Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin were overheard candidly discussing medical advances for extending life — a conversation that critics say highlights China’s practice of brutally harvesting human organs from dissidents and prisoners.

During a discussion picked up and broadcast by Chinese state media prior to a major military parade in Beijing Wednesday, Mr. Xi said living past age 70 is becoming commonplace.

“Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days at 70 you are still a child,” Mr. Xi said through a translator in Russian as he walked together to a dais with Mr. Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Mr. Puttin then noted the life-extending advances in transplanting human organs. “In a few decades, as biotechnology continues to develop, human organs will continue to be transplanted and people will become younger and perhaps even achieve immortality,” he said, speaking through an interpreter in Mandarin.

“Some predict that in this century humans may live to 150 years old,” Mr.  Xi replied through an interpreter off camera as the audio feed faded.

Both leaders are 72.

Mr. Kim, who was walking together with the two leaders, was seen smiling, although it is not clear whether the exchange was translated for him into Korean.

Later Wednesday, Mr. Putin told reporters at a news conference that Mr. Xi raised the topic of extended life expectancy during a stroll on the way to the massive military parade marking the end of World War II in the Pacific.

“The chairman mentioned this,” he said of Mr. Xi, while pointing out that former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was notably interested in longevity.

“Modern health and medical technologies, surgical procedures connected with organ replacements and so on give humanity reason to hope that an active life can continue differently than now,” Mr. Putin said. “The average age varies across countries, of course, but life expectancy is significantly increasing.”

The Beijing comments prompted Rep. Chris Smith, co-chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, to call on the Senate to act on legislation he drafted targeting China’s practice of forced organ harvesting.

Mr. Smith, a leading House human rights proponent, introduced legislation in 2023 and again in May aimed at stopping forced organ harvesting. The bill passed the House and is pending in the Senate.

International investigators have identified China’s use of the practice of surgically removing organs of prisoners and dissidents in China and selling them for transplant.

According to a report by an international tribunal of human rights experts, China is charged with “acts of cruelty and wickedness that match the cruelty and wickedness of medieval torturers and executioners.”

Based on reports, thousands of innocent people were killed as their bodies were cut open while they were alive to harvest kidneys, livers, hearts, lungs, cornea and skin and sold to transplant recipients.

Mr. Smith, also on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Xi-Putin conversation should be a wake-up call.

“The casual, almost anecdotal nature of Xi and Putin’s conversation about organ transplants underscores the need for the United States to act staunchly and swiftly to investigate and end the barbaric practice of forced organ harvesting once and for all,” Mr. Smith said.

“It’s such cruelty. To think that Xi Jinping and the entire leadership of the Chinese Communist Party is not only making billions of dollars by selling organs that they steal and kill to get, but it’s for themselves too,” Mr. Smith said.

China has hospitals and wings of hospitals devoted to organ transplants for Chinese Communist Party leaders.

“So if Xi Jinping tomorrow needs a liver, he gets it from either a Falun Gong practitioner or some other person.”

Falun Gong, an anti-communist spiritual group, remains a major target of a crackdown by the Chinese government. International investigators have documented cases involving organs taken from live Falun Gong practitioners.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also weighed in on the leaders’ exchange.

“I will tell you that we’ve heard some horrific stories of these organ transplants and all of this in China, that they take it from unwilling donors … to put it mildly,” Mr. Johnson told NTD, a Chinese publication associated with Falun Gong.

Mr. Smith said the average age of victims is between 25 and 30 and equally divided between men and women.

“These are young people who are kidnapped and killed with the secret police doing the abduction into the hospitals and then and then brutally murdered to take their organs,” Mr. Smith said.

Testimony from a Chinese doctor who took part in forced surgeries said in one case a victim was still conscious while organs were removed, he said.

“I mean, this is really right out of Nazi Germany, Josef Mengele, it really is,” Mr. Smith said.

Organs are also taken from Muslim Uyghurs in western China and then sold to Middle Eastern countries where Muslims purchase organs from other Muslims, he said.

In July, the online publication The Diplomat reported that China was building six new facilities for organ transplants in Xinjiang, populated mostly by Uyghurs.

“This massive expansion in Xinjiang — a region already under scrutiny for systematic repression — raises deeply troubling questions about where the organs will come from,” said Wendy Rogers, distinguished professor of Clinical Ethics and chair of the International Advisory Board of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China.

The organs may be taken from murdered prisoners of conscience, such as the estimated 1 million Uyghurs held in detention camps, she said.

The Chinese government announced in 2015 the practice of using organs from executed prisoners had ended. 

However, a lack of transparency by the communist government has raised questions about taking organs from dissidents.

The pending legislation would identify any person involved in the practice – brokers, suppliers, or recipient patients — would face 20 years in prison along with civil penalties,” Mr. Smith said. “This is a gross, gross violation of human rights,” he said.

In the Senate, Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, in the past supported bills targeting forced organ harvesting.

“There is growing evidence that the Chinese Communist Party has and continues to harvest organs from persecuted religious groups, prisoners of conscience, and inmates,” Mr. Cotton said in 2023.

The House bill is currently awaiting action before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Mr. Smith said the Xi-Putin conversation has generated new support for his bill that he said has the backing of the White House. The bill is called the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2025.

Abe Greenwald, executive editor of Commentary magazine, said the Xi-Putin exchange exposes the danger posed by the two leaders.

“It sounds like a joke and lends itself to easy mockery about Putin and Xi being evil, power-crazed maniacs,” he said online.

“But the thing is — that’s kind of what they are. And the hot-mic moment provides a clear window into their dangerous grandiosity.”

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.