Spread of AIDS in rural China: Legacy of capitalist 
restoration

In a rural village in Hunan province, China, AIDS is 
becoming an epidemic that is a tragic example of capitalist 
profit motive at the expense of public health. In Hunan 
province alone, more than 1 million people may have become 
infected with HIV from selling their blood. 

In the early 
1990s Chinese companies making biological products started 
going to poor villages and paying people for their donated 
blood to use to make cheap plasma. The blood from several 
donors was mixed together in huge tubs. The plasma was 
extracted, and then the contaminated blood was pumped back 
into the donors. Because of tradition, the Chinese people 
did not want to simply donate their blood because it was 
thought to upset the balance of the body. The donors would 
get US $5.00 every time they donated, which was a huge sum 
to the peasants. 

The villagers are now blaming the epidemic 
on the local public health officials who organized the blood 
drives. One woman said: "Our town is really poor. We had a 
very heavy tax burden to pay the local officials and we had 
no money, so we sold our blood to pay the local taxes and 
also to support our children through school and make a 
living. They told us it was harmless and we believed them. 
Everybody in the village was selling blood. We didn't give 
it a second thought."(1) 

Such trust in local public health 
officials is a legacy of the Maoist revolution, which the 
current state-capitalist regime exploits. Maoism was 
responsible for huge advances in health care in China, 
including doubling the life expectancy and reducing infant 
mortality. Equitable distribution of food and self-
sufficient agriculture was also responsible for reducing 
starvation. No one needed to sell his or her blood for food 
when China was Maoist (from 1949-1976). 

Aside from the 
profit to be had from the trade in blood products, the AIDS 
crisis in rural China is compounded by lack of information 
and slow government health response. This is a consequence 
of the overthrow of socialism in 1976. Basic public heath 
measures (such as AIDS education or monitoring) are seen as 
unprofitable expenses; the rural population gets less 
attention than wealthy cities; and the state-capitalist 
regime does not want to admit to an AIDS problem for 
prestige reasons. 

Of course, the united $tates has little 
reason to be smug -- it was also slow to fight the AIDS 
epidemic and still does not combat it energetically in 
oppressed communities within and without u.$. borders.

Notes: 1. NPR, All Things Considered, 30 May 2001.