Securitizing HIV/AIDS: a game changer in state-societal relations in China (original) (raw)

International non-governmental actors in HIV/AIDS prevention in China

International non-governmental organizations were among the first international actors that responded to the emergence of AIDS crisis in China. Since 1994, the number of international non-governmental organizations and charitable foundations working in AIDS related issue areas in China has grown steadily and substantially. Despite their organizational differences, most of these non-governmental actors present the characteristics of independent mission, localized practice and diverse working focus. Even though they are constrained by financial and other factors compared with multilateral and bilateral official assistance agencies, they have still played a unique role in fighting against AIDS in China as technical experts, public educators, and civil society supporters.

China's HIV/AIDS Crisis: Implications for Human Rights, the Rule of Law and U.S.-China Relations Testimony before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China Roundtable on HIV/AIDS

2002

HIV/AIDS looms as a major humanitarian catastrophe for both urban and rural Chinese, and possibly for citizens in the orbit of “Greater China”, such as in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The Chinese government needs to act quickly and effectively to limit HIV/AIDS’ impact on society, minimize economic damage, and relieve strain on an already overburdened, and increasingly ineffective healthcare system. However, while HIV/AIDS has been identified in China since the mid-1980s, the official response has until recently been slow at best and deceitful at worst. While the Chinese government – particularly its health-related agencies – has launched a more serious public campaign over the past year to address the country’s HIV/AIDS problem, it is still difficult to fully assess how well the Chinese government will respond in terms of political attention, financial resources, dedication of expertise, outreach to foreign assistance, and propagation of information and awareness campaigns.

China Engages Global Health Governance: A Stakeholder or System-Transformer?

2018

Through the lens of public health, in particular HIV/AIDS, this research first scrutinises China's compliance with and resistance to the norms and rules embedded in the global health regime, and second, illustrates China's evolving global role and its intentions for global governance. China's response to its HIV/AIDS epidemic and its active engagement with the multilateral institutions of global health governance are attributable to both necessity and conscious design. While calling for and welcoming the involvement of multiple actors, a sine qua non for China's continued engagement with global governance and global health governance is that they should be conducted in accordance with the principles of national sovereignty, non-intervention and territorial integrity. Overall, while China does not seek any radical transformation of the prevailing world order, its vision for the global order is not compatible with that espoused by the West which attaches much weight to...

The Challenges and Facilitating Factors for International Cooperation on HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control in China

2018

In a world of globalisation and massive health inequalities, international cooperation is a powerful tool for the management of global health. Moreover, because of the need for global health security, international cooperation for health can be seen as an important aspect of foreign policy. A major threat to global health security is infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, which have become significant threats to the development and the economic and social stability of developing countries. These diseases need global partnerships for international cooperation. The response to the challenges such as HIV/AIDS depends on partnerships that lead to effective cooperation of various sectors – international organisations, government, non-government organisations, and business enterprises. No single sector has either the resources or the capacity to work effectively to address complex health problems. Partnerships have many benefits, such as providing opportunities to share workloads and reso...

HIV/AIDS, SARS, and COVID-19: the trajectory of China's pandemic responses and its changing politics in a contested world

Globalization and Health, 2024

suggests a complex tale of globalization and public health, in which the relationships among the major actors of global health governance-in particular, the US, the WHO, and China-have rapidly evolved against the background of contemporary globalization processes. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the contested politics of global health governance [4-6], we still don't know enough about the dynamics of domestic pandemic responses, or about the relationship between the politics of those responses and the politics of global health governance, both of which have changed significantly in recent decades. Focusing on the trajectory of China's pandemic responses in the context of globalization, this article explores three cross-border infectious diseases-HIV/ AIDS, SARS, and COVID-19-that constitute important moments in this country's engagement with global

Untangling HIV in China: Social, political, economic, and global-local factors in Mackie and McLelland 2014

In this chapter I discuss the complexities of HIV/AIDS in China. I provide an overview of China’s uneven socioeconomic landscape which facilitated the spread of HIV; the biological transmission paths of the virus; major milestones and key dates and policies; and the latest trends in infections. I also raise some of the frequently overlooked factors that have impacted on China’s experiences of HIV, such as the changing representations of and dominant attitudes to HIV maintained by urban Han Chinese (and the industrial aspects of responses to HIV by local and global health bodies and industrial corporate social responsibility (CSR) platforms). These practices keep HIV/AIDS as a major recipient of donor dollars and social and political attention in China. The aim of this chapter is to provide an understanding of the political, economic, social, cultural and global health issues that have shaped how the virus is spread, managed, engaged by sick and advocacy groups, and perceived by the general public in China.

Empowerment Globalized: Universal Principles, Grassroots Civil Society and HIV in Post-Socialist China

Usually described as the most global disease of all times, HIV/AIDS has often been dealt through international public health programmes. How and with what consequences do global anti-AIDS strategies entwine with personal histories, local networks and national institutions and regulations? Over the past two decades, global AIDS fight has been mostly dealt through internationally coordinated programmes. A thick network of anti-AIDS initiatives have thus spread across the globe, causing a set of allegedly universal principles of empowerment and involvement of HIV afflicted populations – as well as the funds to realize them – to drop from national parliaments, supranational funding agencies and private philanthropic foundations in the West into tiny locales in the South and the East of the world. Passing through the filter of national legislations and institutions, these moneys and ideas hit the grassroots level, conveying an unprecedented amount of resources into the support of thousands little community-based-organizations and small NGOs run by HIV-positive people. In the wake of these facts, a world of opportunities opened up for before widely marginalized populations, endowing them with attention, ambitions, recognition, job and travelling opportunities. Meanwhile, a concurrent set of discourses, connections, tensions and open jealousies have come surrounding the implementation of “bottom up” strategies to confront with AIDS. Based on a long-term fieldwork among communities of HIV positive heroine users in Southern China, this paper explores the generative power of global anti-AIDS programmes in the context of their implementation. By looking at how internationally funded grassroots public health programmes interweaves with personal histories, state’s regulations and institutions, drugs and medical technologies as well as with new narratives of disease and drug abuse, the author wishes here to contribute to the widening of the current anthropological perspective over the transformative capacity of HIV into society.