AMID the daily drumbeat of protest across China involving citizens aggrieved by local injustices, a demonstration by around 300 AIDS victims outside the headquarters of the Henan provincial government late last month might have seemed routine. But the protesters’ growing frustration worries officials far beyond AIDS-wracked Henan. As the Communist Party prepares for an imminent leadership change it is more than usually anxious to keep the AIDS scandal quiet.

“The government is procrastinating, covering up and clamping down,” says an activist who joined the protest in the provincial capital, Zhengzhou, on August 27th. His son was found to be infected with HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, at the age of six after a blood transfusion at a Beijing hospital a decade ago. Many of the other participants were infected in government-backed blood-selling schemes in the 1990s. Donors, mostly poor farmers, were re-infused with pooled blood once its plasma had been removed. Tens of thousands contracted HIV this way. The government has never admitted responsibility.