The 7th Taipei Conference on HIV/AIDS was held from July 17 to 20. I was invited to speak at the conference because I was conducting an epidemiological study of men who frequent gay saunas in Taiwan, commissioned by the Center for Disease Control.
That evening, newspapers and TV gave the report extensive coverage, which has stirred discussion in society and the gay community. There were even people who suggested that I was sensationalizing gay issues in the media.
My views on the research were solicited both directly and through my assistant. After the conference, I saw front-page headlines such as "8-way Sex in Gay Saunas" and claims that gay men in Taiwan go to gay saunas once every three weeks on average.
In the case of the headline, my assistant had given a figure only after she could no longer bear the reporter's persistent questions, and she emphasized that this figure was an exceptional instance. Regarding the average use of saunas, my research was misrepresented. My findings were that among gay sauna users, men infected with HIV-1 went to gay saunas once every three weeks, as opposed to once every five weeks for those who had not contracted HIV-1.
Even more absurd was one TV channel's report that there were 17-year-old and 73-year-old men contracting HIV via sexual intercourse in gay saunas. My report indicated that in gay saunas, the average age of the 36 HIV-positive people was 29, with an age range from 18 to 49. The average age of the 430 HIV-negative people was 34, with an age range from 17 to 73.
These reports leave me concerned about the professional standards of some Taiwanese media, as such coverage of subjects such as HIV/AIDS prevention and homosexual relationships lacks prudence and respect.
As opposed to heterosexuals, gay men -- or other men who have sex with men -- are especially susceptible to HIV/AIDS. Therefore, the government should offer more funding to help this community combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In the past four years, a joint project conducted by the AIDS Prevention and Research Center at National Yang-Ming University and the Living with Hope Organization has screened 1,578 people in gay saunas, and among them, 108 people turned out to be infected with HIV-1.
If these HIV-1 carriers did not receive HIV testing and did not know they had the virus, then they risked transmitting HIV to others. If, on average, these people could transmit the virus to one person per year, our research project has directly prevented 108 men from contracting HIV/AIDS each year. Moreover, the 1,470 HIV-negative people who anonymously received our HIV screening and counseling could adopt safer behavior. This is a very cost-effective project, and the government should consider promoting this screening strategy in southern Taiwan as well.
Gay saunas are venues for gay men to make friends. Health authorities should face the health problems inside these places. Kevin Frost, vice president of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, learned that some of Taiwan's gay sauna owners are reluctant to distribute condoms to their customers. He recommended that the Taiwan government demand that sauna owners offer condoms, and that if they refused to comply, the government should close their businesses. The gay community should also exert its collective power to make sauna owners provide free condoms.
Finally, I would like to express my deepest apology for the distress that the media's use of my research caused the gay community.
Arthur Chen is chairman of the Institute of Public Health and Director of the AIDS Prevention and Research Center at National Yang-Ming University.
TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
RSS