ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the 30-year-long spread of the HIV virus in the country by framing it against the background of the historical changes witnessed by China in the post-reform period. It argues that AIDS in China was never simply a matter of public health, which required objective and scientific intervention by part of the state. Having a very unclear idea of what AIDS was, the medical staff in the hospital alerted the Ministry of Health, which in turn instructed them to deal with Messina’s case by following the same isolation procedure adopted in the case of hepatitis B. Catalysing the anxieties created by the sudden opening of China to foreign ideas, people and objects, HIV/AIDS rapidly became a fertile discursive field where fears were articulated and brought forward by the social and political openings of the post-reform period.
