Off-topic but on memory: 20 years ago today I was in Tiananmen Square, reporting for Reuters on the chaos that was the student movement. It was an odd time — sweaty, rank-smelling but rather jolly. Erica’s photo captures rather well the unbridled hubris and optimism of the students, right up to the last day or two of their protest. It wasn’t until the evening of June 3rd that things got really nasty. By midnight, things were nasty enough that most people, students and foreign journalists alike, had left the square. I stayed there with a colleague, Graham Earnshaw, until the tanks came in at dawn. Or at least I think I did. Graham’s memory of what happened is rather different.

When I first became aware of the difference, I got in touch with several of the old muckers who were in and around the Square with me. What if we all wrote down now what we remember of that night, then compared notes? No-one was up for it. I guess everyone was frightened about the tricks memory can play — and indeed it was that, more than the actual events in Tiananmen Square, that were the subject of the piece I wrote in Granta recently. (pdf) In the last couple of weeks, however, several of my friends and colleagues have sent me their version of events (including this nice piece from Andy Roche.)

In the intervening years, I’ve had the opportunity of working closely with the Chinese government. My colleagues in the Ministry of Health were young, dynamic, well-trained. Though many were from the post-Tiananmen generation, all were aware of what happened, and many were interested in discussing the implications two decades on. Attending mock press conferences to prepare for the release of controversial HIV estimates (inevitably and somewhat ironically, I took the role of the Rotweiler foreign correspondent) I find it hard to believe that the higher-ups could have allowed Tiananmen to happen. And I find it equally baffling that they are trying, still, to suppress discussion of events which were never a real threat to Party rule, and which in the eyes of most of the population belong to a distant past. The student leaders of yesteryear were not terribly coherent in their demands, but the central item of their agenda — corruption within the Communist Party — remains the major threat to that Party’s survival. If the old men sitting sclerotically atop the Politburo were to spend less time blocking web-sites and more time fighting corruption, they’d have little to worry about.

The Association’s real site is, at a glance, not fantastically more informative than the squatters. We have “men-with-bad-haircuts-in-front-of-red-banner-at-conference”, which film directors will recognise as the statutory Chinese Location Identifier shot (example from my own archives of bum-numbing boredom below). We have a dandelion, an oak tree and a happy Western couple. None of it really relevant to the gay party scene that is currently driving the epidemic in Beijing. I ran a search on the site for the word “gay” (同性恋) to see if I was missing something, but no.

UNAIDS’s cyberslip-up was brought to my attention by Aimee Barnes, who also has an interesting post on China’s (in my reading of the data unsubstantiated) obssession with migrant labour as a driver of the HIV epidemic in China. What Aimee did not point out was the deliciously apposite tagline at the top of the bjaidsass.com site: Look for the ridiculous in everything!

Thailand’s relative neglect of HIV prevention among gay men has been confirmed yet again by a new paper to be published in the upcoming edition of JAIDS — the abstract is on line now. (JAIDS is one of those dinosaur journals which still makes you pay for access to the full text.) Using blood samples taken between 2006 and 2007, researchers in Bangkok used a relatively new technology to find out which infections were recent at the time people came in for their voluntary test.

Nine of the 11 incident infections were in men, and 60% were in gay men. Overall, the rate of new infections was equivalent to 2.7% a year. This sort of testing is imprecise at best, not least because it depends on who walks in the door asking for a test. But still, it’s worrying that such an overwhelmingly high proportion of the newly infected are among gay men. To make matters worse, the data probably exclude many of the highest-risk gay men in Bangkok, who go to gay and sex-worker friendly clinics, one improbably based in Bangkok Christian Hospital, just a sound-system’s reach from the flesh-pots of the Patpong red light district and Silom Soi 4, it’s gay equivalent.

The concentration of new infections among gay men led the researchers to conclude that these boys would be a good study population for new HIV infections in Thailand. So at least the junkies — who have long been study-population of choice for Bangkok’s talented pool of AIDS epidemiologists — may get a break for a while.

Meanwhile, over in Beijing, colleagues of mine from China CDC used a slightly different but also relatively new method to look at new HIV infections among gay men. Because the Chinese Medical Journal is not a dinosaur, you can read the full text online. They actively recruited gay men to the study; many people signed up through internet sites or because they were contacted in bars and clubs; you’d expect these guys to be at the higher end of the risk spectrum. And they are. My mates estimated new infections at 2.9% in 2005 and 3.6% in 2006. About the same as among gay men in London, in fact.

A McDonald’s in every airport, a Starbucks on every block, and a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no evil HIV crisis in the gay community. Thailand and China look more like the US and Britain every day.

Meanwhile,

So a Russian girl is worth twice as much as a girl from north China, huh? And Malaysian girls are discounted fairly heavily. There are 460 million young adult women in China. That’s 60 times more “girls” that you’ll find in Malaysia (even if you count the Chinese Malaysians). My rudimentary understanding of economics suggests the scarcer commodity should sell for more. Perhaps some of our economist friends over at Marginal Revolution could explain what’s going on before we become Unspun or propmt Ranting from those who know the true value of cewek Melayu…

If nothing else, I’m happy to note from the poster that all nationalities are working in air-conditioned rooms. In these days of rising temperatures and oil prices, that’s a blessing whatever your price.

Hat tip: Unknown source via Digg and Mark Zip.

According to an AFP report, China is recycling used condoms into colourful rubber hair ties. Health officials are worried that people might get genital warts or HIV by holding the hairbands in their mouths while plaiting their hair. Let’s leave aside the biological impossibility of this. My question is: where do they get the used condoms?