The search for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-370 has been labelled the most expensive search in history, with a price tag estimated at more than $200 million. While conspiracy theories to explain what happened continue abound, Guo Wengui, an exiled Chinese billionaire connected to the country’s upper echelon, believes the flight was intentionally downed to prevent the leak of one of China’s most horrifying secrets: organ harvesting.

The Persecution of China’s Falun Gong

In the early 90s, a spiritual movement based on the holistic energy practice of Qi Gong became popular in China. The practice centered on three basic tenets: truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. Falun Gong, also referred to as Falun Dafa, is a peaceful, spiritual path that incorporates energy exercises and meditation, drawing from Qi Gong and Taoism.

At first, Falun Gong was a perfectly accepted practice that enjoyed government support, with practitioners numbering somewhere between 70 to 100 million. But the turning point came, when in 1993, Jiang Zemin took over as General Secretary of China and quickly became intimidated by Falun Gong’s growing independence from the state.

Jiang began a crackdown through propaganda campaigns against Falun Gong, leading many of its supporters to publicly protest the interference of the state on their religion. But of course, in China’s communist creed, any resistance to the state is met with a strict backlash. Though, Falun Gong devotees didn’t realize how harsh that backlash was going to be.

It started with state media’s marathon-length television propaganda campaigns, followed by website censorship, and the public burning of confiscated Falun Gong literature – the stereotypical Big Brother tactics. Hundreds of articles were also published in newspapers labelling the philosophy as a cult, claiming it was anti-science, and generally maligning its practices.

Another turning point came around 1999, when the state televised an alleged group of Falun Gong members self-immolating in Tiananmen Square. The stunt appeared to be orchestrated by the government using cinematic tactics, leading Falun Gong supporters to believe they were stuntmen. Falun Gong members demonstrated publicly to call out the government for what they believed was clearly propaganda. But the government’s response was not sympathetic.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong members have been arrested, tortured, and put to death based on this spiritual belief, largely unbeknownst to the rest of the world. Many have labelled the persecution a genocide, though no major governments or NGOs have successfully made a large enough case for the persecution to fully end.

People practicing Falun Gong

China’s Horrific Secret: Organ Harvesting

For those in need of a crucial organ transplant, one is typically put at the bottom of a long list that can take months or years to ascend, if you’re lucky enough to survive that long. Kidney transplants are one of the most sought after with 93,000 people waiting for a healthy donor in the U.S. alone. Those on the list can wait anywhere from 5 to 10 years.

In China, that essential transplant is almost entirely guaranteed, with recipients only having to wait two to three weeks to receive an organ. This has led to transplant tourism, where foreigners will travel to China and spend tens of thousands of dollars on a new kidney.

The transplant tourism industry in China is estimated to be worth at least $1 billion a year. To keep up at this rate, there are as many as 100 hospitals in China conducting tens of thousands of organ transplant surgeries, with a significantly smaller number of people actually on the official donor list.

Curiously, China’s organ transplant boom began in 1999 and has continued to reap large profits since. That’s the same year that the persecution of Falun Gong began.

Yes, it sounds absolutely absurd to draw that connection, but it has in fact been confirmed – by Canadian investigators and the U.S. government. China’s organ transplant industry is sourcing its organs from political prisoners, and often those organs are extracted while the prisoner is still alive.

Despite the suppression of this information and claims from Falun Gong prisoners and their family members, China’s organ harvesting scheme has only recently been uncovered by foreign governments.

Aside from the horrible acts of e torture carried out against Falun Gong prisoners, those who have been unlucky enough to have their organs harvested are said to have not been given any anesthetic, while doctors remove everything from kidneys, to livers, and corneas.

China has officially denied that it harvests organs from Falun Gong prisoners, though it has admitted to harvesting organs from convicted felons. Though two Canadian activists have claimed that the government uses religious and ethnic prisoners, including Tibetans, Uyghurs, underground Christians, and Falun Gong.

Guo Wengui: China’s Rogue Billionaire Dissident

In the mid to late aughts, two top cabinet members of the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, received new kidneys from some of China’s most well-known surgeons. One of those surgeons, Li Baochun was the director of the Kidney Department of Medicine at Shanghai Military Hospital, an expert in kidney transplants. The other was Li Leishi, deputy director of Nanjing’s Military Command and renowned kidney transplant specialist.

In 2007, Li Baochun jumped to his death from the 12^th story of his hospital’s kidney transplant building. Three years later, Li Leishi jumped to his death from the 14^th story of his apartment building. According to reports, one of these special kidney units was averaging 1,000 transplants a year, or roughly three per day, an entirely unsustainable number anywhere else in the world.

According to Guo Wengui, these organ transplants are basically done on demand. When an organ is needed it is harvested from a prisoner while they’re still alive, in order to keep it healthy. Guo says this is the reason why some members of the CCP have been diagnosed with terminal illnesses, but then lived another 20 years.

Guo is a Chinese billionaire who made his fortune in real estate and development, before becoming mired in controversy and scandal within the Chinese government. He’s worth a couple billion dollars and has holed himself up in a $70 million-dollar mansion overlooking New York’s Columbus Circle. A recent interview on Vice gave a glimpse into his lavish residence, where he levels allegations of corruption against the CCP to millions of internet viewers on a regular basis.

Guo lives in constant paranoia of the CCP sending spies to kill him or hack into his electronics. He told a Vice reporter that he can’t use one of his cell phones anymore because while he was on his yacht, it became remotely piloted against his will and he believes it was hacked via his iPhone.

Guo’s accusations against the CCP have been met with both skepticism and acceptance. His credibility has been questioned by some who say his history of business dealings negate all of his integrity. Guo is said to have blackmailed former business partners and manipulated a number of people in both the private sector and government. Though it’s hard to say what is true and what is fabricated with China’s state media propaganda machine.

But one of the most profound and bizarre allegations against the government that Guo has espoused is that it intentionally downed the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH-370. According to Guo, a number of family members and insiders linked to China’s organ harvesting had fled to Malaysia to avoid being held or persecuted by the CCP wanting to keep them silent. However, the government persuaded them to return to China, putting them aboard flight MH-370. He believes the plane was remotely piloted or hijacked in some way by the government and made to crash.

Guo says there are more revelations he has yet to release that are equally as shocking and damaging to the CCP. Is it possible that these accusations could be true, or is this just a conspiracy crafted by Guo as a vendetta meant to tarnish the CCP’s reputation? And could there be any validity to his theory on the Malaysian Airlines flight?

Guo insists that his long-term goal is to completely change China by removing the country’s corrupt regime or possibly it’s entire political system. And many acknowledge that Guo may have been a shady businessman or that his stories may be hyperbolic, but when it comes to their shared distaste for the CCP, they’ll count him on their side.

There have been ostensible attempts to show that organ harvesting from Chinese prisoners has been curbed, and that the number of donors now roughly matches the number of recipients. Though it is also true that in Chinese culture, organ donation after death is shunned because many believe the body should remain intact in order to be reincarnated. And even if the government can prove that organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has stopped, it still does not justify the continued incarceration of Falun Gong practitioners in labor camps and prisons.