iPhone 6s: Two Men In China Attempt To Sell Their Kidneys To Buy An Apple iPhone
Apple’s iPhone 6s remains so highly in demand before its launch in China that two men went to the extreme length of deciding to sell their kidneys to buy the smartphone.
China Daily reports that a young man named Wu, who hails from China’s eastern Jiangsu Province, had been desperate to make enough money to buy Apple’s latest smartphone when it launches later this month. However, when Wu was unable to fulfill his wish, his friend Huang made the outrageous suggestion that they both sell a kidney each to make the 9,250 yuan ($1,450) they needed to buy the iPhone, which will be available in Chinese markets from September 25.
This comes after jokes about having to sell a kidney to pay for the expensive new Apple product have been widely circulated on Chinese social media networks, according to People’s Daily Online(via Daily Mail).
iPhone 6S already on sale in China, with speculators charging as much as US$3,300 per device http://t.co/vmAzRyoMa9
— Andrew Leyden (@PenguinSix) September 9, 2015
Once they agreed on the plan, the two friends took to the internet. After a lot of searching, they found a networking group on QQ where they were told that a kidney could sell anywhere between 100,000 Yuan ($15,000) to 200,000 Yuan ($30,000) depending on their blood type. An agent asked the two friends to take medical examinations at a hospital in Nangjing, where the monthly per capita income almost equals the cost of an iPhone 6s.
On September 12, Wu and Huang reached the hospital in a state of nervous excitement, but the agent never turned up. Wu then reconsidered the plan to buy the iPhone 6s, asking Huang to drop the idea altogether, but his friend was adamant. A scuffle broke out between the two, following which Wu managed to call the police. However, it was too late and Huang had already escaped by then. The local police confirmed that he remains on the run.
Though it cannot be confirmed with any certainty, police suspect that Huang may have been involved in a racket that participates in illegal organ transplants. Huang may have stood to profit from trapping his friend by tempting him with an iPhone 6s, but Wu managed to evade the plot. The young man remains keen to buy an iPhone 6s, although he is not willing to sell his kidney for the phone anymore.
Strangely enough, this is not the first time that people in China have gone to the desperate lengths of selling their organs to buy Apple products. According to NDTV, in 2012, a Chinese teen reportedly sold his kidney to buy an Apple iPhone and iPad. In an even more bizarre incident that came to light a year before, a Chinese couple illegally put their third child up for adoption online and accepted money for the baby, using the proceeds to reportedly buy an iPhone.
China remains the second-largest consumer of Apple’s iPhones, with the company reported to have earned $16.823 billion in revenue for Greater China in the last quarter alone, according to The Verge.
We hope not everyone has to go Wu’s path in their attempts to own an iPhone 6s.
[Photo via Stephen Lam / Getty Images]
