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Third World Quarterly
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The 'nameless fever': The HIV/AIDS pandemic and China's women
Neil Renwick
To cite this Article Renwick, Neil(2002) 'The 'nameless fever': The HIV/AIDS pandemic and China's women', Third World
Quarterly, 23: 2, 377 — 393
To link to this Article: DOI:10.1080/01436590220126694
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436590220126694
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ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/02/020377-17 q 2002 Third World Quarterly
DOI: 10.1080/0143659022012669 4 377
Third World Quarterly, Vol 23, No 2, pp 377–393, 2002
HIV/AIDS is fundamentally an issue of human rights. To the right to medical
provision must be added rights to theprovisions of social justice necessary to the
prevention and alleviation of HIV/AIDS. With its 1.27 billion population, a rapid
and sizeable growth in the incidence of HIV infection during the 1990s and a
belated political and epidemiological response, China has become a focus of
particular concern, with UNAIDS Director Peter Piot warning that ‘China is at the
verge of a major epidemic ifbusiness as usual continues’ (Gittings, 2001a: 15)
Moreover, as one report aptly notes: ‘All over the world, women find themselves
at special risk of HIV infection because they lack the power to determine where,
when and how sex takes place’ (UNAIDS, 2001a). Women in the developing
countries are particularly vulnerable to infection, with increasing numbers falling
victim. Deploying the concepts of‘capabilities poverty’, ‘discursive democracy’,
gender construction, ‘structural violence’ and the ‘hypermasculine state’,1 the
following study identifies the extent of the threat to women from the ‘nameless
fever’2 in China; evaluates the factors contributing to this threat with reference to
issues of human rights; and assesses the quality of the national and international
response to theHIV/AIDS threat to China’s women.
The study argues that there is indeed a significant and growing threat to
The ‘nameless fever’: The HIV/AIDS
pandemic and China’s women
NEIL RENWICK
ABSTRACT HIV/AIDS is fundamentally an issue of human rights. To the right to
medical provision must be added rights to the provisions of social justice
necessary to the prevention and alleviation of HIV/AIDS. Chinahas become the
focus of international concern over HIV/AIDS. Applying the concepts of ‘capabilities
poverty’, ‘discursive democracy’, gender construction, ‘structural
violence’ and the ‘hypermasculine state’, the study identifies the threat to China’s
women from HIV/AIDS; evaluates the factors contributing to this threat with
reference to issues of human rights; and assesses the quality...