According to a detailed article in The Guardian (brought to my attention by a reader via email – thanks!), Yunnan province is taking extraordinary strides in educating its populace about AIDS prevention. Thanks to its position alongside the “Golden Triangle,” its high poverty rate and high rates of prostitution and illegal drugs, Yunnan has long been seen as a primary breeding ground for AIDS.

At the end of last year, local officials reported 15,000 confirmed cases of the disease in the province. Because so many of those likely to have been affected live in remote mountain communities where there is little opportunity for testing, it is estimated that the actual figure is probably above 80,000 and rising at the rate of about 30% per year.

That is the bad news. The good news is that Yunnan has done more than any other province to face up to the problem rather than pretending it does not exist, which is still the approach favoured by many local governments. Yunnan has given the media greater freedom to report on the issue, welcomed support from international organisations and shown a willingness to experiment with radical pilot projects, elements of which have since been adopted nationwide.

Earlier this year, Yunnan became the first province in China to enact a local ordinance on HIV prevention. It is the first place where free condoms are provided in hotel rooms, where methadone and needle-exchange programs are offered to drug users trying to kick the habit, and where local officials are attempting outreach programs to socially ostracised groups such as sex workers and homosexuals.

Arguably more radical has been a program to re-educate the police, who are more used to fighting gun battles with drug dealers and throwing users into detention centres. Since 2002, the training program at the Yunnan police academy has included a course on HIV-Aids prevention partly funded by a grant of 380,000 RMB (£25,000) from the UK.

The Chinese police — being trained with funding from a UK AIDS prevention program? Now, that is amazing.

If you follow this topic, you have to read the article. It’s another very positive sign that China is taking meaningful steps to deal with what could become one of the worst catastrophes in its history.

The country still isn’t taking enough such steps on its own volition. Outside forces, be they foreign funding groups, Dr. David Ho or Bill Clinton, are constantly having to force China’s arm. But looking at Yunnan, there’s cause for some genuine optimism.

Related article: The indescribable tragedy of AIDS in China

I’m not sure yet whether this is a good or bad thing. Apparently Guandong has agreed to designate special detention centers for convicts with AIDS.

According to the Southern Metropolitan News, this is necessitated by the fast-growing number of AIDS-afflicted prisoners — and the fact that their illness allows them to threaten other prisoners.

The move comes after several years of steady growth in the proportion of inmates suffering from Aids, the paper reported.

It quoted a lawmaker as saying Aids sufferers among the province’s prison population are “fearless” and carry “a trump card” in the form of their disease.

The lawmaker did not elaborate on the remarks, but he appeared to accuse Aids victims of intimidating fellow inmates by threatening to infect them.

All I’ll say for now is that it sounds very strange.

I hope everyone interested in the Tiananmen Square Massacre will visit Daai Tou Lam’s excellent site to read his post on an eyewitness account of one William Hinton, author of The Great Reversal: The Privitization of China – 1978-1989. There is a lot to learn here, especially in the wake of revisionist efforts to downplay the horrors of June 3-4. People were mown down. Innocents perished.

Whether these murders took place in the square or on the surrounding streets is irrelevant. There was indeed a massacre. And that’s no myth.

France’s first gay wedding.

Armageddon lurks right around the corner. If you are married yourself, prepare for catastrophe as the sacred institution of marriage is threatened. The Peking Duck recommends that Europeans remain indoors until further notice, and for God’s sake watch the children. We’re all at risk; no one is safe.

The BBC interviews one of the leaders of the protests, Zhang Boli, an eyewitness to the clearing of Tiananmen Square on June 4. A chilling account that takes you right there.

This is an excellent article on the mysterious “Tiananmen tank man” and the efforts to indentify and find him. It includes some intriguing comments from Jeff Widener, the photographer who captured on film the man’s standoff in front of a row of tanks on June 5, 1989. If this topic interests you, you’ll want to read it.

It seems mobile phones are allowing foreign cultural influences to seep into North Korea, so the government is recalling them.

North Korea’s mobile service began in November 2002, with products from Motorola Corp. of the United States and Nokia Corp. of Finland on the market in Pyongyang, Yonhap news agency said.

North Koreans were seen using mobile phones last month when the two Koreas held minister-level rapprochment talks, it said.

Experts believe North Korea had introduced the mobile technology to make communications convenient but later realised the device caused floods of foreign culture into the reclusive country, Yonhap said.

So now their use is forbidden, and they’ve been recalled. Sometimes I think Kim and his coterie might be a wee bit paranoid. Just a bit.

The BBC is collecting people’s thoughts and memories on the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Check it out.

UPDATE: You MUST read this extraordinary look back by Tiananmen Square protestor Wang Dan, who spent years in prison following the crackdown. Here’s the entire thing; it was also in today’s unlinkable Wall Street Journal.

TOMORROW is the 15th anniversary of the massacre of student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. During the six years I spent in prison after the massacre, much of it in solitary confinement, I had ample time to reflect on whether we – the leaders of China’s 1989 democracy movement – made a mistake in encouraging the protests that culminated in the tragic events of 4 June.

Again and again, I have asked myself if there was another path that could have avoided the bloodshed. And whether, by bringing students and other ordinary citizens on to the streets to confront the Communist leadership, we frustrated the plans of reformist leaders – such as the former Communist Party general secretary, Zhao Ziyang – to engineer a peaceful transition to a democratic China. It’s a question I’ve also often been asked during my public appearances in the US, since I was forced into exile in April 1998. Emphasis added by me.

Now, reflecting on the events of 15 years ago, it is clear to me as never before that the Tiananmen massacre was an unavoidable step in the long path to a free China, and that true political reform can never come from within the Communist Party.

Indeed, one of the real tragedies of 1989 was not that we jeopardised the efforts of so-called reformist leaders. Rather it is that they never had the vision or political will to lead China toward democracy.

The events of 4 June were a turning point for me and other members of what we call “The 1989 Generation”. Encouraged by the brief relaxation in the political environment in Beijing in the months before the killings, which had even made it possible for me to hold workshops on democracy, we harboured false hopes that change could come from within the Communist Party. It was this fantasy that emboldened us to take to the streets, calling on the government to fight corruption and take steps toward a free society. We petitioned the leadership in the hope of triggering a top-down reform.

Yet the response of “reformists” in the leadership was disappointing, to say the least. Had their hearts been with us, they would have surely seized this unique opportunity to support publicly our calls for democratisation.

Instead, they continued to hide behind closed doors. Only after he had already been outvoted in the Politburo standing committee did Mr Zhao finally come and visit us in Tiananmen Square. And when our modest demands were answered with gunshots on the night of 4 June, it shattered any remaining illusions.

The experience of the 15 years since then has confirmed what we failed to understand in 1989. Namely, that Communist leaders, be they conservatives or reformists, are all wedded to retaining the current political system, complete with its problems such as corruption and lack of accountability.

Look, for instance, at how even relatively enlightened officials such as Premier Wen Jiabao – who visited us in Tiananmen Square in 1989 – and President Hu Jintao have shied away from political reform since taking office. Instead, the issue remains a taboo subject in Beijing. And far from easing its iron grip on all forms of political dissent, the new leadership now seems intent on extending it to Hong Kong.

In the past, the Communist Party has reversed its official verdict on several other major political events in modern Chinese history. The Cultural Revolution, hailed by Mao Tse-tung as a great proletarian movement, has long since been repudiated. Another popular protest that also led to violent scenes in Tiananmen Square, the demonstration on 5 April, 1976, against the leftist leaders known as the “Gang of Four”, was also initially suppressed and labelled as counter-revolutionary. Within two years, that verdict had been reversed and it was recognised as a legitimate public protest.

Yet when it comes to 4 June, there has been no change even after 15 years. That’s because Messrs Wen and Hu realise that re-evaluating the official description of the 1989 movement as counter-revolutionary would shake the foundations of the Communists’ grip on power.

But avoiding the issue will not make it go away. On the contrary, the cries for justice are getting ever louder.

In recent months, the group of parents and relatives of those killed in 1989, known as the Tiananmen Mothers, have been gaining increasing domestic and international support in their fight to reverse the official verdict on the 1989 movement. They have been joined by Jiang Yanyong, the heroic doctor who blew the lid on China’s initial cover-up of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome last year. In an open letter to the Chinese leadership, Dr Jiang recounted what he witnessed on the night of the killings and called on the government to revisit what he called the worst Communist crimes since the Cultural Revolution.

The continued failure of the Chinese leadership to address the issue only increases the risk of further violent eruptions in the future, especially at a time of growing social discontent. With unemployed workers struggling to survive without any form of welfare benefits, residents forced from their homes without proper compensation and farmers living in extreme poverty as they shoulder unfair tax burdens, China is a tinder box which could be set on fire by the slightest spark.

Worse still, until the leadership confronts the past and re-evaluates the official verdict on the 1989 movement, there is always the danger that it could resort to such violent methods again to suppress any future protests.

One positive development is that, since the early 1990s, shoots of civil society have begun to sprout within China. As more Chinese enter the private sector, the state is no longer able to control every aspect of daily life in the way it used to.

On the contrary, people are starting to recognise the importance of monitoring the state and making government more accountable. And as the internet and modern telecommunications have become part of everyday life, it’s become easier to break through the government’s control of news and information and to organise campaigns for basic rights, be they the right to private property or freedom of speech. This provides a stronger basis for continuing the fight for democracy in China.

Fifteen years after the massacre, the 1989 democracy movement remains as much a part of my emotional present as my past. The movement and its aftermath have consumed the idealism and passion of my youth, and the fight for a reversal of the official verdict has become a goal which I can never abandon.

The 1989 student movement played an invaluable role in pointing out the path to democracy in China. Without it, we would still be clinging to the myth that a small group of enlightened Communist officials could rescue China from totalitarian rule. Instead, we have learned from our mistakes that year, and realised that China’s democratisation must be a bottom-up process, driven by forces outside the Communist system.

And when that happens, as it inevitably will, I will be able proudly to say that we, the 1989 Generation, were part of the process that brought freedom to my home country.

There’s nothing I can add to that, except Thank You.

There’s an interesting article in China Daily on the difficulties Chinese students have speaking up in class. I encountered a variety of this in the business world, and it’s something I suspect expats in Asia all have to deal with at one time or another. ESL teachers probably deal with it every day.

Lu is teaching courses on automatic controls in the institute. Whenever raising a question, whether difficult or not, Lu finds there are almost no students volunteering answers.

“Waiting is meaningless and in vain. Instead,many times I have to call some students by name to answer my questions. I used the name list for the classes I am not familiar with,” he said.

However, Lu is always upset about the answers given. Students apparently lack key points and reply irrelevant words due to little practice in answering questions, let alone actively raising questions or ideas. Usually, he has to answer his own questions or speak by adding details to what he has already said.

Not only Lu, but teachers in other universities, colleges and institutes are experiencing similar problems.

“I have talked with many of my colleagues and teachers in other universities,” Lu said, “Most of them are worried about the same problem.”

Some teachers say that most Chinese students apparently pay much more attention to reading and learning knowledge by heart than participating in the practice of oral expression.

I’m surprised to see China Daily writing about this as though it’s a recent phenomenon. I’ve been hearing about it and experiencing it for years. When you have an educational system that for decades has taught students to learn by rote, and to listen to the teacher and memorize, what would they expect?

If the professors interviewed in the article are looking for fast answers, I’d recommend they forget about it. This trait isn’t going away anytime soon, especially since memorization and cramming for tests is still the mainstay of Chinese education, as opposed to inquiry and problem solving and seeing things from many perspectives. That’s why so many of the managers there are imported from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Memorization won’t help you solve problems that require critical thinking.

I hear this is starting to change, very slowly. Problem solving is creeping into the curriculum. But remember, when you start teaching students to think for themselves, you’re opening the door to all kinds of dangers. Authoritarian governments don’t want their people asking too many questions. So expect any changes to be gradual in the extreme.