By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 29, 2002; Page A23
BEIJING, Aug. 29 (Thursday) --

One of China's leading AIDS activists, a physician who helped expose unsanitary blood collection schemes that infected hundreds of thousands in the Chinese countryside, has disappeared and is believed to have been detained by state security agents, according to relatives and human rights groups.

Wan Yanhai, 38, who was fired from China's Health Ministry in 1994 after advocating gay rights and promoting AIDS awareness, was last seen in Beijing on Saturday night attending a gay film screening he helped organize, according to Human Rights in China, a group based in New York. A colleague said in an e-mail that friends who left the screening with Wan noticed they were being followed by a black car.

On Wednesday, a friend told local police that Wan was missing, and authorities have opened a case, said his wife, Su Zhaosheng, a student in Los Angeles. Wan, a Chinese citizen, divides his time between China and the United States.

"I'm very worried," Su said by telephone. "We usually talk every day, but I haven't heard from him since Friday and he hasn't answered his e-mail."

Police officials did not respond to requests for information.

Wan's disappearance comes just months before a crucial Communist Party conference is expected to name successors for the country's top leaders, including President Jiang Zemin. Police have been ordered to increase their vigilance against threats to social order, according to state media.

Wan, who spent a year as a visiting scholar at the University of Southern California in 1997, has been involved in a variety of projects, including an Internet site about AIDS and several support groups for patients. But he has angered some health officials with his open criticism of the Chinese government and his stubborn campaign to push it to do more to address the country's growing AIDS epidemic.

For example, by publishing articles and documents on his Web site, he helped expose how blood collection stations run by local officials and their friends infected as many as 1 million poor farmers in central Henan province. He also has helped people with HIV petition the government and has worked with Chinese and foreign journalists.

The Chinese government is deeply ambivalent about AIDS. It recognizes that the disease is spreading quickly and threatens to undermine the economy, but it has been unwilling to allow the kind of independent advocacy by non-governmental groups and activists that experts say is necessary to address the crisis.

Earlier this summer, friends said, authorities forced Wan's group, the AIDS Action Project, out of its offices at a Beijing academic institute.

"Their position is AIDS is a problem for the government and the experts to solve, not for regular people and not for grass-roots organizations," Wan said in November. He said that he was aware his activities might upset some in the government, but that he did not believe he would be arrested because he never violated the law.

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