1 in 5 college students in China engage in unprotected sex: Survey

Beijing — Over 20 per cent of Chinese college students were sexually active, and one in five had engaged in unprotected sex due to ignorance about birth control, a government survey found.

Ten per cent of female students who said they have been sexually active said they have experienced an unwanted pregnancy, while 3.2 per cent said they became pregnant multiple times, the survey released early this week by the China Family Planning Association (CFPA) shows.

The high prevalence of risky sexual behaviour among Chinese university students should serve as a wake-up call to the school authorities to strengthen safe sex education, said Mr Li Lihe, deputy head of the international department of the CFPA.

Educators at some top universities in Beijing and Shanghai were more reluctant to put in place sexual counselling and awareness programmes than authorities in smaller institutions, he said.

Sex education is part of the high school curriculum in China, but experts have often criticised it for being rudimentary, as public discussions on sex largely remain a taboo topic in the country.

Lack of awareness among college students has also exposed them to sexually transmitted diseases.

The number of students aged 15 to 24 with HIV/Aids rose by 35 per cent each year on average from 2011 to 2015, said Mr Wu Zunyou, director of National Centre for Aids/STD Control and Prevention.

Nearly two-thirds of those infected contracted the virus in college, Mr Wu said.

For example, in Hunan province, the number of college students living with HIV/Aids rose from four in 2007 to 154 at the end of November 2015, according to official statistics.

The survey on sexual activity and reproductive health among Chinese college students, the first of its kind in China, sampled nearly 18,000 students from 130 Chinese universities around the country in 2015.

Nearly one-third of those surveyed said they were willing to have premarital sex with someone they have feelings for or they intended to marry, the survey found. But one in four said they opted not to have sex before marriage. CAIXIN ONLINE