China is taking an important, albeit overdue, step. It's acknowledging the AIDS epidemic within its borders and acting to halt it. Or at least that's the spin coming out of Beijing these days.
It recently admitted what the outside world already knew: AIDS is a growing problem for the world's most populous nation.
The government also plans to spend lots of money on the crisis. It even appears to have freed up China's state-compliant media to cover the story. Testimonials of victims are popping up everywhere. So are AIDS prevention advertisements.
But is Beijing really rolling up its sleeves where HIV-AIDS is concerned? Hardly, and the world's fastest-growing economy will suffer for it.
"Beijing needs to contain this crisis before it erodes not just its international image, but also domestic public health," says Tom Plate, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. President Jiang Zemin's (江澤民) "No. 1 social issue is now AIDS in China. Tension with Taiwan and the Falun Gong are mere sniffles." China figures it has as many as 600,000 cases on its hands.
Most of those, Beijing claims, are related to drug use. Yet experts generally think China's caseload is at least double the official estimates. Thanks in part to Beijing's slow response, officials at UNAIDS, a UN program, think China could have 20 million HIV-AIDS cases by 2010.
With surveys indicating many Chinese are ill-informed about how the virus spreads, such estimates seem more than plausible.
The HIV-AIDS message isn't getting out as activists and non- government organizations had hoped. Even now, many media reports suggest victims typically contract HIV-AIDS while overseas or engaging in risky drug use. Yet rather than spinning the issue, Beijing needs to tackle it -- and fast.
The good news is that developing countries like China are realizing that AIDS isn't just a health issue, but an economic one of gaping proportions. It will weigh exponentially on Chinese and global growth in years ahead.
That explains why finance ministers and central bankers now include HIV-AIDS in discussions about the international economy.
Lawmakers from Washington to Tokyo mull options to deal with the epidemic. No longer is HIV-AIDS a peripheral concern for financial markets. Today, it stands as the issue for many developing economies.
Halting the spread of HIV-AIDS, according to researcher Yuan Jianhua, isn't just about compassion. The epidemic will boost China's medical fees, require costly prevention campaigns and shrink labor forces, reducing worker productivity. A slowdown in the national economy would be inevitable.
"What has happened in many African countries has taught us a lesson," Yuan told conference attendees in Beijing. "In fact, the impact of HIV-AIDS is no longer supposition but reality in China. Now we have to consider the AIDS issue from the perspective of state security."
While sub-Saharan Africa has been hardest hit, it's only the beginning. Scientists believe Asia -- a region far more connected to the global economy -- will be the epicenter of a fast-worsening HIV-AIDS crisis over the next 15 years. HIV-AIDS also is spreading rapidly in the states of the former Soviet Union and Latin America. It's constructive to see governments like China stepping up efforts against it.
The bad news is that China continues to downplay its crisis.
RSS