[REPORT] HIV Real-Name Testing: Is China Ready? (2012)

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By Meg Davis and Shen Tingting

About 4 months ago, Guangxi and Hunan provinces announced plans to require real-name testing for HIV, and the Ministry of Health expressed support stating it should be a national policy. Immediately there was a huge outcry from the China Association of People Living with HIV/AIDS, the China Gay Male Health Forum, and others.
A joint report from Asia Catalyst and Korekata AIDS Law Center calls on China to protect patient confidentiality, provide counseling, and end compulsory testing in order to encourage more people to get tested for HIV. Without these basic rights, Chinese government programs that aim to expand HIV testing will not succeed.

The following briefly outlines our joint report and conclusions, but first we want to tell you about a community-run HIV testing program right here in Beijing, which has been dealing with these issues on the ground.

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[UPDATE] April – June 2012

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AIDS 2012 Comes To Our Backyard 

The largest AIDS conference in the world, brining together over 20,000 individuals, is coming to Washington DC this summer. Asia Catalyst is pleased to award travel scholarships to help four Chinese AIDS activists take part in AIDS 2012, the world’s largest AIDS conference. The four activists – three women and one man — include the mother of a child living with HIV/AIDS, a former sex worker, a rights advocate, and a youth leader. They will speak at the conference, join in roundtable discussions, and share policy recommendations with the UN and international agencies. Together, they represent the next generation of civil society leaders in China’s fight against HIV/AIDS.
In preparation for the International AIDS Conference in Washington D.C. in July, the China team, together with three student volunteers from the International School of Beijing, has been supporting our three Chinese delegates to finalize their presentations, posters, and design brochures about their organizations.

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[COMMENTARY] On the Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services／关于《互联网信息服务管理办法（修订草案征求意见稿）》的意见

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To:The National Internet Information Office,Ministry
of Industry and Information Technology 
国家互联网信息办公室、工业和信息化部：

In response to the Notice of Soliciting Public Comment on the Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services (Draft for Public Comment)
issued by the two departments on June 7, 2012, I set out below my comment.

根据二〇一二年六月七日两部门发布的”关于《互联网信息服务管理办法（修订草案征求意见稿）》公开征求意见的通知”（以下简称”征求意见的通知”），兹提出如下意见。

Section 1 of Article 15 of the Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services (Draft for Public Comment) (hereinafter referred to as “the Draft”) stipulates that any Internet information service provider which provides services of Internet users disseminating information to the public should require any of the Internet users to register real identity information. 

随同征求意见的通知公布的《互联网信息服务管理办法（修订草案征求意见稿）》（以下简称”征求意见稿”）第十五条第一款规定，”提供由互联网用户向公众发布信息服务的互联网信息服务提供者，应当要求用户用真实身份信息注册。”

对此，我基于如下所述理由提出删除该款规定的意见。

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[COMMENTARY] What We Talk About When We Talk About Outreach

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By Mike Frick 

Many of our partners in China engage in “outreach” to marginalized communities such as sex workers, drug users, or men who have sex with men, that are at increased risk of contracting HIV. We hear a lot about “outreach,” but what do these activities actually look like in practice? China program director Gisa Hartmann and I experienced outreach first-hand when we accompanied Lanlan, a member of Asia Catalyst’s NGO Leadership Cohort, on an afternoon with female sex workers in Tianjin.

Lanlan is the founder and executive director of Tianjin’s Xin’ai Home, a grassroots organization dedicated to promoting the health and rights of female sex workers in Tianjin. Over the course of four hours, Lan Lan showed us two different outreach environments: a bathhouse with about twenty-five sex workers and a street with dozens of hair salons and massage parlors, each staffed by two or three women.

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[PROFILE] Yuan Wenli: Mobilizing Women Affected by HIV/AIDS in China

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Yuan Wenli, originally from Henan province, an area ravaged by HIV/AIDS, started Henan Golden Sunshine in 2005, after her son was infected with HIV. The organization aims to help women and children living with HIV/AIDS and to incorporate women’s voices in advocacy in China. Subsequently Yuan helped establish the Henan Regional Network of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in 2010 and in 2012 became the secretary
of Women’s Network Against AIDS in China. Yuan will be coming to the International AIDS Conference, AIDS 2012, in Washington this July on a full scholarship, and will present her own talk Mainstreaming Gender into The National Global Fund Strategy in China: A Case Study from a Grassroots Women’s NGO Network on Thursday July 26th in English.

Yuan spoke to Asia Catalyst about her own work and what she is most looking forward to at AIDS 2012 this year.

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