A move by the AIDS and venereal disease (VD) prevention authorities in Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, has caused widespread controversy and placed local police in an awkward position.

The organization last Wednesday invited 50 "xiaojie," or misses - a euphemism for female commercial sex workers (CSW) - to a lecture on the prevention of AIDS and VD, teaching them ways to protect themselves from contracting the diseases. Staff members presented gifts as well as pamphlets and condoms to the women, calling them "sisters."

Critics berated the move as being tantamount to giving legal status to the CSWs. "Teaching them how to protect their health during prostitution is tacit consent to the illegal activity," one critic said.

Local police also complained that they were thus placed in a dilemma. A policeman said, "It is frustrating to see these xiaojie coming into the open without taking action against them."

Their logic is that prostitution should be cracked down upon whenever and wherever it appears and there should not be any hint or implication of tolerance of the action. It is natural for people to think so.

However, such a "perfect or perish" thinking is an isolated, one-sided approach to the world.

It is true that no action of prostitution should be tolerated. But it is also true that prostitution has become considerably rampant in some areas in China, and has shown a tendency of getting worse despite repeated campaigns to crack down on the evil industry.

Together with drug abuse through injection, prostitution is one of the two major vehicles for spreading HIV/AIDS. And the problem has become alarmingly acute.

Official statistics released last year indicate that China has 840,000 HIV/AIDS carriers. Some experts estimated China's HIV/AIDS carriers may reach 10 million by 2010 if the spread cannot be checked effectively.

Cracking down on prostitution is certainly one of the major measures to check the spread of AIDS in addition to remedying corroded social ethics. For various reasons, however, the crackdown has not been that effective.

Whatever the reasons, it is an undeniable fact that the vice cannot be eradicated in the foreseeable future. Since this is so, we cannot count solely on police moves to check the prostitution-related spread of HIV/AIDS. Other moves have to be taken simultaneously. Awareness education for CSWs is such a move.

The gathering of CSWs at a government facility may generate the impression that prostitution is admitted as acceptable. But there are two reasons to warrant the move.

First, encouraging CSWs to take preventive measures definitely will reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS dramatically. The positive effect will far outshine the possible negative effect, which is not necessarily worse than what is caused by an instance of an impotent police action.

Second, the health authorities can also educate the CSWs on the illegality of prostitution while conducting AIDS awareness lectures.

The dilemma the Harbin police alleged to have faced referred to the fact that they could not act to arrest the prostitutes and their bosses, who accompanied the women to the lectures. Definitely they should not make any arrests on the occasion, for that would constitute a trap and thus tarnish the credibility of a government department, the AIDS prevention institute.

Actually, it was not a dilemma at all, for if the police were determined enough, they should have taken action long before the lecture. One cannot imagine that the health department could identify the CSWs and their bosses - managers of local entertainment services - while the police could not.

Email: liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 10/18/2006 page4)