China: Beijing Health Office Opens Online Gay Chatroom

The Beijing Times today reported that the city's first officially sanctioned online gay chatroom, which was set up on the Chaoyang District Disease Prevention and Control Center's Web site, is attracting few visitors. Using the Chinese slang for gay men, the site added a link marked "comrade forum" two months ago, but few people apart from the site's managers have posted messages, said Fu Qingyuan, a center employee. Fu said the low interest in the site may be due to people's concerns about restrictions on the site's content. "Actually, such concerns are really unnecessary," Fu said, noting that posts are not edited except when they concern "people selling sex, obscene images and other unsavory content." The site's purpose, Fu said, "is to let all gay people express their true needs, to allow health workers to better communicate with them and to prevent and control the possibility of AIDS risks developing." A 2005 UNAIDS survey of Beijing men who have sex with men found that only 15 percent of 482 participants knew they were at risk of HIV infection.

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