Beijing's HIV/Aids prevention strategy continues to be hindered by bad policies despite major improvements from the central government in increasing public awareness about the deadly disease and health care for infected patients, says an influential American scholar.
Bates Gill said the lack of local-level implementation of central government-mandated HIV/Aids policies and continued harassment of Chinese activists were the products of the Chinese political system and not mere hitches in policy implementation.
'Such problems are not technical issues that can be solved through spending more money ... these are policy issues,' said Mr Gill, the Freeman Chair for China Studies at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
He was speaking at a Tuesday forum on China's health and environmental challenges held at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Centre.
Mr Gill made his assessment after recently visiting the mainland where he met Chinese health officials and experts. He said government statistics showed the country had 650,000 HIV-positive patients in 2005, with 70,000 estimated new HIV infections in that year alone.
To counter this, Beijing has adopted an aggressive HIV/Aids policy, which has included President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao meeting infected patients in an attempt to fight the public stigma surrounding the disease.
Last year, the central government increased its disease-related funding to US$18 million from US$12.5 million in 2002, as well as enacting a ban on discrimination against people with HIV/Aids.
