What is worrisome is the high mobility of rural migrant workers. According to a survey of over 4,000 rural migrant workers conducted by the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention, on average, survey respondents moved between cities once every three years, industries once every three years, and changed employer once every 1.8 years. Because of their high mobility, rural migrant workers, if infected with HIV, may spread the virus between cities and into rural areas.

Awareness of AIDS prevention and control is dangerously low among rural workers. In August 2007, Economic Daily issued 352 questionnaires to rural migrant workers, and got 300 back. Thirty percent of the respondents answered that they knew nothing or little about AIDS, and nearly 90 percent believed that they would not be infected so they did not need to worry about it. Seventy percent of the respondents said that they were not clear about how the disease was transmitted. Only one respondent was able to recognize the early symptoms of the disease.

Awareness initiatives

In December 2005, 11 government ministries in China jointly launched a national AIDS-prevention project among rural migrant workers. The project was scheduled to last for five years, and was aimed at improving awareness of AIDS prevention and control to 65 percent of rural migrant workers by the end of 2006, and to 85 percent by the end of 2010.

Apparently, there is still a long way to go to reach this goal. To complement the project, some departments of the Central Government as well as some local governments also started their own initiatives, including the Red Ribbon project for farmers organized by the Ministry of Agriculture and the above-mentioned Red Ribbon project for construction workers organized by the ACFTU.

In June 2008, Xi'an of Shaanxi Province required a minimum two hours of AIDS-awareness training to be included in the pre-employment training offered to rural migrant workers. In July, Xi'an began to offer free HIV-tests to rural migrant workers.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has also incorporated AIDS education into the construction safety and occupational skill training delivered to rural migrant workers in the construction industry. There are also around 10,000 spare-time schools, which can accommodate a total of more than 3 million rural migrant workers. According to Sun Meiyan, an official in the ministry, in 2007, spare-time schools trained more than 30,000 rural migrant workers and 1,500 AIDS prevention and control advocates. The schools have compiled leaflets, brochures and CDs and distributed them to rural migrant workers.