Homosexual sex, one of China's biggest emerging challenge

AIDS expert tells China's gay men to face up to responsibilities

by Xinhua writers Du Jie, Shang Yang, Xu Yalan

BEIJING, July 30 (Xinhua) -- A leading international expert on HIV/AIDS Friday challenged China's gay men to front up to their responsibilities in fighting the spread of the disease.

Dr. Ray Yip, director of the China Program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said the spread of HIV/AIDS in China through homosexual sex was "one of the biggest emerging challenges" to controling the disease.

Dr. Yip told CNC World, the satellite news television station run by Xinhua News Agency, that HIV transmission through "MSM" (men having sex with men) had boomed since 2003.

This year, the Beijing Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced sexual activity between men and men had become the main channel of HIV transmission in the city, exceeding both heterosexual sex and drug use.

Poor awareness of safe sex among gay men contributed to the sharp rise as many gay men had multiple sex partners, and did not always use condoms.

"We need the MSM group to engage their community to take part in the intervention," Dr. Yip told CNC.

"Will they promote safe sex? Will they be promoting early testing? Will they be supporting people already with HIV? So the key is their involvement in the prevention."

Social pressures forced many HIV carriers to remain hidden, and many were reluctant to admit they were HIV carriers, said Dr. Yip.

They need to show their faces and let their voices be heard, said Dr. Yip.

Homosexuals, sex workers, drug abusers and underground blood donors were all most at risk of infection and the biggest danger to others.

"The prevention of the spread of HIV, regardless of which group, drug users, sex workers or men having sex with men, is the same," Dr. Yip said.

"The key thing is that the high risk behavior needs to be reduced.

"It is those people who don't know they are HIV carriers are dangerous. We need to find them," said Dr. Yip.

However, he said, "China represents one of the few countries in Asia that really takes AIDS seriously."

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had committed 50 million U.S. dollars to support HIV/AIDS prevention efforts in China, supporting both governmental and non-governmental programs focused on the "priorities": prevention services for high-risk groups, HIV testing, prevention and support for people living with HIV, and stigma reduction.

"We fund government programs in about 15 cities across China to work with NGOs who fund high-risk communities, such as MSM, to mobilize and develop their capacity to do the prevention," Dr. Yip said.

The foundation, which cooperates closely with China's Ministry of Health (MOH), was supporting groups that promoted "peer education" such as Zhitong, a volunteer organization.

Luo, the head of Zhitong programs who would only give his surname, said, "We give away condoms and brochures in gay bars and parks, set up a free hotline, and conduct salons or lectures regularly."

The organization, which is financially supported by the Gates foundation and local health agencies, has more than 200 volunteers and claims to have contacted at least 60,000 people.

MOH figures showed that by the end of last year, MSM transmission accounted for 32.5 percent of China's total HIV/AIDS infections, up from only 0.4 percent in 2005.

China had 740,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, 105,000 of whom had AIDS by the end of 2009, MOH data showed.

The Chinese government has lifted the 20-year-old ban on entry of foreigners with HIV/AIDS in a move to eliminate unequal treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Since the end of 2003, the government has carried out a policy of free blood tests for those with HIV, free education for orphans of AIDS patients, and free consultation, scanning tests and anti-virus therapies for pregnant women.

(Note: Su Jing and Li Dongxu also contributed to the story. To view the CNC World interview, please log on http://www.xhstv.com/english_video_online.asp)

[Posted by Paul Causey, MSM-Asia mailing list, 2010-07-31]

HIV in China's MSM increases 8-fold

[Related to an earlier post this month. Posted by Frits Van Griensven, msm-asia, 13 October 2008]

The changing face of HIV in China
Featured in Nature, Vol. 44, 2 October 2008
Authors: Lin Lu, Manhong Jia, Yanling Ma, Li Yang, Zhiwei Chen, David D. Ho, Yan Jiang and Linqi Zhang

HIV has advanced from high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users to some in the general population, according to comprehensive new data from the south of China. What needs to be done to halt its spread?

[Download PDF copy of article here]

HIV shifts to women, gay men in Yunnan

[Posted by Edmund Settle on msm-asia Google Group, 08 October 2008]

Yunnan HIV infections jump among women, gay men
Go Kunming, 7 October 2008

A recent study focusing on the spread of HIV in Yunnan has revealed significant shifts in which demographics are at higher risk for becoming infected with the virus that causes AIDS, according to a Tsinghua University study cited in a Bloomberg report.

According to the study, which was authored by Zhang Linqi, executive director and professor at Tsinghua's Comprehensive AIDS Research Center in Beijing, HIV infections spread via heterosexual contact accounted for 38 percent of all cases in 2006 in Yunnan.

Intravenous drug use, which had accounted for all of Yunnan's infections in 1989, dropped to 40 percent in 2006. Intravenous drug use was how HIV first entered and spread throughout Yunnan, which is located just north of the Golden Triangle. As of 2006, Yunnan had 48,951 HIV cases and 3,935 AIDS patients.

In general, intravenous drug users are being surpassed by women and homosexual men as the fastest-growing gender demographics, while in ethnic and socioeconomic terms urbanized Han Chinese are overtaking rural minorities

"HIV/AIDS is spreading beyond the high-risk populations," Zhang told Bloomberg, "It is the responsibility of every citizen to help control the further spread. More needs to be done in a much bigger and more effective manner."

The study focused on 3.2 million blood samples taken in Yunnan between 1989 and 2006. It found that between 1996 and 2006, the proportion of Yunnan HIV cases that were women rose from 7.1 percent to 35 percent. In 1996 the gender ratio for HIV infections was one woman to every 13 men, by 2006 that ratio had changed to 1:1.9.

In addition to gender pattern shifts, ethnic trends have also changed. Between 1989 and 1995, the Dai and Jingpo ethnic minorities in rural southern Yunnan were most at-risk for HIV infection – today the Han ethnic majority accounts for 60 percent of Yunnan's HIV cases.

"The high percentage of infected are now due to sexual contact," Bloomberg cited Zhang as saying. "It has begun to move from farmer, minority groups in rural areas into worker, Han-majority urban settings."

The study's researchers concluded that although less than one percent of China's population is HIV-positive, resolute action must be taken to address China's HIV/AIDS situation before it makes further headway into the general population. The study called for expansion of social programs targeting HIV as well as free medical treatment for the infected.

Mainland vs. Taiwan on LGBT rights

[Posted by Gaysphere, b-side, 01 October 2008]

Homosexuals better off in Taiwan than China

Members of Taiwan's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community marched by the thousands in downtown Taipei Saturday. Taiwan is more accepting of homosexuals than nearby China, where demonstrations of any kind are forbidden. But parade organizers in the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, there is still a long way to go. Thibault Worth reports from Taipei.

Despite Taipei's gloomy weather Saturday, participants came by the thousands waving signs and sporting rainbow-colored shirts or outlandish costumes. The annual gay pride parade attracted 18,000 participants this year, up from 500 when it started in 2003. That makes it the largest gay pride parade in the Chinese-speaking world.

But gay rights leaders say little progress has been made toward revising old laws against gays and lesbians, as well as drafting new civil rights legislation. Two years ago, then Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou spoke at the parade, calling homosexuality a "natural phenomenon." But as president, Mr. Ma has provided little support.

Neither have most members of the legislature. David Lee, a festival organizer, says it's a typical pattern.

Lee says he thinks the status of the Taiwanese gay community is steadily improving. However, he says, politicians typically support gays before elections, then distance themselves after they are in office.

During former president Chen Sui-bian's era, a basic human rights law was drafted that supported same-sex marriage. But the law was never passed by the legislature. Gay rights groups hope with continued pressure, politicians will start to take them more seriously.

MSM and HIV in Hong Kong

[Posted by Edmund Settle on msm-asia Google Group, 19 September 2008]

Hong Kong Medical Director Warns of Rising HIV Prevalence Among MSM
Kaisernetwork.org, 19 September 2008

The senior medical director of Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection, Raymond Ho Lei-ming, on Tuesday warned residents that HIV prevalence in the region is increasing among men who have sex with men, Hong Kong's Standard reports (Chui, The Standard, 9/17).

According to Ho, a study released last year found that HIV prevalence among MSM in Hong Kong is about 4%, up from a 1% HIV prevalence rate in previous years. Ho said prevalence among MSM in the region could top 30% by 2020 if current trends continue.

According to Ho, sex parties and low condom use have been attributed to the increased number of cases. "If we don't do anything, we are looking at a worst-case scenario," Ho said (Benitez, South China Morning Post, 9/17). He called for people at risk of HIV infection to get tested and for greater condom use and other HIV prevention measures (Standard, 9/17).

Loretta Wong Wai-kwan, the CEO of AIDS Concern, a volunteer organization offering HIV/AIDS support and prevention programs in Hong Kong, said that the number of HIV/AIDS clinics in Hong Kong has remained stagnant over the past decade. She added, "How do the existing human resources or facilities cope with the increasing case load?"

China: MSM higher transmission than sex workers

[Posted by Edmund Settle on msm-asia Google Group, 06 September 2008]

AIDS rampant among Beijing gays

Xinhua News Agency, 5 September 2008

BEIJING, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- The transmission of HIV/AIDS among gays in the Chinese capital was even worse than through sex workers, the city's disease control center said on Friday.

Up to 5 percent of homosexuals in the city were infected, compared with 0.5 percent of women sex workers, said He Xiong, the Beijing Centers of Diseases Control and Prevention deputy director.

He attributed the HIV/AIDS increase among gays to the lack of protection measures during sex.

Some gays don't have due knowledge on HIV/AIDS, while condoms were used in less than half their sex acts, he added.

Despite society's increasing tolerance to homosexuals in recent years, discrimination against them still exists. Gays usually kept their sexual orientation secret, making it difficult to improve awareness of the disease among them.

Beijing authorities examined 1 million blood samples between January and July and found 563 people infected. Among them, 118 were permanent residents of the city, according to He.

The percentage of infections from mother to baby, from blood products and needle sharing among drug addicts had dropped, a sign of the city's prevention efforts.

While the prevalence of AIDS in China remains low compared with the total population, the situation is very serious in several provinces affected by drug trafficking and illegal blood donation.

China had registered about 214,000 HIV cases by July 30 last year, but many HIV-positive people were still not registered as having the disease, officials said.

According to the last major survey in 2005 by the Ministry of Health, Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people suffering from HIV in China was estimated at 650,000.

China, Olympics and the gay scene

[Posted by Jan Wijngaarden on msm-asia Google Group, 25 August 2008]

Chinese gay bars open, activism slowed during Olympics

Washington Blade, 15, August 2008

The first paragraph of the Aug. 9 entry on John Amaechi’s blog could have been written by any Olympic tourist guilty of staying up too late to take in the local culture.

“I had to wake up at 6 a.m. this morning, which was not fun considering I had been up until 3 a.m., watching the opening ceremony and hanging out at ‘Destination’ again,” he wrote. “I have to say that it got busy very late — I am officially too old for bars that close at 5 a.m.”

Only Amaechi isn’t just any tourist, and Destination isn’t just any bar. Last year, Amaechi made worldwide headlines when he became the first NBA player to come out as gay, three years after retiring from professional basketball. And Destination is the most popular, contemporary gay bar in Beijing, which some activists had fretted would face closure as the Chinese government tried to strictly manage the city’s image during the Olympic Games.

Now, Amaechi, who once feared being ostracized in the sports world, is in Beijing to broadcast Olympic basketball games for the BBC. And the party at Destination continues, drawing a mix of Chinese citizens, ex-pats, and tourists.

“It is a sizeable club, very pleasant staff, which is not a given in every gay bar,” Amaechi told the Blade.

Amaechi noted a lack of racial diversity — “Not many black people about in Beijing outside of the athletes” — and a lack of dancing on weeknights, but otherwise found Destination to be similar to many high-end Western gay bars.

Destination’s Edmund Yang confirmed that the club, which recently expanded from one floor to two, is open and thriving with the Olympics underway.

“So far we have seen more foreign visitors coming to Destination,” he said. “We had a large crowd on the dance floor on Aug. 9, Saturday. The highlight of the night was most of them singing along to the chorus of ‘YMCA’ when I played this oldie towards the end of my set.”

But while gay nightlife has continued in Beijing during the Olympics, Chinese activists acknowledge that the Games have impacted their work.

“There are many new regulations on security, such as Internet censorship, travel, migrant workers in Beijing,” said Bin Xu, who leads an organization for lesbian and bisexual women based in the Chinese capital. “We have to be careful with our work to avoid intriguing safety concerns.”
The heightened security and general restrictions in place during the Games make activist work almost impossible, agreed Damien Lu, a volunteer with Aibai Culture & Education Center, which operates two gay centers and a gay library.

“Most LGBT groups, particularly those in Beijing and surrounding areas, have completely suspended their work during the Olympic period, partly because of logistic reasons (transportation problems, etc), partly because the Beijing public security has become hysterical and closed down many entertainment venues, gay or otherwise,” said Lu, who lives in Los Angeles but travels to China frequently for gay rights work and maintains constant contact with activists there.

“Since many of these groups’ work consists mainly of conducting outreach at these venues, it effectively made it impossible for them to continue,” he said.

[Rest of the article is found here]

Sexual behavior of MSM students in China

The characterisation of sexual behaviour in Chinese male university students who have sex with other men: a cross-sectional study
7thSpace Interactive, 23 July 2008

The risks for Chinese male university students who have sex with other men (MSM) have not been compared with those for non-MSM students. This information is important for the development of targeted HIV prevention programmes for this population.

Methods: Sexually active MSM and non-MSM students were compared for demographic characteristics, sexual behaviour, and related psychosocial variables using bivariate analyses. The data were a subset drawn from a large-scale cross-sectional questionnaire survey of sexually active male students conducted at two universities in a large city in Zhejiang Province, China, in 2003.

Results: Of 1824 sexually active male students, 68 (3.7%) reported having had sex with a man at least once; 33.8% of these 68 men had also had female partners. Compared with non-MSM students, MSM students were 3-6.5 times more likely to have had sexual encounters with casual or commercial sex partners in the past year or during their lifetime and were three times less likely to have protected sex.

They were three to five times more likely to have had multiple partners and 15 times more likely to have had a sexually transmitted disease (STD). In addition, the MSM students knew half as much about HIV and had less condom-decision than did non-MSM students and were two times more accepting of commercial sex.

However, the MSM students were twice as aware of the risks for HIV infection.

Conclusions: MSM composed 3-4% of the male sexually active university student population studied and was found to be at greater risk than non-MSM students for STD/HIV infection. There is an urgent need for STD/HIV programmes in university health services that take into consideration the sexuality and psychosocial issues of MSM students.

Keywords: China; HIV; Men who have sex with men; Sexual behaviour; Sexually transmitted disease; Student

Chi Heng's work among Shanghai gays

Chi Heng Foundation's quest to keep Shanghai's gays safe

If you find yourself at Eddy's or Shanghai Studio and a stranger hands you a condom along with a brochure, don't be alarmed. He isn't trying to flirt with you; he's trying to help you. Chances are that he is a volunteer from the Chi Heng Foundation. Based in Hong Kong, the foundation, whose name means "wisdom in action," was created by Hong Kong-born and Harvard-educated businessman Chung To.

Currently, their foundation runs two projects: one for AIDS orphans and another for AIDS prevention and education. With offices in six Chinese cities (including Shanghai), they distribute condoms and informational brochures throughout Shanghai's various gay hot spots. They also run a Shanghai-based hotline (800 988-1929, 6380-8239), offering counseling to gays and lesbians all over China.

Intrigued, I recently went to Chi Heng's headquarters to find out more. At their offices, I spoke with Simon Tang and Ray Mahoney, two of the approximately 200 workers and volunteers for the organization. They gave me a report about the current HIV/AIDS situation among Shanghai's gay population.

The good news for Shanghai gays is that the infection rates are low compared to other places, but as a common destination for business travelers and tourists, dangers still exist. For the Shanghai gay population, "It's about practice rather than knowledge," Tang explains. In a country where the government reported rate of new HIV infections is small, getting the message across can be a bit tricky with every age group having their own special characteristics. For young Chinese gay men, they're used to the lectures about safe sex, but they're tired of it. "At the clubs, they don't care what you are talking about," Tang says. "They have AIDS fatigue," he continues. For older generations of Chinese gays, getting them to understand the dangers HIV can also be difficult. For example, I was told that for older Chinese gay men, wearing a condom was like "washing your feet with your shoes on." Some of them have never used condom. "They think it's weird," Tang informs me.

And yet there's another problem. Mahoney mentions that at a recent AIDS conference in Beijing, "I was the only one with a friend who had died from AIDS." With its hard work with the gay scene in Shanghai, Chi Heng's a great resource to help our community become stronger and healthier.

Pete

GLAAD's Beijing olympics resource kit

I am pleased to share with you a new LGBT media resource for the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Our toolkits give journalists tools they can use to tell our community's stories and report on our issues in a fair, accurate and inclusive manner. This resource is a tool for you to leverage with media outlets to encourage LGBT angles within Olympic Games and general sports coverage.

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Resource Kit is available here.

It is available in English, Chinese (both traditional and simplified), Français, Deutsch and Español.

The toolkit provides reporters with information on the following topics:

• Openly gay athletes competing at the 2008 Beijing Olympics
• A history of gay and transgender athletes at the Olympics
• International Olympic Committee policy towards transgender Olympians
• Gay and transgender rights in China
• Story possibilities
• Terminology
• Media contacts

We hope you find this resource informative and helpful. Please let us know if you do utilize it with any of your organizing, public education or advocacy efforts. Feel free to email me with any questions about using the kit in your respective LGBT work.

A very special thanks to Russ Rivoallan, Joel Sidwell and Damien Lu for the translation assistance.

Andy Marra

• Asian Pacific Islander Media Strategist
• Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)
• 104 W. 29th Street, 4th Floor
• New York, NY 10001
• t. (212) 629-3322
• f. (212) 629-3225
• marra@glaad.org
• http://www.glaad.org/
  

---

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

Documentary on Gay Men in China - Tongzhi In Love

Three young men navigate the dilemmas of being gay in modern China, torn between the lure of big city life and the demands of Chinese tradition. “Frog” Cui and his friends live and work in cosmopolitan Beijing, reveling in the freedom that it affords them. But does their happiness come at the expense of their mothers and fathers? Can they be gay, and still be good sons?

The film is directed by Ruby Yang who, with producer Thomas Lennon, won a documentary Oscar in 2006.

http://www.tongzhiinlove.com/index.html

UN Technical Working Group on MSM and HIV, Nanjing, China, July 10 - 15

The UN Technical Working Group on MSM and HIV (China) will hold its next meeting in Nanjing on July 10 through July 15. Because of the recent events in Sichuan and the convergence of the Olympics and International AIDS Conference (Mexico City) dates, we are holding two consecutive working group meetings. Over 70 invited community participants including MSM living with HIV are expected to attend.

Dates:

• July 10 – 11 - MSM community strategy consultation session
• July 12 – 15 - MSM joint community action plan workshop

Expected Outcomes:

1. MSM community strategy to respond to HIV and AIDS drafted and outcomes endorsed
2. Skills to identify and develop local partnership (local MSM CBOs, local health departments and local MSM business establishments) strengthened
3. Capacity to develop joint community action plans and funding proposals inline with China’s national MSM strategy enhanced – including increased converge, sustainability and monitoring
4. Potential mechanism to facilitate funding to CBOs through national and local partners established
5. National (China) Coalition of MSM Networks initiated (modeled on APCOM)

Partnering Organizations:

• Chengdu Tongle Health Center, Beijing Gender Health Institute
• Asia Pacific Coalition on Males Sexual Health (APCOM) Board Member
• Hong Kong AIDS Foundation
• China STD/AIDS Association (national/local); China Preventive Medicine Association
• SCAWCO, China CDC/NCAIDS, Nanjing STD Center, Jiangsu Provincial CDC
• Gates Foundation including local programme officers from 13 urban areas
• UN Technical Working Group on MSM and HIV (UNDP, International AIDS Alliance)

Support for these meetings was provided by UNAIDS PAF 4, Ford Foundation, International AIDS Alliance and UNDP China.