{"id":2302,"date":"2023-12-10T19:57:55","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T00:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/?p=2302"},"modified":"2023-12-10T19:57:55","modified_gmt":"2023-12-11T00:57:55","slug":"%e7%ba%bd%e6%97%b6%ef%bd%9c%e5%85%8b%e9%87%8c%e6%96%af%c2%b7%e5%b7%b4%e5%85%8b%e5%88%a9%ef%bc%9a%e6%8f%ad%e9%9c%b2%e4%b8%ad%e5%9b%bd%e5%86%9c%e6%9d%91%e8%89%be%e6%bb%8b%e7%97%85%e6%b5%81%e8%a1%8c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/?p=2302","title":{"rendered":"\u7ebd\u65f6\uff5c\u514b\u91cc\u65af\u00b7\u5df4\u514b\u5229\uff1a\u63ed\u9732\u4e2d\u56fd\u519c\u6751\u827e\u6ecb\u75c5\u6d41\u884c\u4e11\u95fb\u7684\u9ad8\u8000\u6d01\u533b\u751f\u53bb\u4e16"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"css-1gkjb1c euiyums1\">\n<div class=\"css-1vkm6nb ehdk2mb0\">\n<p id=\"link-5d1e5c7\" class=\"css-1l8buln e1h9rw200\" data-testid=\"headline\"><span style=\"font-family: NonBreakingSpaceOverride, 'Hoefler Text', 'Noto Serif', Garamond, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: normal; font-size: 21px;\">Despite government efforts to silence her, she drew global attention to an epidemic that devastated rural China and killed tens of thousands.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-79elbk\" data-testid=\"photoviewer-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"css-1a48zt4 e11si9ry5\" data-testid=\"photoviewer-children\">\n<figure class=\"sizeMedium layoutHorizontal css-nlqgyf\" role=\"group\" aria-label=\"media\">\n<div class=\"css-1xb94ky\" data-testid=\"photoviewer-children-Image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"css-rq4mmj\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2023\/12\/11\/obituaries\/gaoobit1\/merlin_16901321_76e7daf8-4328-4910-a2cb-4cc46a7ca4f5-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" sizes=\"auto, ((min-width: 600px) and (max-width: 1004px)) 84vw, (min-width: 1005px) 60vw, 100vw\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2023\/12\/11\/obituaries\/gaoobit1\/merlin_16901321_76e7daf8-4328-4910-a2cb-4cc46a7ca4f5-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp 600w,https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2023\/12\/11\/obituaries\/gaoobit1\/merlin_16901321_76e7daf8-4328-4910-a2cb-4cc46a7ca4f5-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp 1024w,https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2023\/12\/11\/obituaries\/gaoobit1\/merlin_16901321_76e7daf8-4328-4910-a2cb-4cc46a7ca4f5-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp 2048w\" alt=\"She is shown at right wearing a black coat and thick eyeglasses as she stands beside a silver van on a city street as four young people \u2014 two male, two female \u2014 gather around her with looks of affection.\" width=\"600\" height=\"385\" \/><\/div><figcaption class=\"css-1ifeaca e1maroi60\" data-testid=\"photoviewer-children-ImageCaption\"><span class=\"css-jevhma e13ogyst0\">Dr. Gao Yaojie talked with students during an AIDS lecture tour in Shanghai in 2006.<\/span><span class=\"css-1u46b97 e1z0qqy90\"><span class=\"css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0\">Credit&#8230;<\/span><span aria-hidden=\"false\">Mark Ralston\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section class=\"meteredContent css-1r7ky0e\">\n<div class=\"css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Gao Yaojie, a Chinese doctor who defied government pressure in exposing an AIDS epidemic that spread across rural China through reckless blood collection, died on Sunday at her home in Upper Manhattan. She was 95.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Her death was confirmed by\u00a0<a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/polisci.columbia.edu\/content\/andrew-j-nathan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Prof. Andrew J. Nathan<\/a>, a scholar of Chinese politics at Columbia University who managed her affairs in the United States.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Gao\u2019s relentless efforts to expose and halt the epidemic of AIDS among poor farmers in the late 1990s brought her fame in China and acclaim abroad; among others, she was hailed by Secretary of State\u00a0Hillary Clinton\u00a0during the Obama administration. But Communist Party officials ultimately tried to silence Dr. Gao, and she spent her last decade in New York.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Even in exile and in faltering health, she continued to speak out about the hundreds of villages \u2014 especially in her home province, Henan, in central China \u2014 where residents flocked to sell blood at collection stations whose slipshod methods caused\u00a0tens of thousands\u00a0of deaths, if not more, from AIDS.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div id=\"story-ad-1-wrapper\" class=\"css-xqryb1\">\n<div id=\"story-ad-1-slug\" class=\"css-l9onyx\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Officials concealed, ignored or played down the outbreak for years, and infected villagers received little help until the furor that had been inspired by Dr. Gao and several other Chinese doctors and experts prompted the government to distribute medicine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cAIDS not only killed individuals but destroyed countless families,\u201d Dr. Gao said in\u00a0an interview\u00a0with The New York Times in 2016. \u201cThis was a man-made catastrophe. Yet the people responsible for it have never been brought to account, nor have they uttered a single word of apology.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Gao had retired from day-to-day medicine and was nearing 70 when she took up her second career as an AIDS educator. But her earlier life steeled her for the hardships that were to come.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Gao Yaojie was born on Dec. 19, 1927, in eastern Shandong Province. She grew up during the Japanese invasion of China and the civil war that brought the Communists to power under Mao Zedong. She endured the famine caused by Mao\u2019s policies in the late 1950s, and she suffered detention and beatings during his Cultural Revolution. When her accusations of a cover-up of an AIDS epidemic brought house detention and pressure from the police and government officials, she said she had lived through far worse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cShe encountered a lot of ups and downs in her life, and all the adversity tested her spirit,\u201d said Chung To, a former investment banker from Hong Kong who founded the\u00a0Chi Heng Foundation\u00a0to help rural Chinese children orphaned or affected by AIDS. \u201cWithout her, the news of this outbreak might have been swept under the carpet for longer, and more people would have died.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Wang Shuping, a medical expert who was also\u00a0<a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/chinachange.org\/2012\/10\/08\/dr-wang-shuping-how-i-discovered-the-hiv-epidemic-and-what-happened-to-me-afterwards\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">instrumental in exposing<\/a>\u00a0the spread of AIDS in rural China, said of Dr. Gao in 2012: \u201cHer biggest contribution was winning the attention of the news media. Local governments wanted to cover up many things, but they couldn\u2019t, because Gao Yaojie was brave and kept speaking out.\u201d Dr. Wang also moved to the United States and\u00a0<a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/09\/30\/world\/asia\/shuping-wang-dead.html\">died in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Gao, a diminutive woman with a crackling laugh, walked with a limp, and not just because of advancing age. She was born to a relatively well-off landowner and his wife, and as a child her feet were bound with cloth for six years, in the painful traditional Chinese practice intended to create artificially dainty feet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Her family settled in Kaifeng, an ancient city in Henan, and she soon showed an independent streak, choosing to study medicine at a local university. She graduated in 1953,\u00a0<a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.boxun.com\/news\/gb\/china\/2008\/09\/200809162024.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">married<\/a> soon after and became a specialist in women\u2019s health.<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"css-1m50asq\" style=\"font-family: 'Inter var', -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.015em;\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/01\/18\/obituaries\/00gao-02\/merlin_115054463_0dd13548-ba8d-43c0-8ebe-2d58d6642c7d-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" sizes=\"((min-width: 600px) and (max-width: 1004px)) 84vw, (min-width: 1005px) 60vw, 100vw\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/01\/18\/obituaries\/00gao-02\/merlin_115054463_0dd13548-ba8d-43c0-8ebe-2d58d6642c7d-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp 600w,https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/01\/18\/obituaries\/00gao-02\/merlin_115054463_0dd13548-ba8d-43c0-8ebe-2d58d6642c7d-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp 1024w,https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2022\/01\/18\/obituaries\/00gao-02\/merlin_115054463_0dd13548-ba8d-43c0-8ebe-2d58d6642c7d-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp 2048w\" alt=\"She is shown sitting in a chair with wooden arms and gazing out a window at left. She wears a purple sweater and her hands are clasped on her lap. Potted plants are on a table behind her. \" \/><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"css-79elbk\" data-testid=\"photoviewer-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"css-1a48zt4 e11si9ry5\" data-testid=\"photoviewer-children\">\n<figure class=\"img-sz-medium css-d754w4 e1g7ppur0\" role=\"group\" aria-label=\"media\"><figcaption class=\"css-gbc9ki ewdxa0s0\" data-testid=\"photoviewer-children-caption\"><span class=\"css-jevhma e13ogyst0\">Dr. Gao at her Manhattan apartment in 2016. \u201cUnless Mao is dragged off his sacred pedestal, there\u2019ll be no hope for China,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"css-1u46b97 e1z0qqy90\"><span class=\"css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0\">Credit&#8230;<\/span><span aria-hidden=\"false\">George Etheredge for The New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Henan Province was among the regions worst hit by the famine after 1958. Then fierce fighting broke out in the province in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution. Dr. Gao was singled out for ferocious beatings by Maoist radicals because of her \u201clandlord\u201d family background and her refusal to buckle. She said her knees never recovered from her being forced to kneel for hours on cold stone.At one point Dr. Gao tried to kill herself. Her youngest son was imprisoned for three years when he was 13, after he was falsely accused of insulting Mao. The suffering and a lasting rift with her son dating from that time left her bitterly critical of Mao\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cUnless Mao is dragged off his sacred pedestal, there\u2019ll be no hope for China,\u201d she told one interviewer in 2015.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Gao was a roving advocate for women\u2019s health in 1996 when she encountered her first patient diagnosed with AIDS, a woman from rural China who had been infected through a blood transfusion during an operation. The woman died about two weeks later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Gao began investigating how AIDS had entered villages in Henan, visiting people\u2019s homes herself.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She and other medical workers discovered that hundreds of unscrupulous blood stations, often with official backing, were buying blood from villagers using methods almost guaranteed to spread infections. The stations extracted valuable plasma from the farmers\u2019 blood and pooled the leftover blood, which was then transfused back into villagers in need of the procedure. The vats of pooled blood proved to be a devastatingly effective way to transmit infectious diseases, including H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">By 1995, Henan officials tried to shut down the practice. But an underground blood trade persisted, and Dr. Gao called for closing the blood stations, treating infected villagers and bringing officials to account.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">She often ventured with a driver from her home in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan, roaming for days to deliver advice, food and clothes to ailing villagers, as well as rudimentary medicine for fever, diarrhea and other symptoms of AIDS. In one village,\u00a0she recalled, she came across a woman who had hanged herself after her husband died of AIDS. Her 2-year-old son was clinging to her feet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cGao Yaojie was crucial, because she saw what was happening in the villages and kept talking and talking about it,\u201d\u00a0Zhang Jicheng, a former journalist from Henan who was among the earliest to report on the AIDS outbreak there, said in an interview. \u201cMany people didn\u2019t understand why she did it, but she\u2019d already been through so much that she wasn\u2019t afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">By the early 2000s, the AIDS scourge in rural China had become an international scandal, and Chinese officials\u2019 efforts to play it down were overwhelmed by anger at home and abroad. Chinese activists and journalists championed Dr. Gao, and she won a measure of praise in the country\u2019s news media and official welcome, at one point meeting a vice premier, Wu Yi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But Dr. Gao\u2019s growing prominence bothered other Chinese officials, who regarded her as an embarrassment to them, especially when she refused to stop her campaigning. Henan officials\u00a0tried to prevent her from traveling to the United States in 2007 to collect an award, only to be overruled by Ms. Wu, the vice premier.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Gao moved to the United States in 2009 and began giving talks and writing books about her experiences. Her skepticism about promoting condoms to prevent the spread of H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases irritated many AIDS experts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But the reservoir of respect for her led even critics of her views on preventing AIDS to regard her with affection.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Her husband, Guo Mingjiu, also a doctor, died in 2006. Dr. Gao is survived by two daughters, Jingxian Guo and Yanguang Guo; a son, Chufei Guo; a sister, Ming Feng Gao; three grandchildren; and, in China, three brothers and another sister.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In Dr. Gao\u2019s\u00a0final years, in a West Harlem apartment, a group of\u00a0Chinese students helped keep her company and edited her writings. She never returned to Henan, but she said she wanted her ashes to be taken there and scattered on the Yellow River.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<div class=\"bottom-of-article\">\n<div class=\"css-ddxw8g\">\n<div class=\"css-acwcvw\">\n<p class=\"css-o5w3xl evys1bk0\">Because of an editing error, a previous version of this obituary misstated the given name of a Columbia University professor who confirmed Dr. Gao\u2019s death. He is Andrew J. Nathan, not Arnold.<\/p>\n<p>2023\u5e7412\u670810\u65e5<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Despite government efforts to silence her, she drew glo [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-6","category-light"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2302"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2304,"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2302\/revisions\/2304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chinademocrats.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}