From China.org.cn:
A research study done by the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention has concluded that the AIDS virus in China originated in 1989 with 146 drug addicts found in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
Wu Zunyou, director of the center, disclosed this information during an AIDS-related meeting held at Tsinghua University. According to Wu, a small segment of the drug-using population in one of Yunnan’s prefectures was found infected with AIDS in 1989.
The prefecture at that time had a population of 1 million. By the end of 2006 the prefecture had 1.1 million residents with twenty thousand, or 2 percent of the total population, infected with the AIDS virus. During these 17 years, AIDS spread beyond Yunnan to the rest of China. [Full Text]
Read also Report: Sex Main Cause of HIV in China by Henry Sanderson, HIV/AIDS discrimination widespread in China–U.N. and China’s Hu presses the flesh with AIDS patients by Reuters.