Social Inscription of Sexualities in an Era of AIDS

Contemporary Chinese society provides several socially pre-constructed models of representations and practices that interact to produce tensions that must be managed, and values, behaviour and actions are subject to renegotiation: the first system arises from pluralist and dynamic Chinese tradition (local traditional discourse), the second is twofolded—one was inherited from the 1919 intellectual and reform movement in the historical context of the fall of the Empire and the first republican revolution (1911), the other was introduced by Marxist ideology and nurtured the project to construct a socialist society (official discourse); the third reflects the global model that is producing changes in China just as it is elsewhere (local global or ‘glocalised’ discourse). Except the first model, the others are broad projects of modernization of the Chinese society as well. As in other Asian developing countries, the AIDS epidemic was denied for more than a decade (1985-1996) by the Chinese authorities and not publicly acknowledged as a major epidemic until 2001 (Gill, Okie, 2007). From 2003, economical stakes related to SARS and Avian flu epidemic risk succeeded in mobilising official actors, prompting their actions and rising their awareness about epidemic risk from infectious diseases including AIDS (Kaufman et al. 2006: 4-5). At the end of 2003, a broad response based on a national programme stemmed from these changes, showing a strong shift in policies assessing a striking change in the government approach. In April 2005, the law on infectious diseases was revised and AIDS was removed from the list of diseases requiring mandatory quarantine (FIDH, 2005). In 2006, were issued regulations for HIV/AIDS prevention and control, highlighting the responsibilities of both central and local governments and ‘stipulating the rights and responsibilities of infected persons’ (Gill, Okie, 2007: 1801). Ideological and behavioural models underlying sexual life of individuals are transmitted in messages from family or the State through conduits such as schools or family planning organisations and through new, uncontrollable messages from a society on the path