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Made in China: Eyes Wide Shut
By: Hannah Beech
Time Asia, March 28, 2001
China's hermetic leaders have finally begun addressing the nation's burgeoning AIDS problem. But in typical fashion, their outlined solutions are both misguided and inept.
World health experts predict that by 2010, more than 10 million Chinese will be infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, compared to 500,000 today. And that's a conservative estimate. So how has Beijing reacted to this startling piece of news? By proposing to make spreading AIDS knowingly a criminal offense. Forget about ramping up education efforts, increasing HIV testing or distributing condoms. Instead, let's sentence to life imprisonment people who are condemned to death by AIDS anyway.
Some of the regions worst hit by the AIDS epidemic are places where poor peasants sold blood to illegal buyers. Many of these unscrupulous blood gangs reuse dirty needles, pool plasma together, and neglect to test donors' blood for HIV. But instead of offering HIV testing or helping to educate information- starved farmers, local leaders have buried their heads in the sand. Roads leading to some of these villages have even been blocked off, as fears mount that their horrible secret will be revealed.
The local cadres, of course, worry that being associated with a dirty word like AIDS will only curtail their progression through Communist Party ranks. Some are scared that their own corruption -- strapped-for-cash hospitals buy blood from these illegal blood banks because funds earmarked for them don't get past greedy officials -- will be uncovered.
And even if testing is conducted, that data is often ignored. Earlier this year in Shaanxi province, officials discovered that AIDS testing had been conducted the year before by village headmen, but the information on HIV-positive results was never divulged to the infected citizens. So the disease has continued to spread unchecked.
While these peasants continue to fall ill to this disease, other citizens are being forced to undergo AIDS testing, just because they are considered "high- risk individuals." That's a polite way of saying that gays, drug users and prostitutes will face even more government harassment, even though the disease has traveled far beyond these small sectors of Chinese society.
By the time the central government catches up to that fact, it will already be too late for millions of Chinese. They will have died from a disease they never really understood. And Beijing will still be drafting useless laws in the vain hope of eradicating a problem that is already larger than it ever imagined.
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