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.](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240817_CND001.jpg)
“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”
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