BEIJING, Oct 31 (AFP) - China's attempts to stave off a looming AIDS epidemic are being hampered by the criminalization of high-risk drug users and prostitutes, experts fear.

The HIV epidemic, while still in a relatively early stage compared to Western countries, is finding fertile ground in China, where education on the virus which can lead to full-blown AIDS remains scant, and prejudice is widespread, they say.

A report last week issued by the official Xinhua news agency cited experts predicting the number of Chinese infected with HIV would hit one million by next year, while the health ministry expected the figure would be closer to 400,000.

The crisis has been exacerbated among high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users, prostitutes and gay men by the legal implications of approaching authorities for information or treatment.

China's zero-tolerance policy for sex industry workers in particular has made education work all the more difficult for the growing number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the ground in China.

"The government is now openly acknowledging the threat of HIV, but it will take some time for them to realize that there is a parallel universe out there -- they have their cultural morals but there are people who live outside of those cultural norms," Audrey Swift of the Yunnan-Australia Red Cross HIV Prevention Project told AFP.

"We target service workers in karaoke bars on the assumption that they work or know someone who works in the sex industry, but we don't target them directly because we don't want to put anyone at risk," she said from the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming.

Xiao Yan, an official with the Disease Control Division of the health ministry, said: "HIV carriers guilty of prostitution and drug use are sent to reform through labour camps.

"China is not capable of offering these people free syringes or condoms. We cannot afford to give these things out for free," she told AFP.

But free condoms were regularly handed out to married couples in line with China's strict one-child policy, she said.

"Family planning is the basic state policy of our country, that's why work units distribute free condoms to couples," Xiao said.

"But the other group of people, their behaviour doesn't conform with our social ethics ... we work with the police to try and educate them and to give them treatment in detention centres and labour camps," she said.

The official number of registered carriers of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was just 13,913 by the end of June, while nationwide deaths from AIDS had reached 241.

Precisely because of the reluctance to come forward -- even on the part of those not in high-risk groups -- many observers say it is near impossible to monitor the spread of the AIDS epidemic on the basis of officially reported cases.

"How do you create an accurate picture when many are not aware enough of the epidemic to even get tested, the proper infrastructure is not in place and consequences also prevent people from coming forward," said Graham Smith of the Hong Kong charity AIDS Concern.

According to the United Nations AIDS China Office, the populations most vulnerable to infection are drug users, STD patients, prostitutes, migrant workers and ethnic minorities.

But in a pattern similar to the spread of HIV/AIDS in the west, the number of Chinese not included in any of the high-risk groups now contracting the virus is fast on the rise.

"Even if it doesn't break out of those (traditional) groups, there's still a lot of people that are going to get sick, and that could overwhelm China's medical system," said Swift.

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