Rachel Hou/Shanghai Daily news

There are around 650,000 people infected with HIV in China, including about 75,000 AIDS patients, according to an official report released today by the Chinese Ministry of Health. 
The figure for Chinese HIV carriers is estimated at somewhere between 540,000 to 760,000, accounting for about 0.05 percent of the total population. 
In 2005, China reported about 70,000 new cases of HIV infection and 25,000 patients dying of AIDS.
Needle sharing by intravenous drug users (44.3 percent), sex (19.6 percent) and blood selling and transfusion (10.7 percent) remain the prominent sources of HIV infection in China.
The number of drug users living with HIV is about 288,000, accounting for 44.3 percent of reported HIV infections. The seven worst-hit provinces (Yunnan, Xinjiang, Guangxi, Guangdong, Guizhou, Sichuan and Hunan) each have more than 10,000 drug users infected with HIV.
About 127,000 people contracted HIV through sexual contact and 69,000 patients through blood selling or transfusion. Only about 9,000 HIV infections were passed from mother to child, making up 1.4 percent of the total HIV-positive population.
Compared with the official figure of 840,000 in 2003, the new report reduced the estimated number of HIV/AIDS cases in China by 190,000. The report was jointly written by the Chinese Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).