WASHINGTON — A top Chinese official emailed a late-night diatribe to an aide to Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) last week, slamming Smith’s “absurd” House-passed bill against state-sponsored organ harvesting and ridiculing Congress for “lies” and “baseless hype” about both the gruesome practice and the related, ongoing Uyghur genocide.
The email arrived at 9:49 p.m. March 28 from a Gmail account registered to Zhou Zheng, the Chinese embassy in Washington’s chief of section for congressional affairs, and was written in a post-happy hour tone.
“We did call [the embassy] to make sure it was real,” Smith, a longtime critic of Chinese human rights abuses, told The Post.
Zhou wrote to Smith’s office that the persecuted Falun Gong religious movement was an “anti-human” and “insane” cult that “orchestrated” false claims that the Chinese government is abusing its members and also the predominately Muslim Uyghurs of northwestern Xinjiang province.
When contacted by The Post, Zhou responded from the same Gmail account Monday: “I can confirm the authenticity of our opposition to the ridiculous bill raised by Congressman Smith. It is nonsense to accuse China of forced organs harvesting.”
In his initial message, Zhou also called on Congress to halt its “anti-China” legislation to condemn, investigate and punish organ harvesting — without mentioning that many independent experts accuse Beijing of effectively murdering unwilling patients by depriving them of their hearts, livers, kidneys and other organs.
“China firmly rejects this absurd bill,” the undiplomatic note informed Smith’s chief of staff, Mary McDermott Noonan — though the message addressed her as “Ms. McDnoonan” — one day after the bill passed the House 413-2.
The unbridled envoy insisted that forced organ harvesting was a hoax and even claimed that the World Health Organization, which Republicans say is too close to China, confirmed it.
“Chinese law strictly prohibits the sale of human organs, and China’s organ transplantation policy fully complies with the human organ transplantation guidelines formulated by the World Health Organization, with relatively strict management regulations that conform to ethical and legal principles,” the email protested.
“As early as 2018, Jose Nunes, the director of the World Health Organization’s organ transplantation program, publicly stated that the claim that ‘China has 60,000 to 100,000 organ transplants annually’ is completely unreliable.
“Falun Gong is a completely anti-human, anti-science, and antisocial cult organization. I wonder why Congressman Smith believes in any words from such an insane cult. The so-called ‘forced organ harvesting’ in China is a farce orchestrated and a scam hyped up by ‘Falun Gong’.
The message added, “China fully protects the rights and interests of all ethnic minorities, including the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and the living standards and human rights protection of all ethnic groups continue to improve.
“The so-called ‘genocide’ and ‘forced organ harvesting’ are lies that will eventually shatter into pieces in front of facts and truth. It is the time that the US side immediately stops baseless hype and anti-China moves and stops preceding [sic] this legislation.”
Zhou concluded, “Look forward to any argument Congressman Smith or you may have. Best wishes.”
Smith told The Post that if China is so confident, he would like to make a trip to investigate what’s going on for himself.
The lawmaker equated Zhou’s claims to dubious denials about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protesters.
“If [Chinese President] Xi Jinping tomorrow needs a new liver, where’s he getting it? Some 28-year-old Uyghur or Falun Gong practitioner or some other victim,” Smith said.
“They get the healthiest people they can find … They’re healthy and then they murder them and take their organs. I mean, that is so barbaric. It’s it’s something that Josef Mengele from the Nazi Party would love. It’s just — it’s outrageous.”
The Chinese diplomat didn’t address the fact that the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in 2021 that it was “extremely alarmed by reports of alleged ‘organ harvesting’ targeting minorities, including Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians, in detention in China.”
In a statement, that UN entity said it had “received credible information that detainees from ethnic, linguistic or religious minorities may be forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent; while other prisoners are not required to undergo such examinations. The results of the examinations are reportedly registered in a database of living organ sources that facilitates organ allocation.”
The world’s top medical journal focused on organ transplants, the American Journal of Transplantation, last year featured a study that documented 71 cases of Chinese patients who suffered “execution by organ procurement.”
“In these cases, the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the proximate cause of the donor’s death,” the study said. “Because these organ donors could only have been prisoners, our findings strongly suggest that physicians in the People’s Republic of China have participated in executions by organ removal.”
The Chinese government supposedly outlawed involuntary organ transplants in 2015 by requiring convicts to opt into the practice.
Smith said he doesn’t know yet if President Biden intends to sign the bill if it passes the Senate. Republicans often accuse Biden of being too soft on China — including on issues such as finding the origins of COVID-19, which has killed more than 1 million Americans, and stopping fentanyl exports driving a surge in US overdose deaths.
Biden’s family has had extensive business relations with Chinese government-linked figures.
First son Hunter and first brother James Biden received at least $4.8 million from state-linked CEFC China Energy in 2017 and 2018, according to a Washington Post review of documents from Hunter Biden’s former laptop.
Hunter in April 2010 met with Zhang Lei, whose firm Hillhouse invests in Uyghur-tracking firm Yitu, and co-founded a state-backed investment fund, BHR Partners, in 2013 within weeks of joining then-Vice President Biden for an official trip to Beijing. Hunter maintained the stake through at least part of 2021 and supposedly divested his 10% share, though the White House and Hunter’s team have offered no evidence.