"Watering-Down" Strict HIV Testing Quotas on Chinese Men Who Have Sex with Men Community-Based Organizations

• Published in: Medical anthropology Vol. 42; no. 7; pp. 667 - 681
• Main Author: Wortham, Andrew T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Routledge 03-10-2023; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: audit cultures; China; community-based organizations; Disease control; HIV; HIV testing; Human immunodeficiency virus; Men who have sex with men; MSMs; Partnerships; Quotas; Surveillance; Tests; HIV testing; MSMs; quotas; community-based organizations; China; audit cultures
• ISSN: 0145-9740; 1545-5882
• DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2244650

The Chinese Center for Disease Control employs Community-Based Organizations (CBO) to conduct mass testing on "hidden" Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). Testing MSMs is intended to make risky bodies legible to the state and discipline the CBOs around narrow health goals. However, detailed ethnographic fieldwork with MSM CBOs in southwest China demonstrates that pressures to achieve HIV testing quotas produce the need to "water-down" or manipulate data. This distorts the identities and practices of MSMs from state surveillance and builds collusive partnerships between CBOs and low-level government officials to mitigate the disciplinary impacts of strict audits.