Airport propaganda

I was in Shanghai this weekend. When I arrived at Pudong International Airport, by the baggage claim I saw a big poster that said "AIDS" in big letters, apparently intended to raise awareness of AIDS. I was pretty impressed that China was making an effort to end its harmful coverups of AIDS in China and start to educate the population about HIV and how it is transmitted. When I left, I saw a similar poster in the check-in hall - which is when I realized that the only places I had seen this poster at all during my whole visit were in the international airport. I can't help but suspect that this reflects an effort by China to convince foreigners that it's doing a good job, when in reality it's not doing much of anything...

This story in China Daily (a state-run English-language newspaper) contains a picture of a similar poster (scroll down), in a Beijing subway station. Notably, not a poster from a rural village in Henan province, where even the government admits that 40% of people who gave blood between 1992 and 1996 became infected with HIV.