BEIJING, Dec 6, 2007 (AFP) - China's first televised AIDS campaign featuring condoms was launched on Thursday with top music and film stars championing the values of safe sex, organisers said.
The campaign, sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme and AIDS advocacy group the Chang Ai Media Project, will feature singer Peng Liyuan, the wife of a leading Chinese politician, and Hong Kong star Jackie Chan.
"This is basically the first public campaign that has been allowed to feature condoms and link the transmission of AIDS to active sexual contact in the visual media," Chang Ai Media project spokeswoman Alison Spector said.
Previously, Chinese state television refused to air AIDS awareness announcements featuring condoms, she said, apparently due to fears that it could lead to greater promiscuity.
Besides airing on national broadcaster China Central Television and provincial stations, the ads will also run on video screens in airplanes, train and bus stations, office buildings and shopping centres and on the Internet, she said.
China is estimated to have about 700,000 HIV/AIDS cases, with tens of thousands of new infections each year, according to government figures released last week.
An increasing number of infections are due to heterosexual contact and not drug use, which was formerly the main channel of the disease.
Peng is the wife of Xi Jinping, who was promoted in October to the elite nine-member Communist Party Standing Committee Politburo and is widely seen as the top candidate to replace President Hu Jintao in 2012.
Although Peng is a household name in China, her husband remains relatively unknown in the nation where politics is secretly guarded by the ruling Communist Party.
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