HIGH-FLYING Communist Party officials, known for their extravagant lifestyles, have been urged to curb their extra-marital activities and to take notice of the risk of Aids.

A survey of attitudes among Chinese officials towards Aids carried out by Central Party School — the training ground for all of China’s top Communist mandarins — discovered a high level of ignorance with as many as 60 per cent saying that they were unaware that no vaccine existed to prevent the spread of Aids.

Jin Wei, a professor at the school, organised Aids prevention training in several branch schools nationwide and issued a questionnaire to 3,000 of the officials who took part.

Asked how they would protect themselves, 70 per cent of respondents said that they would limit themselves to a single partner and about half said that they would try to avoid extramarital sex. Only 30 per cent said that they would always try to use a condom.

The difficulty of changing the sexual habits of China’s officials was underlined by the results of the training. Only an additional 17 per cent said that they would use a condom in future. The number who said that they would limit their number of sexual partners to one rose by a mere three percentage points.

Ms Jin told The Times that she believed the risk of officials becoming infected was scarcely higher than for the many well-off businessmen who frequent the saunas and karaoke bars that front brothels.

But, as the survey pointed out, officials should make sure that they set an example to the rest of society — particularly in a country where Communist Party cadres have for decades been regarded as arbiters of puritan moral rectitude.

In recent years the temptations of money and sex have become a powerful incentive for government officials who command power and influence but enjoy few material benefits.

One party school official, who requested anonymity, said: “Among a small group of officials there exists very high-risk behaviour. This is an open secret. Our investigation showed that they have no sober understanding of the dangers of behaving like this.”

Hu Jintao, party chief and state President, has declared war on corrupt officials and those who keep mistresses. The most recent victim of the crackdown was Qiu Xiaohua, former head of the National Statistics Bureau, who was fired last month.

Newspapers have reported that he funded a mistress and their daughter with £3.5 million siphoned off from the Shanghai city pension fund.

The Beijing vice-mayor overseeing the construction of Olympic venues for the 2008 Games was sacked in June after it came to light that he had built himself a pleasure palace complete with concubines.

Chen Xitong, the former Beijing mayor, was sentenced to 16 years in jail in 1995 for corruption. Vice-mayor Wang Baosen, his deputy, shot himself on a hillside near the Great Wall after his wife, angered that he had offered her less money in return for a divorce than he had spent on his girlfriend, turned him in to party watchdogs.

As the new survey said: “Among officials who have been dealt with, some have more than one mistress.

“People usually criticise their low moral standards but, from the angle of experts, the more sex partners, the higher the rate of infecting and spreading the virus.”

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