第42章 View from the villages(18)

“When high expectations meet the cruel reality, the great psychological blow thatoften occurs is easily converted into hatred and the desire for revenge against society,”

he said. “Young migrant workers are not just moving home. This is a total migrationof culture, which involves a total transformation in living, concept, social value andpsychology.

“They need more chances to gain education, skills and knowledge. We can guide andteach them to change their concept of life and social value. Society also needs to be moretolerant and respect them.”

Once their problems are solved, this new generation can drive China’s futuredevelopment, say analysts.

“Among other groups, migrant workers have the greatest potential to boost domesticconsumption in the future,” said Fan Jianping, director of the State Information Center’seconomic research department. “Authorities should give them more choice and make iteasier for them to settle in cities.”

Between 150 and 200 million migrant workers are expected to move to cities, whichmeans greater spending on housing, education, communication and healthcare, said WangXiaoguang, a researcher with the National Development and Research Commission, thenation’s economic planning body.

Experts also expect the widening wealth gap between urban and rural residents willbe closed, or at least narrowed, as more farmers - the majority of migrant workers - areregistered as urban residents.

The central government has invested large amounts of money in rural development,especially on infrastructure. Many of the country’s 500,000 villages are already linked toroad networks and have modern amenities. “But none of these efforts can stop farmersfrom leaving their homes for the cities,” said Dang Guoying, a researcher for the ChineseAcademy of Social Sciences’ institute of rural development. “Sometimes, the better theroads are, the more farmers will use them to go to cities.”

“It is wrong to suggest farmers, who make up more than half of the population, canenjoy the fruits of modernization in the countryside. Only when there are fewer villagesin the countryside, while still keeping some professional farms, can farmers enjoy modernsociety as much as urban residents.”

Wang Shanshan contributed to the storyMarch 23, 2010

Fight against AIDS has a long way to go

Campaigners say it is increasingly difficult to trace fearful prostitutes driven underground.

Duan Yan and Shan Juan in Yunnan report.

Xiao Xiao wiped tears from her reddened eyes. She starts crying whenever she thinksabout her days as a prostitute in a nightclub.

Sitting in a quiet coffee shop in Yuxi, Yunnan province, the petite, pale-skinned 30-year-old had agreed to talk about her struggle with HIV but became upset when the subjectturned to her “disappearance” in 2002.

That year, she said, all employees at the club were given blood tests.

“I didn’t know it was a HIV test,” she said, although not long after getting the results,she left her job.

For three years, officials with the city’s center for disease control (CDC) were unable totrace Xiao (not her real name).

She reappeared when she was hospitalized with a life-threatening fever.

“We were trying to contact you (all that time) but we couldn’t find you,” Li Lianxue,a doctor with the Hongta district CDC, said to Xiao as they chatted about the past over acoffee in November 2010.

“I had no idea”, was her only reply.

As China marks World AIDS Day on Dec 1, anti-AIDS campaigners say keeping trackof HIV-infected sex workers is one of their greatest challenges - not least because of policecrackdowns.

“Crackdowns do little for disease control, they just drive prostitutes furtherunderground, which undermines efforts to reach them and deliver intervention education,’’

said Jing Jun, director of Tsinghua University’s social policy institute.

Following the closure of an infamous nightclub in Beijing in June 2010, authoritiesacross China, including in Yuxi, launched fresh campaigns against the sex industry.

“We are determined to put an end to ... illegal activities in the entertainment places,”

said Qian Jin, deputy director of the security corps under Beijing’s public security bureau.

However, health professionals in Hongta, who have spent eight years raising awarenessof HIV and AIDS, fear plans to shut the 100 or so “entertainment venues” they regularly visitwill mean losing all contacts with the sex workers employed there, including those infected.

Of the 614 women given health exams in the district in 2010, only one tested positivefor the virus. She has already disappeared from the CDC’s radar, admitted Li Lianxue.

“This year, we’ve given out more than 100,000 condoms at these venues but it’s far fromenough,” said Ma Yi, deputy director of Hongta CDC, who said that a prostitute at a “hairsalon” can use up to eight condoms a day.

Flipping through the monthly free condom distribution records, Li Jinlin, the CDCdoctor in charge of contacting venues, said more than 70 “hair salons” were closed by policein November 2010, meaning they now only have records for sex workers at 21 nightclubs.

“Experience has shown that cracking down on sex work and driving it furtherunderground is likely to make sex workers reluctant to accept services and make it difficultfor health workers to gain access to them,” said Mark Stirling, China coordinator forUNAIDS. “Interventions that respect the rights of sex workers can be highly effective.”

As prostitution is illegal in China, there is no official number for how many people areinvolved in the business, although experts estimate the figure is roughly 3 million nationwide.

Police used to take possession of condoms as evidence to arrest a suspected sex workeror customer. However, that rule has been changed in Yuxi as part of a trial project to bettercoordinate the work of CDC officials and public security bureaus in AIDS prevention.