Gov't-approved condom ads aired for first time ( 2003-11-28 09:30) (China Daily)
Condom ads made their first officially endorsed
appearance in China on Tuesday. The pioneering 30-second commercial, shown on
the national China Central Television (CCTV) network, aims to raise awareness of
HIV/AIDS.
A man enters a building beside a condom
vending machine along a Beijing street. More people in China are getting
to know how to protect themselves from AIDS and how it is transmitted.
[AFP/file]
In the ad, a woman says she feels
safe because she uses a condom when she has sex with her boyfriend. It is being
screened ahead of World HIV/AIDS Day, which falls on Monday in China.
Condom advertisements have been banned in the past in China.
In 1998, a commercial condom ad appeared on buses in South China's Guangzhou,
and in 1999, a public interest condom ad once appeared on CCTV.
However, both were removed after they attracted criticism from residents and
were deemed in breach of regulations.
According to these regulations, ads related to sex or obscenity are banned or
restricted.
However, the authorities have begun to relax the ban, accepting that condoms
help prevent diseases and should not be simply regarded as a sex product.
Sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS are spreading quickly across the
country through unsafe sexual contact.
In October 2002, some departments under the central government, such as the
Ministry of Health, decided that condom brands could advertise their role in
HIV/AIDS prevention in designated media.
China has 840,000 HIV/AIDS sufferers, including 80,000 AIDS patients,
according to the latest Ministry of Health estimates.
Unsafe sex has become a major cause of HIV transmission, accounting for about
10 per cent of cases. And this percentage is expected to grow in the future,
experts said.
"It is not a surprise for me to see such advertisements on television now
because I have become aware of condoms' functions in HIV prevention through many
other channels such as news reports in recent years," Wang Xiaoming, a young
businessman based in Beijing, said.
However, Jiang Qili, a young farmer in the poverty-stricken county of Junan
in East China's Shandong Province, told China Daily in a telephone interview he
had not seen the advertisements. It was unlikely he would notice such a short
advertisement in so many TV programmes, especially since he had little time to
watch TV, he said.
Jiang said he knew little about HIV/AIDS prevention because he had never
heard about it on TV, which is a major source of information in rural areas.
