China may be keeping new estimates for the number of HIV infections secret because they are lower than previously published figures and could undermine the government's credibility, a US researcher said yesterday.
This could be the reason why the official HIV figure has remained at 840,000 for the past two years, according to Bates Gill, a China expert at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"What I've heard is that with further modeling and more fine-tuning of their approaches, they now internally have come to the conclusion that the number may be actually lower than 840,000," he told a briefing in Beijing.
The new estimate, if it exists, has not been made public because of concern about the political impact of such an announcement, he said.
"Clearly the immediate reaction might be, `Oh my God, they really are meddling with the numbers and they're trying to put forward a picture which is less serious than it actually is,'" Gill said.
A Chinese health ministry official in charge of monitoring the spread of HIV confirmed yesterday the figure was still 840,000, but said a new estimate would be released shortly.
"We're calculating a new figure. It will be issued by the end of this month," the official told reporters, declining to give his name.
The figure of 840,000 HIV-positive cases, as of the end of 2003, is regularly repeated by officials.
It is an estimate arrived at using modeling techniques, and the result of a cooperative effort between China, the World Health Organization and the UN Program of HIV/AIDS.
Beijing has only directly diagnosed HIV in a total of 120,000 people, according to Gill, who regularly travels to China to meet with health ministry and other senior government officials.
"What I'm saying is that nine out of 10 people or so in China today, according to the government's own statistics, who are HIV positive don't know it," he said. "And the government doesn't know who they are or where they are."
The authorities only have a rough general sense of where HIV is prevalent, believing it to be more common among intravenous drug users and sex workers, he said.
"That for me has obvious implications for the continued spread of this disease in China, regardless of what the precise number might be," he said.
The UN has warned that China may be on the brink of an AIDS epidemic, with 10 million HIV-positive people by the end of the decade.
According to official data, 45 percent of HIV carriers were infected through intravenous drug use, 25 percent through blood transfusions and about 30 percent through unsafe sex -- but that figure has been rising steadily.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese