Nicholas Netzer
Contemporary China 370
Dr. Charles Hammond
Journal #12
As of Friday, November 28th CNN reports that China started running its first officially back condom ads in the recent battle against AIDS. The advertisement shows a woman saying that she feels much safer using condoms when she has sex with her boyfriend. The advert is about 30 seconds long. Condom advertisements appeared on the backs of buses and on television commercials for a short while in the late 1990’s, but were pulled shortly afterwards. They violated certain restrictions and codes China had against broadcasting material that is obscene and sexual in nature. Both of those forms of advertisement received a lot of criticism.
Nearly ten percent of HIV cases are credited to unsafe sex practices in China. The explosion of the sex industry in China has not helped the prevention of AIDS, the practice of safer sex or endorsement of it. Sadly, it is believed that most of the people whom suffer from HIV/AIDS in Central China got the virus from blood selling schemes and bad blood transfusion practices which translated into a fairly large spread of the virus.
Moving on with the whole disease trend, the current year has seen a large leap in rabies cases, nearly 63% increase. The blame has been put on unreliable vaccination practices, a large surge in dog ownership in China and the public’s low awareness of as they call it, mad dog disease. Another factor that has contributed is wild dogs running on the outskirts of towns and in rural areas. By the end of September nearly 1300 people were killed by rabies which is already a lot more than the 1003 people that died from the disease in 2002. Interestingly enough, pet dogs were shunned in the days of Mao because they were seen as a sign of bourgeois.
