Putin, Xi Hot Mic Moment On Organ Transplants Underscores Concerns Over Organ Harvesting In China

Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,

As China and Russia’s leaders walked shoulder to shoulder on Sept. 3, a hot mic captured them discussing increasing longevity through organ transplants, possibly living to 150 years old.

The moment came as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ascended the Tiananmen rostrum for the massive World War II military parade.

“Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days at 70 you are still a child,” Xi said through a translator in Russian.

“As biotechnology advances, human organs can be continuously transplanted, allowing us to become younger and younger, perhaps even achieve immortality,” Putin replied through his interpreter in Mandarin, gesturing with his fingers as he spoke.

A laugh can be heard in the background as the feed cuts to a wide shot of Tiananmen Square.

“Predictions are that in this century, there’s a chance of living to 150,” Xi said off camera just before the audio faded.

Both Xi and Putin are 72 years old.

Quite a hot mic moment on CCTV in Beijing today as Putin and Xi, both 72 years old, are caught casually talking about living to 150 and maybe forever thanks to organ transplants. (As picked up by Bloomberg.) pic.twitter.com/kC4VTRaobq

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) September 3, 2025

The conversation, livestreamed through Chinese state media to billions online and on television, made international headlines as China watchers scrutinized the implications, with many pointing to longstanding concerns about forced organ harvesting.

“I will tell you that we’ve heard some horrific stories of this organ transplants and all of this in China, that they take it from unwilling donors, OK, to put it mildly,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told NTD, The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet, in a press briefing.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 3, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

“The fact that they were caught in a hot mic,” he said, is “very telling.”

“It tells you where their worldview is, in contrast to ours,” he said.

The reference to a 150-year lifespan had earlier surfaced in 2019 in a one-minute clip boasting a top-notch health system to extend the lifespan of the Chinese leadership.

The video, allegedly released by China’s largest comprehensive military hospital, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, said that Chinese leaders on average live to 88 years old, far surpassing their counterparts in the West.

Amid a COVID wave in 2023, the obituary of a former Chinese deputy cultural minister again brought the topic to the fore.

In the condolence, a Chinese official wrote that 87-year-old Gao Zhanxiang, whom he described as having a “sharp mind and a booming voice,” had “replaced many organs in his body” as he “tenaciously fought with illness,” such that Gao himself said that “many components are not his own anymore.”

The source of their organs remains a question.

In 2006, several eyewitnesses came forward to The Epoch Times alleging mass killing of prisoners of conscience for their organs in secret facilities in China. The targets, they said, were detained practitioners of Falun Gong, a meditation practice that the Chinese regime perceives as a threat to its rule. The eyewitnesses described doctors removing organs, such as corneas, and cremating the bodies to cover up the evidence.

While China, under mounting international pressure, set up an organ donation system in 2015, experts who studied the Chinese organ donation data said they are “too neat to be true.”

According to a 2019 study published in the scientific journal BMC Medical Ethics, the statistics, unlike those of 50 other countries, fit unusually well to a mathematical formula. The only explanation for that is data manipulation, the authors said.

The same year, the London-based China Tribunal concluded after a year-long investigation that forced organ harvesting was still taking place in China on a significant scale. Falun Gong practitioners, according to the tribunal, were the primary victim group, with other persecuted minorities such as Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Tibetans, and House Christians also at risk.

The European Parliament, a panel of United Nations-affiliated human rights experts, and the State Department have voiced alarm over the Chinese regime’s forced organ harvesting in recent years.

In the United States, House lawmakers have voted twice to pass bills to impose sanctions on perpetrators of organ transplant abuse in China. Two bills are now awaiting Senate action.

In August, eight state senators from Texas wrote to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a lead sponsor of the Falun Gong Protection Act, urging him to push the bipartisan legislation forward. The state is the first of five in the country that have enacted laws to block health insurance coverage for organ transplants from China.

Johnson, at the briefing, said that Xi and Putin’s conversation on this topic adds new urgency for Congress to act.

“If the leaders are talking about it, it should alarm us,” he said, noting that “it’s a persecuted religious minority that they’re using to harvest organs from.”

“The United States—we’re going to stand for morality and ethics, and we’re going to stand against that. There’s legislation, as you know, that would address it, and we might need to put that at the top of the priority list, if that’s what’s happening.”