Chinese college students unaware about safe sex

BEIJING - College students in China are not aware about safe sex and over 40 percent of them say they learnt about sex by looking at porn websites or movies.

A study conducted by the Guangdong provincial population and family planning commission and Guangdong provincial sexology association in October spoke to 1,000 students at 10 universities in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province.

In another survey conducted by the China Youth Daily, over 75 percent of 3,000 teenage respondents said the internet was their most important source of information about sex.

Some 48 percent of students polled in the survey accepted premarital sex, China Daily reported.

Nearly 30 percent of respondents said they did not think it was necessary to use condoms.

“Students are becoming more open to sex because they have more knowledge of sexual freedom,” said Zhang Feng, director of the Guangdong provincial population and family planning commission.

A regulation allowing marriage between college students, which was implemented in 2005, also contributed to the open attitude toward sex among students, Zhang said.

Zhang said about 17 percent of respondents suffered from sexual diseases.

He attributed the lack of knowledge about safe sex to the way in which many students get their knowledge about sex - from pornography.

“My knowledge about sex would be totally empty if I had not watched porn movies,” said a Guangzhou University student, who declined to be named.

Qiu Hongzhong, a professor of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, said inadequate sex education at school and home forced students to learn about sex from the internet.

“There is a severe lack of formal sex education in the country. Most teachers, from primary schools to universities, do not have knowledge about sex. So how can they teach students?” Qiu said.