Sinic conundrum: A history of HIV/AIDS in the people's republic of china

China's HIV/AIDS case rate continues to grow despite national and World Health Organization efforts. Reports in Western journals are nearly nonexistent, and what is in print does not provide evidence of the infection's historical progress. I traced progress of the infection since my last report (1991) and based current findings on unobtrusive data [HIV blood screening (assays)] provided by State epidemiology‐prevention stations and on ethnographic interviews conducted with public health officials from the Center for AIDS Surveillance, Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, and epidemiology personnel in Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Shanghai during fieldwork in China in 1992 and 1993. Cultural, social, economic, and political factors involved in China's historical attempts to manage a growing HIV case rate are discussed. Together, data reveal a widening geographic and social distribution of the virus over time, which, in conclusion, should now qualify China's HIV status as epidemic.