Photo by Ktccphotography Pexel
Today I noticed a number.
A presentation at the 2026 Academic Conference on Blood Safety revealed that the number of blood donations from college students nationwide decreased from 2.366 million in 2023 to 1.06 million in 2025, a 55% reduction in two years.
This is astonishing.
It’s important to know that college students have always been the main force of blood donation in China. I myself donated blood for the first time when I was a university student.
Additionally, according to information from the voluntary blood donation blogger Xiang Haiquan, when he gives blood donation talks at universities across the country this year, he always presents data obtained from blood stations in various regions: In the past 4 years, the number of college student blood donors in Y city has decreased from 3,698 to 305, a drop of over 92%; in L city, it decreased from 11,388 to 961, a drop of over 84%; and in N city, it decreased from 46,959 to 6,536, a drop of over 86%…
In the “Economic Observer” report on July 4, 2026, titled “Blood Donation Volumes Still Falling in Many Provinces, Blood Centers Seek the Next Bag of Blood,” a staff member from the Zhejiang Provincial Blood Center said that in previous years, blood donations from college students accounted for about 20% of Zhejiang’s total blood donations. Starting from 2024, the number of college students donating blood has almost “halved.”
Why has the enthusiasm for blood donation among college students suddenly waned in recent years? Young people are the future; if this trend continues, what will the situation be like in a few years?
Another piece of news is that in December 2025, the legislative body initiated the revision of the “Blood Donation Law,” proposing to extend the upper age limit for blood donation from 55 to 65 years old and shorten the interval for whole blood donation from 6 months to 3 months.
Legal amendments will certainly have an effect, but what if young people are unwilling to donate? Are we going to return to the era of mandatory blood donation, when the law stipulated that “blood donation is a citizen’s duty”?
First, it must be stated that Chinese people are not a group that is inherently indifferent to social welfare. The blood donation rate in Taiwan (called “献血率” in mainland China) ranks first in the world, to the extent that Taiwan’s hospital system experiences a luxury of excessive blood usage (Taiwan’s inpatient transfusion rate is 3-4 times higher than that of the United States).
Regarding blood donation, I have written at least 4 articles. Two of them are long articles exceeding 8,000 words, the earliest of which was during the Ali blood donation incident in 2023. I have always hoped to contribute my part to promoting reform of the blood usage system.
Regrettably, the two most important of these 4 articles have disappeared. What makes me even more uncomfortable is that some people with status have slandered me offline, saying that my disappeared articles were because I wrote them incorrectly, and so on. In fact, I did not write a single word incorrectly in those articles. But I can no longer prove it (strangely, why should I prove it?), because the articles are gone, and I can only let them say what they want.
The operation of public blood banks concerns the potential health interests of everyone. Now, the phenomenon of a sharp decline in blood donations from young people has exposed the weakness of “publicity” in our society.
At the same time, it also indicates that it is time for this system to undergo corresponding changes.
How should it be changed? The prerequisite for change is to conduct thorough public discussion, fully and completely expose the problems in this field, and thereby reshape consensus and unite people’s hearts.
Truth becomes clearer through debate, and public rationality stems from social consensus. If we continue to operate behind closed doors, engage in “closed-door management,” and habitually block the rational voices of others, there will be only one outcome: walking into a dead end. This is especially true for matters like blood donation, which highly depend on the autonomous will of countless ordinary individuals.
Therefore, stop preventing ordinary people from speaking out.
When the day comes that I no longer have to worry about my articles on blood donation disappearing, I will certainly believe that the enthusiasm of young people will naturally and gradually recover, and even gradually approach Taiwan’s world-leading blood donation rate.
Discover more from 自由档案馆
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
