China and AIDS--The Time to Act Is Now

While the world has watched 20 years of unfolding misery in sub-Saharan Africa, the Chinese AIDS epidemic has been steadily gathering momentum. Because of China9s enormous population and growing importance in the global economy, an epidemic could have serious repercussions. Kaufman and Jing say that China has the unique opportunity to learn from the mistakes and accumulated wisdom of the last 20 years. The Chinese government9s recent willingness to tackle the HIV problem is encouraging, but the authors of this Policy Forum argue that the AIDS battle must be fought at the local level, where localized epidemics are expanding unchecked.