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II. RESEARCH METHODS

Human Rights Watch conducted field research for this report in Yunnan, Beijing, and Hong Kong for a total of five and a half weeks in 2002 and 2003. 26 Human Rights Watch researchers visited offices and interviewed representatives of thirteen NGOs and GONGOs (government-organized NGOs), two U.N. agencies, two hospitals, two religious centers, and two drug detoxification centers. Seven people living with HIV/AIDS agreed to be interviewed, and Human Rights Watch also interviewed twenty-three NGO workers, police officials, social workers, and health workers. The six male and one female HIV-positive interviewee ranged in age from late teens to late fifties and came from Hebei, Fujian, Yunnan, and Hong Kong.

Interviews were conducted in settings that were as private as possible. In almost all cases, interviews were conducted in Modern Standard Mandarin; in two cases where dialectal differences were significant, NGO workers assisted with translation. In addition, Human Rights Watch collected information from Chinese and English-language news accounts, NGO reports, scholarly journals, archives in Hong Kong and the U.S., and the Internet.

In an effort to understand these human rights issues in their broader social and cultural context, researchers visited and conducted participant observation in public and private places, ranging from urban hospitals to village homes.27 To supplement formal interviews, researchers held informal interviews and conversations with former drug users, entrepreneurs, students, religious leaders, government officials, farmers, researchers, and educators on the topics of AIDS and related social questions.

The scope of this study is necessarily limited by the information accessible to Human Rights Watch given the research constraints discussed below. In particular, it does not deal in depth with such important issues as violations of the rights of children, of women, of male and female sex workers, or of men who have sex with men in the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It is hoped that this report will prompt more field research into human rights and HIV/AIDS by Chinese and international researchers working in China.

Security concerns and restrictions on research

China may be increasingly open to international NGOs working on AIDS, but it remains closed to Chinese and international human rights organizations. Over the years, Human Rights Watch has received many reports of the detention and interrogation of Chinese activists and scholars because of their contact with international human rights organizations: for instance, in 2003 a copy of the indictment against Liaoning labor activists Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang obtained by Human Rights Watch showed that the charges of state subversion against these two labor activists were based in part on their contacts with independent Hong Kong-based human rights groups, officially termed didui zuzhi (hostile organizations) by the Liaoning prosecutor’s office.28 International scholars who publish materials on subjects deemed sensitive by the government have been refused visas to China.29

Moreover, Chinese scholars who travel abroad to teach or participate in scholarly conferences are often questioned by police on their return to China, as in the case of some scholars who reported such interviews after their return from a scholarly conference in Thailand, and of a professor who was questioned when he returned to Xi’an after teaching at Yale University.30

The situation of Chinese AIDS activists, especially those who worked to reveal the facts about the Henan blood scandal, is further evidence that HIV/AIDS is considered sensitive by the Chinese government. In 2002, Chinese AIDS activist Wan Yanhai was detained, allegedly for circulating “state secrets” to journalists, academics and human rights organizations about the Henan scandal. Several other Chinese AIDS activists have reported to Human Rights Watch that they believe they are followed by the police and that their mail, electronic mail and telephone communications are under surveillance. The importance of preserving security for people living with HIV/AIDS and AIDS activists was a major concern for Human Rights Watch in its research in China.

Because of the above concerns, Human Rights Watch researchers did not request interviews with government officials while in China, but did write to China’s representatives in New York to request an interview (appendix). The embassy did not respond. In Hong Kong, a Human Rights Watch researcher interviewed the chairperson of the Equal Opportunities Commission.

Also because of these concerns and due to the sensitive position of international NGOs in China, this report omits the names of all interviewees, including the names of international and local NGOs and their staff. Identifying characteristics of interviewees have been omitted or altered, as have precise dates and locations of field research. Only AIDS workers in Hong Kong gave permission for the use of their names. Human Rights Watch looks forward to the day when international human rights groups can work openly with all our colleagues in China.




26 Events unfold rapidly in China. The information contained in this report is current as of August 21, 2003.

27 Participant observation is a qualitative social science research method that requires immersion in the research site. Everett C. Hughes calls it “the observation of people in situ; finding them where they are, staying with them in some role which, while acceptable to them, will allow both intimate observations of certain parts of their behavior, and reporting it in ways useful to social science but not harmful to those observed” (“Introduction: the place of fieldwork in social science,” in Buford H. Junker, ed., Field Work: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1960; p. v). By contrast, quantitative research methods such as questionnaires are useful for gathering larger amounts of information that are easier to compare across research sites, but these more superficial tools can also distort the data. For an excellent discussion, see Bruce Jackson, Fieldwork(Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1987).

28 Human Rights Watch, “Indictment of Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang in Liaoyang, China,” annotated English translation, February 14, 2003, http://hrw.org/press/2003/02/chinaindictment.htm.

29 Perry Link, “The Anaconda in the Chandelier,” China Rights Forum no. 1, April 2002, 26-31.

30 Private communication by a Chinese scholar with Human Rights Watch, December 2002; Kang Zhengguo, “Arrested in China,” The New York Review of Books, vol. 48 no. 14, September 20, 2001; and Perry Link, “The Anaconda in the Chandelier.”


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August 2003