Inter Press Service - September 30, 2002
Antoaneta Bezlova

Some tried to argue that they were simply hostesses and not prostitutes, but such questions were left for afterwards.

The Dazhongsi bars they were working in, near the site of Beijing's biggest wholesale vegetable market, are frequented by peasant dealers from the neighbouring provinces and the police were convinced that all have come to buy sex.

In the morning after the mid-September raid, photos of the girls -- with bowed heads, in a group like a cluster of bright evening moths -- appeared in the papers. Articles praised police efforts to safeguard "socialist morality" by purging the prostitutes, often seen as the cause of the problem rather than the victims.

The crackdown is just one of a series of government sweeps aiming to rid Chinese cities of the vices of prostitution, drug abuse and gambling -- 'evils of the capitalist society' that have made a steady comeback in the last few decades of wrenching market reforms after having been banished from this communist land more than 50 years ago.

But this same tough government response is also being blamed for the authorities' failure to raise HIV awareness in this sexually conservative society and to step up prevention efforts in the battle to contain China's growing AIDS epidemic.

China's punitive treatment of high-risk groups, such as sex workers and drug addicts, has hindered effective preventive strategies. It has also made the question of treating HIV/AIDS and helping people living with the pandemic if not a taboo, then a very sensitive, issue.

Because prostitution is banned in China, efforts to promote use of condoms in places like bars and parlours are slighted as attempts to legalise sex work.

Most recent government guidelines such as 'The Medium and Long Term Plan for AIDS Prevention and Control' of 2001 reiterate that "prostitution, drug trafficking and drug abuse must be vigorously cracked upon".

China has an estimated 1.7 million people with HIV/AIDS. The United Nations forecasts that some 10 million people in China could have HIV by 2010.

While U. N. missions and non-governmental organisations are lobbying the central government to give the green light to free condom distribution projects in areas outside of the few trial cities, local officials are fearful of implementing them.

" 'Condom' is still a very sensitive word in China," says Kumiko Yoshida, a coordinator of HIV/AIDS focal point at the U.N. Fund for Population (UNFPA) mission in Beijing. "It is still seen as a sex commodity rather than a health product and you can't just simply go around the place distributing it."

Zhao Pengfei, a World Health Organisation official in charge of its "100 percent condom use" project in China, has witnessed nothing less than a storm since trial distribution of condoms took off in Li county in central Hunan province this summer.

Indignant residents accused the local government of legalising the undeclared local "red district" because it encouraged karaoke bar owners to distribute free condoms and place condom-vending machines in their establishments.

"It was only because we had local officials' support that our project could weather the storm," Zhao says. "We chose Li county not because it is a particularly HIV-affected area, but because we could secure government support for a scheme which many other places wouldn't dare to touch."

Yet the success of these first modest trials is being challenged by the fact that the decision whether to use condoms or not remains entirely in the hands of the male customers.

According to a national survey of China's sex workers, conducted by the Sexual Sociology Research Institute at the People's University in Beijing, some 25 percent of people who buy sex refuse to wear condoms.

"There is nothing girls in that business can do about it," says Zhao Pengfei. "They can refuse to work for a day but eventually they would give up because they need to make a living out of their clients."

Professor Pan Suiming, a renowned sociologist and director of the institute behind the survey, suggests that prevention efforts should target not the girls but "bosses and managers with money and power" who are sex workers' most regular clients and the real "bridge population".

"They are the largest group, accounting for 40 percent (of total clients)," Pan says. This compares with just 10 percent of other groups like workers and peasants.

As men with money and power, Chinese bosses and mangers can afford to buy sex more often than other men can. They can also afford to support one or more mistresses and could have various occasional lovers.

"As a rule, once these men become infected, they will spread the infection to the most number of women -- and there is nothing women can do about it," says Professor Pan.

The only way out is shifting criminal responsibility for prostitution from sex workers to the organisers of commercial sex, and moral responsibility from sex workers to their clients, suggests Professor Qiu Renzong, a philosopher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Speaking at an U.N. Development Programme-sponsored AIDS conference in Beijing this summer, Qiu argues that sex workers should receive "education for prevention of AIDS and vocational training," while their clients should be subject to "compulsory education in law and morality".

"The core principle of Chinese AIDS law is that people are not treated as principles enjoying rights; they are treated as targets of management," says Professor Li Dun of Qinghua University, who has been reviewing Chinese legal documents related to HIV/AIDS as part of UNDP-funded research and advocacy project. (END/IPS/AP/HD/HE/PR/AB/JS/02)

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