DShomshak Posted August 26 Report Share Posted August 26 This article comes from the August 17, 2024, issue of The Economist. While that magazine chiefly deals in politics, business, finance and related subjects, it also sometimes reports on oddball events from around the world. This one could supply inspiration for a particularly twisted Dark Champions adventure... or maybe Horror HERO, if anyone actually played such a game. In brief, a Chinese online news source ran a story about a gang allegedly taking human bodies from crematoria and medical laboratories and dismembering them for making bone grafts. Last I checked, everything in The Economist online seemed to be paywalled. I hope they won't mind me posting the entire brief article, if I do so as an advertisement to encourage other people to read that magazine. So here it is: Quote Crime Thousands of bodies for sale BEIJING A gruesome scandal involving the theft of corpses angers the public “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? The Paper, a state-owned online publication, broke the story on August 8th. The scandal involves bodies taken from crematoria and medical laboratories in several provinces. The bodies were allegedly cut up and then transported for processing at a company called Shanxi Aorui Biomaterials in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province. The scheme is said to have generated 380m yuan ($53m) in revenue. Nearly 80 people have reportedly been detained. The story has sparked public outrage in China. (Families of the deceased received cremated remains that were either incomplete or fake.) The article by the Paper was taken down within hours. So were reports from a handful of other official outlets. Censors have also stifled discussion of the scandal on social media. Some people are wondering if officials were involved. Government agencies manage the firms that provide funeral services and handle remains. There is also suspicion that big state-owned medical companies may have purchased the tainted bone grafts (knowingly or not). One of them, Sinopharm, issued a statement on August 9th saying that reports of its involvement in the scandal were incorrect. It denies having had any business dealings with Shanxi Aorui Biomaterials. Less than a week after the Paper filed its story, state media reported that the authorities in a number of provinces have been investigating misconduct in the funeral industry. But there was no mention of body snatching. Rather, officials have been combatting “petty corruption and small-scale malfeasance”. The state-media report quoted Peng Xinlin, a law professor whose remarks amount to a bureaucratic translation of Confucius. Corruption in the funeral sector, said Mr Peng, “undermines the credibility of the party and government, disrupts public order and erodes social norms.” But the now-censored words of Yi Shenghua are more reflective of the public mood. Mr Yi, a lawyer, shared information about the theft of corpses with the Paper. He then wrote online: “In the culture of Chinese tradition and thought, it is absolutely impossible to accept this kind of reality.” Dean Shomshak Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
death tribble Posted August 26 Report Share Posted August 26 That has traction also in Champions. I am reminded instantly of the Charlie the Unicorn film and that he is lured to a cave and one of his kidneys removed. There is also the urban legend of this happening in the States. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rails Posted August 27 Report Share Posted August 27 Stealing corpses was a problem in the US (and at least some parts of Europe, if I remember correctly) back in the 1800s), where they were being sold to medical schools and used for experimentation by somewhat less than reputable scientists. I don't see a lot of difference between that and what was reported on in the article. DShomshak 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnia Posted August 27 Report Share Posted August 27 There's also reports of stealing corpses for ghost weddings in China... https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1000384 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wcw43921 Posted August 28 Report Share Posted August 28 Someone skilled in Chinese magic could also use the corpses to create hopping vampires. tkdguy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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