Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The problem is that if you have two factions and they're both gunning for each other, once you start admitting anything it becomes a slippery slope to some kind of prosecution, investigation, and so forth. That's my understanding of this. I don't have absolute proof for what I'm saying; this is just my interpretation.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There's one other factor that I think people neglect sometimes. One of the ideas of the anti-Falun Gong campaign was to make everybody in society complicit. That meant you went down to the lowest party level, the old women with the arm bands who walked around the hutong making sure it was clean.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I do have a point about that. I'm afraid I don't think it's quite either. I think the problem.... Let us assume, just for the sake of argument, that there are many in the Chinese leadership who wish this had never happened and wished we had never gotten to this point. The problem is that there are two factions always fighting within China.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  How is the average Chinese organ tourist different from a western organ tourist? There's not a “single” western organ tourist, because we know there are plenty. Not one has written anything. It's very difficult to interview them. Hospitals of course are very protective, but I've recently scored an interview with a Chinese fellow in the U.K. and am expecting to interview him when I get back.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, I think what you just said is incredibly persuasive. I would only add that China has a propensity to do its dirty work through entrepreneurial work if possible. In other words, Deng Xiaoping, as an old army guy, said to the military that they'd have to start paying some of their own freight because they cost too much, and to do whatever they needed to do to make money.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I think Damon has really hit on it here. The dilemma is that if you push the medical community to go out there and talk to their Chinese counterparts and try to influence them, you enter a process of engagement. We just went through that for two years, and it led to exactly that—the feeling of, well, the medical community kind of has this under control and the problem is sort of ending.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'd just add that there are several states certainly—I've testified in Scotland—that have shown a huge interest. Whether they're independent or not, they control their health policy, and they control their education policy. They've shown a lot of interest in stopping organ tourism, and they've seriously considered it.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It's not terribly well verified, either. I mean, one of the reasons we have that picture of the three surgeons is that it was one of the very rare occasions where somebody actually donated their organs. It was released for that reason. Even so, the surgeons still look awfully nervous about the whole thing.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  What we hear not so anecdotally from World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong, which actually has a very strong investigative team of native Chinese who go in and make phone calls and get to know people who are involved in this business, is what they describe as a bidding system, almost a bidding war for judges between the armed police on the one side and the military hospitals on the other.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I think there is another aspect, which is that it slowed the rate of public executions in China. Again, these are prisoners who are on death row. It appears to have had an effect on slowing down that rate. Supposedly they are closing some of the labour camps, although we don't actually see a sign of a lessening of the overall population in Laogai if you put together everything: prisons, labour camps, black jails, mental hospitals, and detention centres.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Anecdotally—and I hate to plug another author's book—Daniel Asa Rose wrote a book called Larry's Kidney, a very humourous account of his getting a kidney for his ne'er-do-well cousin in China.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I don't want to say that the revenue stream is really the significant thing. If you were stopping organ tourism coming from Canada, perhaps that's not the most salient point. But it is true that there are cases, at least unverified, of people having paid up to $2 million for one of these organs.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'm not a Falun Gong practitioner, but Falun Gong practitioners have obviously taken a strong interest in my work over the years and I've often been an embedded reporter with them. They'd often say to me, Ethan, you have to hurry up on your research. Why is that, I asked? It's because the leadership's changing, Xi Jinping is coming in, and this kind of thing.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I do and I will take a shot at that question. The interesting thing is that Israel—and basically half of its software and IT industry has Chinese investment—chose to simply end organ tourism. They just turned around and did it without caring about any economic repercussions. It turned out there were no economic repercussions.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I think what Damon just said is applicable to that as well. There are two problems. One is that families, of course, are afraid at a certain point to go any further in looking for a missing family member. The second point is that many Falun Gong practitioners simply remained nameless after a certain point because they were sick of their families losing their jobs, getting in trouble, and so forth.