Eastern Asia

China enacted an HIV-specific law in 2006.¹ Article 38 of the Regulations on AIDS Prevention and Treatment places obligations on people aware they are living with HIV to disclose their HIV-positive status "in time" to sexual partners as well as to doctors. In addition, HIV-positive individuals must "take necessary precaution measures to prevent others being infected”. Article 62 specifies that diagnosed HIV-positive individuals who "on purpose spread AIDS" shall be investigated as to whether "a crime is constituted/established/committed" and, civil lawsuits notwithstanding may also face "criminal liability in accordance with the law."

News reports suggest that the Article 62 law may be used by "police [to] crack down on places where AIDS might spread, such as illegal blood-collection centres and places were drug users and sex workers congregate."² However, under the 1987 Frontier Health and Quarantine Law,³ HIV-positive sex workers who continue to seek clients were already criminalised for "creating a risk of spreading a quarantinable disease", with prison sentences ranging between six months to two years.⁴

Gansu province in north-western China passed its own law in 2009 mandating that anyone newly diagnosed must disclose their HIV-positive status to sexual partners within a month of diagnosis. Non-disclosure may result in prosecution for ‘deliberate’ HIV transmission, although the penalties are not clear.⁵

Also in 2009, a man perpetrated an elaborate hoax by setting up a blog claiming that his ex-girlfriend was an HIV-positive sex worker whose aim was to deliberately infect as many men as possible.⁶ He was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for ‘aggravated defamation’.⁷ News reports did not specifically mention HIV-specific laws that could have been used to prosecute the woman had the man’s story been true.

South Korea has no HIV-specific criminal laws, but in 2009 a 26-year-old HIV-positive man became the first person prosecuted under the country's public health laws for having unprotected sex without first disclosing his HIV status. The man reportedly had sex with at least ten women. He received an 18-month prison sentence.⁸ The case occasioned calls for tougher laws for such conduct.

Taiwan has an HIV-specific law which criminalises sexual transmission in the absense of disclosure, with a maximum prison sentence of 12 years. In 2009, a man was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for having unprotected sex with an 18-year-old man without disclosing his HIV-positive status. The unprotected sex apparently resulted in transmission. The man also paid 830,000 Taiwan dollars (US$25,000) in compensation.⁹