Every year, around 300,000 people with terminal illnesses require an organ transplant in China, but only some 20,000 operations can be performed. Despite the worrying discrepancy, the situation is actually improving.

A decision taken by the government in January 2015 to ban the use of organs harvested from executed prisoners was a watershed in China's transplant history.

Initially, there were concerns in the medical community that relying solely on voluntary donations would lead to a catastrophic shortfall in organs available for transplant. However, recent figures, while suggesting that the situation remains serious, hold out the hope that things are improving. According to the China Organ Donation Administrative Center, by the end of February this year the number of registered organ donors in China exceeded 1.05 million, compared with around 30,000 in 2015, and 1,087 in 2010, the year China began a pilot organ donations project.

This increase reflects growing public awareness that registering as a donor can potentially save lives. There is also greater confidence in the fairness of the system of allocation, which has been bolstered by the creation of a computerized supervision system covering the entire sector, from organ donation and retrieval, to allocation and transplant.

The 20,000 transplant operations performed last year represented an increase of 21% over 2017. The figure, the second highest in the world after the United States, testifies to a marked improvement in the skills of China's organ transplant surgeons. It also points to the effectiveness of several world-class medical centers that have been set up, specializing in the transplant of major organs such as livers, kidneys, hearts, and lungs.

On May 5, Rediscovering China will broadcast the first of a three-episode series about organ donation and transplant in China.