(《华盛顿邮报》，2003年12月2日)
 
Chinese Leaders Break AIDS Taboo
Premier's Appearance With Patients Signals End to Silence About Epidemic
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 2, 2003; Page A14

BEIJING, Dec. 1 -- Premier Wen Jiabao appeared on Chinese state television Monday night and comforted AIDS patients with pats on the arm and an appeal for his nation to treat them with "care and love," becoming the first senior Chinese leader to address the country's fast-spreading AIDS epidemic in public.

Wen's visit with three patients at a Beijing hospital broke long-standing political and social taboos, and appeared to signal a new commitment by the ruling Communist Party to fight a disease that has infected as many as 1.5 million people in China, but has been ignored, played down and covered up by government officials for years.

The report on the national evening news showed Wen shaking hands with patients, and later the camera zoomed in as he squeezed the arm of a patient sitting to his left and patted it gently. Another Politburo member, Wu Yi, also shook hands with patients. Both officials wore red ribbons, the international symbol of AIDS awareness, for their visit, which was timed to mark World AIDS Day.

In a nation where prejudice against people with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is widespread and where officials have profited from blood collection schemes that spread it, no member of the powerful Politburo had been shown on state television visiting AIDS patients. Nor has any Chinese leader of Wen's rank discussed the subject at length in a public setting.

Wen asked the patients about their health and their families, then pledged to put AIDS prevention and treatment high on the government's agenda, urging officials at all levels to act with a "spirit of high responsibility to the people" and calling for a "struggle with full confidence" against the disease.

"All of society must be filled with an atmosphere of care and love and helpfulness," Wen said. "The kind of care and love we advocate is based on equality, opposition to prejudice and concern."

Chinese and Western AIDS activists hailed Wen's visit to Ditan Hospital as a breakthrough in their campaign to raise public awareness of a disease the United Nations has warned could infect 10 million to 20 million Chinese in the next six years and cause a "catastrophe of unimaginable human suffering, economic loss and social devastation."

Wen's appearance also reinforced the impression that China's new leaders, who took office in March, are more open-minded and more willing than their predecessors to press the country's rigid political system in behalf of weak members of society.

Li Xiguang, a prominent journalism scholar at Beijing's Qinghua University who has criticized the state-run media for stigmatizing people with AIDS, noted that Wen's visit took place less than a month after former president Bill Clinton visited China and was shown on television hugging a young man with HIV.

"We can see that the new generation of Chinese leaders are eager to learn anything good from others, and they are quick to take action," he said. "Political communication in China has entered a new era."

In recent weeks, the momentum in China for action against AIDS has been building. Last month, China Central Television aired its first public service ad endorsing condom use after a drawn-out debate with censors that had lasted years. And a 20-part drama about a woman found to have HIV after receiving a blood transfusion from her boyfriend is scheduled to be shown this week.

The government has also begun distributing free antiretroviral drugs to more than 5,000 rural AIDS patients and announced plans to expand the program to 35,000 patients by 2008, although the effort has been hampered by China's weak health care system and the prohibitive cost of key drugs marketed by Western pharmaceutical companies.

In September, the Health Ministry promised free treatment for AIDS patients in economic difficulty, but Wen went further, pledging free medical care for all people with AIDS, free anonymous AIDS testing, free treatment to prevent transmission of the virus from pregnant women to their babies and free education for orphans whose parents have died of AIDS.

AIDS activists praised Wen's remarks, but warned that sustained leadership would be needed to force government officials obsessed with hiding bad news to follow through on his promises.

"Wen's public appearance is significant, but we need to see what actions follow," said Wan Yanhai, a former Health Ministry official who was detained by state security last year for distributing a government report about the AIDS epidemic. "The leadership needs to do more than visit AIDS patients in the hospitals. It needs to support their activities and support AIDS activists."

Chinese officials have been reluctant to allow an open discussion about AIDS in part because they do not want to scare foreign investors, and in part because they fear they would be blamed for the epidemic. Hundreds of thousands of poor farmers contracted HIV by selling blood in the early 1990s at state hospitals and private clinics run by local officials and their friends.

Limits on state media have contributed to a general lack of knowledge about the disease and how it spreads, and to widespread discrimination against those infected. Children with HIV are routinely expelled from Chinese schools and many Chinese hospitals refuse to treat AIDS patients.