BACK	CHINA-AIDS: Homosexuals are Seen, But Still Hard to Reach

But what makes it distinctive is the large gathering of gay people who hang around in the bar.

The gathering remains a clandestine affair, no doubt, allowed to thrive only after midnight. Still, it reflects signs of some growing openness about homosexuality in China, after nearly half a century of tight police surveillance and public censure.

But while this may signal some amount of openness, it also highlights the difficulties of reaching a community that is seen as a high risk group for HIV/AIDS.

Figures for people infected with HIV and for homosexuals in China both appear insignificant given the size of the country's population, and compared with spread of the epidemic in other Asian countries.

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine estimate that there were about 200,000 HIV infections by the end of 1996, compared with more than three million in India.

Although very few studies on homosexuality have been carried out in China, some experts put the number of homosexuals at 12 million, others put the figure at about 30 million.

Whatever the figure, the point is that the underground existence of homosexuality in China tends to makes preventive education and control of AIDS more difficult.

Homosexuality in China is as ancient as Chinese civilization itself, and the first historical records of homosexual activities go back to the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.- 220 A.D.). For centuries, homosexuals and and their relationships were described in classical novels as part and parcel of China's civic life.

All this changed in the beginning of the century, as modern China was trying painfully to part with its feudal past. After the Communists came to power in 1949, homosexuality began to be seen as a social disgrace and people suspected of engaging in homosexual relations risked being rounded up by police.

Things changed slightly when the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping put China on the track of market reforms in the late seventies, and opened up the economy to the outside world. A little bit of 'laissez-faire' attitude has replaced the puritan buttresses of pre-reform society.

''We don't fear to get together any more,'' says one of the guests at 'Half and Half', saying there are already several hangouts for homosexuals in Beijing such as public parks and bars.

Still, he prefers not to be named because anonymity is the best way to avoid any kind of trouble in China.

While the police are not a source of trouble any longer, there remains very little understanding and acceptance of open homosexuality. Experts say this is one of the barriers to effective work on preventive education work and control of AIDS with the homosexual community.

The United Nations Development Programme is giving Beijing 1.89 million U.S. dollars to help fund a programme aimed at minimising the risks of the AIDS epidemic in the next four years, the second UNDP grant for AIDS since 1993.

A couple of medium-term plans for action have been drafted by Chinese authorities since the first AIDS case was reported in China in 1985, and a long-range one is to come out this year. A new National Center for AIDS control will also be put up later this year to coordinate the activities of different institutions.

But despite these efforts, the number of AIDS cases is rising. Today, only one of China's 32 provinces and autonomous regions -- the western region of Qinghai -- has not reported any AIDS cases. Moreover, the scope of groups at risk of acquiring HIV is expanding alarmingly.

What was once considered a ''foreign disease'' limited to some businessmen and returning overseas labourers in China's coastal regions, has affected farmers even in underdeveloped hinterlands, unemployed people and migrant workers. At greatest risk are drug addicts, prostitutes and commercial plasma donors.

Homosexuals are by no means among the greatest numbers of HIV cases, and make up only an estimated 10 per cent of HIV infections in China.

But the community is among the groups of people most difficult to reach for prevention and control, and there are not enough services and mechanisms for them to try to make use of when it comes to HIV/AIDS.

The Chinese Association for Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS Prevention and Control has set up an AIDS hotline in Beijing, but few homosexuals have called for advice.

Dr Xu Lianzhi, one of those involved in the project, says the hotline receives calls primarily from people with STDs. Homosexual callers are few and far between because they fear disclosure, she says.

Their real fear, though, is social discrimination. Chinese homosexuals come from different walks of life and their positions at work or at home could be endangered by their admission of their homosexuality, which is still rejected in Chinese society.

''It has all to do with the idea that one shouldn't differ from the others,'' says a visitor to 'Half and Half'. A sociologist, he argues that this way of thinking has been instilled during decades of Communist rule and is so powerful that homosexual activities are seen as dangerous outbreaks of individualism.

Prevailing social discrmination may well be one of the reasons why there is no hotline on AIDS especially for homosexuals, some experts say.

The sole attempt to set one up in 1992, led by a research fellow named Wan Yanhai at the Department of Medical Anthropology with Beijing Modern Management Institute, ended with negative results after a year. The project was terminated and Wan was dismissed from his job.

Wan, now a scholar at the University of Southern California in the United States, had distributed newsletters on AIDS during a visit to China which reportedly alarmed the police.

''In China there is a wall between what can be said and what can't be said,'' the sociologist said. ''Some of my gay friends feel threatened by AIDS, but they simply don't dare to go and ask.'' (END/IPS/AP-HE/AB/JS/97)