BEIJING, Dec 1 (AFP) - China has more than 400,000 HIV carriers making it one of the Asian countries most seriously plagued by AIDS, the ministry of health said Wednesday.

China ranks fourth in Asia in numbers of HIV-positive cases, following India, Thailand and Myanmar, and 17th in the world, Vice Minister of Health Yin Dakui told a national meeting to coincide with International AIDS Day, the Xinhua news agency said.

China had 15,088 confirmed carriers of HIV by the end of September, but estimates more than 400,000 people have been infected with the virus, it said.

Those infected include a growing number of teenagers, the official news agency said, adding in southwest China's Yunnan Province, the area with the most serious incidence rate, teenagers account for at least 75 percent of the 5,000-plus HIV carriers.

"China is in a grave situation and the tasks ahead are very hard and complicated, due to an enormous number of drug users and people with multiple sex partners, plus over 100 million transient people each year, and commercial blood-sellers, who all are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS," Yin said.

Sexually transmitted diseases (STD), which are described as "the shadow following HIV/AIDS," have been rapidly spreading across China in the 1990s, Xinhua said.

Reported STD cases amounted to 570,000 in the January-September period of this year, almost equal to the annual figure of last year, the health ministry said, adding it feared the real number could be between eight and 10 times higher.

China Central Television reported the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in China grew to 630,000 cases nationwide in 1998, the highest number this decade.

The national meeting, which was co-sponsored by the ministry and ministries in charge of public security, education and publicity, aimed to summarize the work of HIV/AIDS and STD control.

The work related to policy-making, education, and intervention measures targeting high-risk people will be discussed during the two-day meeting, Xinhua said.

Earlier Wednesday China banned all advertisements and public awareness notices advocating the use of condoms, after the first advertisments were carried on nationwide television earlier this week.

"Presently according to the State Advertisement Law, sex products cannot be advertised," an official at the advertising department of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce Administration Bureau, told AFP.

All such advertisements, including print, radio and television were included, he said.

Clarification of the ban came on International Aids Day.

China's Family Planning Propaganda and Education Center began running the first-ever nationally televised public awareness advertisement promoting the use of condoms on China Central Television Sunday in anticipation of International Aids Day.

The advertisement showed a cartoon-style condom fighting off the attacks of the AIDS virus and other sexually transmitted diseases as captions said "Avoiding unwanted pregnancies" and "Use a condom, no trouble."

According to state-run television 67.3 percent of the country's reported HIV cases are affecting people under 30 years of age, so the state campaigns against AIDS this year are targetting youth.

Wednesday the Beijing Morning Post carried a long report debating whether condoms should be passed out in Chinese schools.

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