Killed to Order

Killed to Order: China’s Organ Harvesting Industry and the True Nature of America’s Biggest Adversary
Jan Jekielek (Skyhorse Publishing, $44.99, 220 pages)

This paper’s editorial policy is to refer to Communist China as Red China, a reminder that the global behemoth is still a communist country. But as Jan Jekielek illustrates in Killed to Order about China’s organ harvesting industry, the ‘Red’ could also refer to the blood shed by the butchers of Beijing. Jekielek, a senior editor at Epoch Times, has written an insightful book not only about the grisly practice of Beijing’s involuntary organ harvesting industry but the very nature of the regime. The state removes organs from prisoners of conscience less to advance medical science or turn a profit than to justify the killing of the regime’s political opponents. Chinese communism, Jekielek explains, is based on the “idea of absolute, top-down control” but rather than simply issue direct orders, the Chinese Communist Party “sets strategic direction” and “regional and local officials then compete to implement the strategy, each trying to outperform the others.” Later, he explains, “That is how the normalization runs: a system so entrenched, with so many individuals complicit in its crimes on all sides, that even now, it continues by default.” The author describes the development of the system in one part of Red China to eradicate Falun Gong “through ‘reeducation’ if possible, and through murder when not.” The organ trade was a profitable side hustle. Forced organ donation spread because it was “producing results” which permitted the advancement of key individuals within the CCP. Jekielek says the only force capable of changing this “self-propelling repression machine” is a grassroots movement demanding western leaders act because no politician will want to defend forced organ harvesting. For an author who otherwise see clearly the Chinese regime for what it is, this seems myopic but otherwise this is a sobering book about the west’s greatest adversary.