BEIJING -- A young boy acquires HIV through a blood transfusion, suffers
obscene but legal discrimination from his neighbors and government, fights
back and becomes an icon for people living with AIDS across the land.
In the USA, this was Ryan White. In China, his name is Song Pengfei.
The Chinese teen has never heard of his American counterpart, who died a
decade ago. But in applying a similar mélange of bold outrage and quiet
dignity, Song has put a face on AIDS for a Chinese regime insistent on
dismissing it for years as a distant, inconsequential problem of fringe
groups.
While White went on to become posthumously synonymous to Americans with
non-discrimination laws and federal funding for HIV research, Song may have
to settle for simply nudging his government toward any action on the AIDS
issue.
That may seem a less ambitious legacy, but his willingness to go public two
years ago and openly criticize the leaders of a repressive dictatorship
carried possible consequences White never could have conceived of in the USA.
''I didn't have a choice to speak or not to speak, because if I did not, I
would be dead now,'' says Song, who once publicly dared Chinese health
minister Zhang Wenkang to prove concern for people with AIDS by shaking his
hand on live television. ''I have heard that in the Health Ministry, they say
about me, 'Song Pengfei is just an ant, and an ant cannot bite an elephant.'
That is why they let me speak.''
Zhang shrugged off Song's challenge, but he isn't shrugging off China's
burgeoning AIDS problem -- and observers believe Song is one reason why.
This week, the Chinese Ministry of Health hosts what it bills as the
country's first national conference on HIV/ AIDS, complete with open
invitations to the foreign media and appearances expected by the top players
on the world AIDS scene. Peter Piot, executive director of the United Nations
consortium of agencies fighting the global AIDS pandemic, is scheduled to be
the keynote speaker.
The conference comes three months after deputy health minister Yin Dakui
stunned the Western press on Aug. 23 holding a press conference to
acknowledge that the nation is facing a potential AIDS epidemic. That
disclosure followed a groundbreaking speech to the United Nations in New York
by Zhang, who said in June that 600,000 Chinese people have HIV and 1.5
million could be infected by 2010.
Piot's UNAIDS organization puts the current figure at more than 1 million
infected and predicts 20 million cases by 2010, but the Chinese were roundly
lauded nonetheless for even acknowledging the existence of the problem. Just
two years ago, an official in the central province of Henan, rife with HIV
cases from blood transfusions, went on television to insist there wasn't a
single case in the province.
Amid these improvements, Song symbolizes both his country's history of
missteps and its more hopeful future.
''There are icons all over the world who alter public perception of this
disease for their country,'' says William Stewart, program coordinator for
the China-UK HIV/AIDS Prevention Project, a $21.7 million effort funded by
Britain. ''I believe Song Pengfei is one of those for China. It is important
to have those stories told, particularly here, because people in China think
AIDS is a problem of the West.''
A painful journey
Song's journey is bizarre and yet in many ways typical for China. Nearly
three years ago, when he was 16, he sat on a pair of scissors in his family's
home in a mining city of Shanxi Province, about 150 miles west of Beijing.
When his gash didn't heal quickly enough, his parents took him to a hospital.
Doctors there noted that the Songs, coal-mine owners, were among the
wealthiest families in the impoverished region and insisted on expensive
medical treatments that Beijing doctors later would conclude were
unnecessary. Among those was an ''exploratory surgery'' in which a doctor
opened Song's leg -- and sliced an artery by accident.
The hospital arranged a blood transfusion with an illegal local blood seller.
Hundreds of such operators bought blood from poor farmers in the 1990s and
stored it -- unscreened and unsterilized -- in tanks demarked by blood type
until it was sold to hospitals. Thousands of donors and recipients are
believed to have acquired HIV through this route.
Song's transfusion infected him, too. When he was transferred to a Beijing
hospital for more competent care, outraged doctors demanded that health
authorities investigate, prompting a probe that uncovered the Shanxi
hospital's negligence and corruption.
Yet the probe also exposed Song's HIV status to the village, and the local
school promptly expelled Song for fear he might infect other children.
Neighbors scorned the family and demanded that they leave.
Local leaders resolved the problem by forcing the Songs to abandon their coal
business but promising to pay for an apartment in Beijing and for Song's AIDS
medication. Not long after, though, they cut the Songs off by insisting the
deal was too costly.
These injustices turned a placid, ordinary 17-year-old boy into an angry
activist with little to lose. The state-run domestic press ignored the
contaminated blood supply and the corrupt government actions. So he sought
out journalists from the USA and Australia to discuss these angles. He also
spoke to a regional AIDS conference in Malaysia in late 1999.
Doing this for 'other people'
Song's efforts have made him not just the most famous HIV-positive person in
China, but probably also one of the healthiest. In March 2000, Song began
receiving combination therapy drugs for free through the New York-based Aid
for AIDS.
Fewer than a dozen people in China take the therapies, because of their cost
and availability. Song says the treatment has reduced the level of HIV in his
blood to an almost undetectable level.
''All the people who write me understand and sympathize with me,'' Song says.
''They know I'm doing this not just to make myself famous, but for all other
people with HIV, too.''
Song went abroad again last month for another AIDS conference, this time in
Melbourne, Australia, and he's hoping to make a documentary of his own story
if he can raise the money. He even has a Chinese-language Web site,
www.songpfhiv.com, which provides links to articles about AIDS.
Not everyone is convinced Song is the perfect advocate.
''I think that speaking up to the public will help (people with AIDS), but I
don't think (Song is) well prepared,'' says Wan Yan Hai, director of Aizhi
AIDS Action Network, a Beijing-based charity that has raised $4,000 for the
Songs since 1999. Song is ''still a child.''
But Stewart, the British AIDS activist in China who has become Song's best
friend and mentor, envisions big things.
''There's a lot he can offer,'' Stewart says. ''He could write a newsletter
for people with HIV within China. He can work with other agencies to form a
self-help network for (people with AIDS). There are many possibilities.''
Song vacillates between suggesting he might soon give up this activism and
suggesting new means of educating the Chinese people about those infected
with HIV and AIDS.
In fact, he has a new, half-serious challenge to issue. ''If (President)
Jiang Zemin shakes hands with me in public, China's AIDS problem will be
solved,'' he says with a smirk, recognizing the improbability of it but
amused by the image the idea conjures up.
''It's possible President Bush will shake my hand before Jiang Zemin does.
But China would be very mad if he did that!''
