KNOWLEDGE IS STRENGTH
Li Danhe said, "Free condom machines in schools are neither approval nor encouragement of premarital sex. College students' attitudes toward sexuality and marriage are changing, but they still don't know much about sexual health, nor how to protect themselves."
According to a 2012 poll by Communist Party of China magazine "Xiaokang," 70 percent of over 1,000 respondents said they had had premarital sex, up 30 percent from 1994.
Zhou Ji with the birth control department of Zhoushan City described a recent nationwide rise in unwanted pregnancies, with about a quarter of the victims under 25 years old.
College students fall easy prey to sexually transmitted diseases. Statistics from Zhejiang show 3,327 new cases of HIV/AIDS during the first ten months of 2014, up by 21.2 percent from the previous year. Among them were 104 college students, up 85.7 percent. Medical sources in the province attribute the rise to the students being more sexually active and having more sexual partners.
About 96.5 percent of the 3,327 AIDS cases were sexually transmitted, 40.4 percent through male homosexual practices. "It is estimated that about 4 percent of male college students engage in homosexual acts, and many are unaware of the danger of unprotected sex," said Jiang Jianmin, vice head of Zhejiang disease control center.
In August, the National Health and Family Planning Commission and the Ministry of Education instructed local governments to strengthen AIDS control and prevention in schools.
