China College Students Get Lessons in AIDS Awareness

BEIJING —  The AIDS epidemic has been around as long as 20-year-old Li Fang has. But that doesn’t mean the ponytailed college student knew much about the disease until recently.

“I had a rather vague idea about it,” said Li, a junior at People’s University here in the Chinese capital. “I only knew it’s incurable, but I was in the dark as to how it’s transmitted. I’d imagined it to be more fearful than it actually is.”

Her ignorance and fears were dispelled earlier this year by a pioneer outreach program among Beijing college students to educate them about acquired immune deficiency syndrome and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Such education has become imperative. Though still relatively low in comparison with some other countries, the number of people with HIV or AIDS in China has risen rapidly during the past 15 years, to about 500,000 in 1999, health officials say. Young adults are the hardest hit: Since 1985, people 20 to 29 have accounted for nearly 60% of the cases.

But because frank talk about sex is still largely taboo in China, and because of what some critics call a slow response by the government, ignorance about the disease remains pervasive.

In a study released by state media to mark World AIDS Day today, less than 4% of Chinese citizens surveyed in the last year were able to identify correctly how AIDS and HIV--the human immunodeficiency virus that causes the disease--are spread. Half of those polled believed that they could catch the disease from a sneeze or from utensils used by an HIV-positive person. And about 45% did not think condoms would help prevent infection.

“It’s worrisome that some people are confused about the ways AIDS is transmitted, which makes them severely fear AIDS,” professor Pan Suiming told the Guangming Daily.

Pan is director of the Sexology Research Institute at People’s University, one of three Beijing campuses where a coalition of domestic and international health organizations has been pushing awareness of AIDS--known as aizibing in Chinese--since the beginning of the year.

Mindful of their audience’s youth, the groups have tried to convey their message in as engaging a manner as possible. In addition to traditional methods such as classroom lectures (“Boring,” said Li), organizers put on an exhibition dealing with sexual health. At People’s University, they instituted a peer-counseling program--a common feature at universities in the United States but a relatively rare one in China.

“We have to shoulder the responsibility that history has given us,” Li said.

The education campaign culminated Thursday night in a first-of-its-kind benefit concert featuring a slate of Chinese pop stars and actor Pu Cunxin, star of this year’s film “Shower” and China’s goodwill ambassador for AIDS issues.

The concert attracted several hundred attendees, who picked up free passes on area campuses, sometimes without knowing what the event was about. The tickets gave no clue to the concert’s agenda, so when undergrads Turesa Deng and Jack Ye showed up, they were surprised--but unfazed.

Both said they supported the aim of the event.

“Young people are having sex earlier and earlier,” said Deng, a 20-year-old student at Northern Communications University here. “They need to hear information about AIDS at as young an age as possible so they can avoid being affected by it.”

Neither she nor Ye, also 20, received formal AIDS education while growing up. Their knowledge of the disease came from television or chatting among their friends.

“The teaching materials haven’t been updated,” Ye said. “In biology class, they only gave us a basic idea of the human body. AIDS was never mentioned.”

Although national guidelines direct secondary schools to offer sex education, as with so many other policies, the Beijing regime has had little success enforcing the rules.

Experts blame a lack of resources, of political will and of a sense of urgency for the slow progress in increasing public awareness of AIDS.

Social conservatism remains a stumbling block, even in more liberal settings such as Beijing. Candor like Deng’s is not the norm. One young man at the concert was too embarrassed even to say the word “sex” during an interview.

Condom vending machines on college campuses are few--and controversial. A condom commercial was pulled off the air by the government last year.

“The big obstacle we face is how to change traditional ideas on sex education,” said Dr. Wang Liqiu, with the U.N. AIDS office here.