China | Thousands of bodies for sale

A gruesome corpse scandal sparks outrage in China

The government’s reaction has been to stifle any discussion of 4,000 stolen bodies

The illustration shows a stack of money inside a ribcage.
Illustration: Jovana Mugosa
|BEIJING

“WHEN A PROPER respect towards the dead is shown at the end and continued after they are far away, the moral force of a people has reached its highest point.” That precept appears in the “Analects”, a collection of sayings attributed to Confucius. What, then, to make of the news that from 2015 to 2023 a Chinese crime ring stole, dismembered and sold more than 4,000 corpses for use in manufacturing bone grafts?

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This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline “Thousands of bodies for sale”

From the August 17th 2024 edition

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