nearby medical unit needs a helicopter on 24-hour standby and highly skilled surgeons; and third, a nationwide patient database is needed, because once fresh organs are obtained, the helicopter must know its destination the moment it takes off — that is, which nearby hospital has a patient waiting for that specific organ — otherwise, if too much time passes, the organ cannot be kept fresh and all efforts are wasted. China falls far short of meeting these conditions.
2. The Question of China's Organ Sources
So the question arises: if China were to comply with the World Health Organization's internationally recognized standards, it could only obtain an extremely limited number of voluntarily donated organs, and could never possibly become a major power in organ transplantation. Japan and South Korea, which share a similar cultural background, likewise have scarce organ sources. And yet, puzzlingly, China's organ supply is extraordinarily abundant — many foreigners (including many Japanese and Koreans) spend large sums of money to come to China for organ transplant surgery, and organ transplantation has become an extremely lucrative business in China.
Using the logical method of proof by contradiction, could it not be said that the very reason China has become a major power in human organ transplantation is precisely because it has not complied with the World Health Organization's international standards?
Indeed, organ management in China is chaotic, and criminals, organized crime, and corrupt doctors collude to steal and sell organs. In some Chinese hospitals, patients who could not be saved on the operating table have had their kidneys, livers, and other organs stolen, with no one investigating — and no one able to investigate. Some people have had organs removed after being kidnapped by criminals; others post street or hospital-restroom advertisements offering to sell their own organs for high prices (though not the heart or the entire liver). However, none of this explains how China became a major power in organ transplantation, nor does it explain the abundant organ supply found at government-run major hospitals and military hospitals.
III. China's Extraordinarily Abundant Supply of Human Organs
Since 1999, the number of human organ transplants in China has grown rapidly, with not only short waiting times but also abundant supply. Jiang Zuojun, then deputy minister of the Ministry of Health, stated in a December 7, 2005, speech at a symposium on health technology assessment and management: "In terms of volume, our country has become the world's second-largest organ transplant power, after only the United States."
Given that after leaving the donor, a kidney transplant must be completed within 12 to 24 hours, a liver transplant within 12 hours, and a heart transplant within 4 to 6 hours, relying on random accidental deaths cannot guarantee pre-arranged matches. China has no system like the United States that relies on posthumous donation; the sources of human organs in China come mainly from paid donation and forced removal from living bodies. Since a person has only one heart and one liver, the donor cannot survive after a heart or whole-liver transplant — meaning death occurs either before the operation or directly as a result of the organ removal. This indicates that successfully matched, healthy hearts and whole livers depend on non-accidental deaths (though there are also cases of doctors stealing organs from deceased patients).
In the United States, hearts used in transplants come from people who died in accidents and had voluntarily agreed to donate. About 10,000 people donate organs in the US each year, and in 2002 and 2003 alone, 26,090 people donated. Even with so many donors, waiting for an organ in the US still takes several years. For example, the average wait for a kidney is about five years. Waiting for a critical human organ abroad generally takes at least two years.
In China, however, the opposite is true — many hospitals performing organ transplants openly state on their websites that the waiting time for organs is far shorter than anywhere else in the world, with matching critical organs found in as little as a month, one or two weeks, or even one or two days. This gives the impression that living organs can be obtained at any time. Consider the following specific examples.
1. Heart Transplants
Heart transplant surgery itself is highly difficult, and far fewer hospitals in China are capable of performing heart transplants than other organ transplants. Additionally, since a heart transplant must be completed within four to six hours of leaving the donor, it would be essentially impossible, without a prior blood-type match between donor and patient, to achieve a heart transplant through a random accidental-death match within such an extremely short window.
Jilin University Second Hospital Found a Suitable Heart Donor for a Patient Within a Single Day
Xin Wenhua Bao, a newspaper in Changchun, Jilin, published a report on March 4, 2006. On February 27, 2006, Xie Baoshi (female), from Wenzhou, accompanied by her younger brother, came to the cardiac surgery department of Jilin University Second Hospital (Jida Erhospital) for an examination. Doctors said that without a heart transplant, she would not live more than three months, so the very next day (the 28th), she underwent transplant surgery. In other words, Jilin University Second Hospital found a suitable heart donor for the patient within a single day. The report did not disclose the source of the organ, but the mechanism behind it seems unlikely to be one of random accidental death, since the probability of a random match is only around 1%, and the heart must be transplanted within four to six hours of leaving the donor.
Within the same week, Jilin Heart Hospital performed a heart transplant on March 3, 2006, for Jia Runze, from Gongzhuling, Jilin. Jilin Daily also reported on both of these heart transplants on March 6, 2006, but as with other reports, did not disclose the source of the organs.
Records from Xijing Hospital of the PLA's Fourth Military Medical University
Xijing Hospital, affiliated with the PLA's Fourth Military Medical University in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, "has, on two occasions, performed three heart transplant surgeries consecutively in a single day — the only institution in the country to have done so." Professor Wang Hongbing, deputy director of Xijing Hospital's cardiovascular surgery department, once performed three heart transplants in a single day, setting a national first. Professor Cai Zhenjie, current director of the Cardiovascular Disease Research Institute at the Armed Police General Hospital, who for many years served as director of the Cardiovascular Surgery Research Institute at the PLA's Fourth Military Medical University, likewise set a record one day in September 2003 by presiding over three heart transplant surgeries in a single day.
"Performing three heart transplant surgeries in a single day" — and doing so twice — is something that, at present, only PLA hospitals are able to accomplish, obtaining so many donors at the same time.
2. Liver Transplants
Liver transplantation here refers to whole-liver transplants. A person likewise has only one liver, and the donor cannot survive after the liver is removed and transplanted. The rapid increase in whole-liver transplant numbers in recent years is astonishing. According to statistics from relevant Chinese government departments, only 78 liver transplants were performed nationwide over the eight years from 1991 to 1998. Starting in 1999, the number of liver transplants began doubling year after year, making China the region with the highest transplant volume in the world. In 1999, 2000, and 2001, respectively, 118, 254, and 486 transplants were performed, reaching a cumulative total of 996 by 2001. In 2002 alone, more than 600 liver transplant surgeries were completed. By 2003, liver transplants had surged to more than 3,000. Huang Jiefu, deputy minister of health, announced at a symposium that more than 500 hospitals across mainland China were performing liver transplants, completing approximately 3,500 per year — though according to insiders, the actual figure is at least three times the officially announced number. In other words, the number of liver transplants nationwide rose sharply starting in 1999.
Finding Liver and Kidney Transplant Donors Within a Single Day
Case 1: According to media reports, at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou (referred to as "Zhongshan Sanyuan") alone, the use of a counterfeit drug called "Liangjun Jiasu," manufactured by Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical Co., caused multiple deaths. According to a Southern Daily report, Ren Zhenchao, a 36-year-old man from Hainan, was admitted to Zhongshan Sanyuan for liver disease on April 18, 2006. After being injected with "Qi Er Yao" brand Liangjun Jiasu, he developed acute renal failure symptoms including anuria and edema starting April 30. In early May, he began showing signs of severe hepatic encephalopathy, including confusion, agitation, and incessant delirium day and night. On May 16, experts determined that without an immediate combined liver-kidney transplant, the patient would soon die, and so Zhongshan Sanyuan began searching for a matching liver and kidney donor.
The report states: "Incredibly, just one day later, good news came from outside the province — a matching liver and kidney had been found for the patient. At six p.m. on May 17, the liver and kidney were rushed by air to Guangzhou." The surgery began at eight p.m. The liver transplant was performed by Chen Guihua, president of Zhongshan Sanyuan and director of its liver transplant center, while the kidney transplant was performed by Hong Liangqing. Eight hours later, the surgery was completed successfully.
Not only that, but just one day later, on May 19, news came that Zhongshan Sanyuan performed another combined liver-kidney transplant for a different poisoning patient. As for Chen Guihua himself, he has personally performed more than a thousand clinical liver transplant surgeries, completing 246 in 2005 alone.
Case 2: In fact, finding a whole-liver donor within a single day was already achieved by the military as early as 1999. The First Affiliated Hospital of the PLA's Third Military Medical University in Chongqing (known as "Southwest Hospital"), in an article titled "Our Hospital's First Emergency Whole-Liver Transplant Succeeds," stated that on the afternoon of December 24, 1999, Yue Wei, a renowned 35-year-old accordionist and a national-first-class performer with the Chongqing Song and Dance Troupe, was admitted to Southwest Hospital with sudden "fulminant liver failure." His condition deteriorated rapidly, and by the 25th he had fallen into severe hepatic coma, completely losing consciousness. Experts from the hepatobiliary surgery and infectious disease departments, among others, jointly determined that the musician's liver had completely failed, and that an emergency whole-liver transplant was the only viable option for saving his life. The hospital leadership strongly supported the experts' recommendation. The very next day, December 26, 1999, Southwest Hospital performed an emergency piggyback orthotopic liver transplant on the patient. The surgery began at 1:50 p.m. and ended at 11:50 p.m., lasting ten hours, and was successful.
A "Fresh" Rare-Blood-Type Liver Donor Found Within 24 Days
Hebei Science and Technology Daily published a report on June 6, 2006, titled "Rare Blood-Type Woman's Liver Transplant Succeeds." A Ms. Pei, 45, had suffered from cirrhosis for 14 years and had a splenectomy 12 years earlier. Her condition continued to worsen, developing into hepatic encephalopathy and hepatic myelopathy, with recurring bouts of hepatic coma. She had a rare blood type, RH-negative AB, found in only two out of every thousand people.
On April 18, 2006, the patient was admitted to the General Surgery Department I of Handan Central Hospital. Medical staff searched for a liver source and the scarce "special" blood type while simultaneously preparing for surgery. At 8 p.m. on May 11, the liver transplant was performed, and by around 5 a.m. the next morning, the "fresh" liver had been successfully transplanted into the patient. According to the report, after the surgery, Ms. Pei's vital signs had all returned to normal — meaning Handan Central Hospital had located a "fresh" liver of a rare blood type within just 24 days.
Transplant Surgery Department, Tianjin First Central Hospital (also known as the Oriental Organ Transplant Center)
According to Chinese media reports, Shen Zhongyang, director of the Tianjin Oriental Organ Transplant Center and head of the Liver Transplant Institute at the Armed Police General Hospital, had completed 80 liver transplants by October 17, 2000; completed 109 liver transplants and 80 kidney transplants in 2001; and by March 17, 2005, had completed his 1,600th liver transplant surgery, placing him among the world's leaders in this field. This means that over four years and five months, Shen Zhongyang performed 1,520 liver transplant surgeries — an average of nearly one liver transplant per day.
Not only that, but the Oriental Organ Transplant Center, led by Shen Zhongyang, had by the end of 2004 completed a cumulative total of 1,500 liver transplants and nearly 800 kidney transplants, along with corneal transplants. In 2004 alone, the center completed 507 whole-organ transplant surgeries and nearly 400 kidney transplant surgeries. In 2005 alone, it completed 647 orthotopic liver transplants, 436 kidney transplants, 21 combined liver-kidney transplants, and 2 combined pancreas-kidney transplants, "setting multiple records for the entire military and the entire country" — an average of 3.03 organ transplant surgeries per day. Without a massive supply bank of living organs, such a so-called "world-leading" pace would be impossible to achieve. Shen Zhongyang's "achievements" of this kind have been published on the websites of numerous organ transplant hospitals and in CCP state media, used as a means of attracting patients.
According to disclosures from South Korea's Chosun Ilbo, the Oriental Organ Transplant Center set a record in December 2004 of completing 44 liver transplant surgeries within a single week — an average of 8.8 liver transplants per day, based on a five-day work week. On December 30, 2005, the center's director Shen Zhongyang, in an interview with reporters, stated that in just the two weeks from December 16 to 30, 2005 alone, the center performed 53 liver transplant surgeries. A family member of one patient disclosed that the transplant center had performed as many as 24 liver and kidney transplant surgeries in a single day — organs appearing, in other words, in batches.
The Astonishing Volume of Organ Transplants at Military and Armed Police Hospitals
According to investigations, of the more than 150 military hospitals in China, the vast majority perform organ transplants. And judging from their public websites, the number of organ transplant surgeries performed at military hospitals is astonishing. A few examples follow:
As the core institution for organ transplantation across the entire PLA, the Organ Transplant Institute at Changzheng Hospital of the Second Military Medical University has publicly reported completing 2,800 kidney transplants and approximately 300 liver transplants. Within the nine days from April 22 to April 30, 2005, the institute completed 16 liver transplants and 15 kidney transplants — its website claims this "set a new record for the number of transplants completed within a given time period."
According to the webpage of the Organ Transplant Center at the Second Affiliated Hospital of the PLA General Hospital, deputy director Shi Bingyi has personally performed 1,200 kidney transplants, 1,111 liver transplants, 2 heart transplants, 2 combined pancreas-kidney transplants, 2 combined liver-kidney transplants, and 5 stem cell transplants.
Southwest Hospital of Hepatobiliary Surgery, affiliated with the Third Military Medical University in Chongqing, was approved by the PLA General Logistics Department in 2005 as the PLA's designated liver transplant center, and is currently one of the largest hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery centers in China and abroad; its clinical liver transplant program began in 1999. The hospital currently has three hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery wards, treats more than 3,000 hepatobiliary and pancreatic patients from China and abroad each year, has performed 2,400 transplant surgeries, and has the technical capacity to perform six liver transplants simultaneously. To meet the "need for large-scale liver transplantation," the hospital is expanding its bed capacity from 122 to 150.
At the mid-sized General Hospital of the Jinan Military Region, the urology department has completed more than 1,500 kidney transplant surgeries. Regarding Director Li Xiangtie, a graduate of the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai, a March 21, 2005, report in Qilu Evening News stated: "The urology department he leads is rich in talent and possesses formidable technical strength, capable of performing six kidney transplant surgeries simultaneously, and has set a national record of performing 16 consecutive kidney transplant surgeries within 24 hours." His mentor, Li Shenqin, has likewise performed more than 1,000 kidney transplants.