I would like to point out that the number one cause for HIV spread in China is heterosexual sex. If this isn't a change in a long line of thinking I don't really know what is.
The newspost is here:
It isn't a terrible article, but I would like to point out a few things. Firstly, they note that last Wednesday in Beijing a group of some 30 AIDS patients protested in front of a health ministry building and were detained. You might very well get an impression that the government in China is especially against giving more rights and or compensation to HIV positives. This impression would be wrong - it just so happens almost any demonstrators from rural areas in Beijing are quickly stopped in their tracks. Many protesters arrive to Beijing to complain to the central government, which is usually quickly dealt with.
Second, the statistics are, like so often in China news, woefully bad. The report puts 2005 AIDS patients at 135,000, 2008 at 265,000 and 2009 at 319,000. There is also an expert saying how the real number is more likely 740,000 (all numbers throughout China.) The statistics are a mess of poor reporting, insufficient testing, incompetent local hospitals and corruption. There are quite a few countries from which you could write a report saying "AIDS patients up 300% in 5 years" but here they don't dare. Too bad they don't bother to explain why the numbers are so different, either.
After that they say an estimated 37 million Chinese men buy sex. If the previous numbers were that unreliable, should we believe only 0,5% of Chinese men buy sex?
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