Gay sex is to blame for most of 2,000 new HIV infections in China last year, according to health experts.

Over 1,700 college students were infected with HIV in 2012, approximately 65% of which were contracted through sex with people of the same gender, according to Xinhau News Agency.

Most of the 1,700 cases were male students, said deputy director of the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention Wang Ning.

Ning said that more people getting tested for HIV is one reason for a rise in new cases.

According to news source China Daily, the number of HIV tests taken in China rose from 60 million in 2010 to 100 million in 2012.

‘Many more gay people are coming out and doing the test nowadays due to a more open public opinion,’ said Ning.

He also said that the rise in new HIV infections stems from a more socially open attitude toward sex and unsafe sexual practices.

Ye Dawei, deputy secretary-general of the China Red Ribbon Foundation, an HIV prevention organization, told China Daily: ‘Poor awareness of safe sex increases the risks of young people getting infected’.

‘Many students in junior high school have had sexual experience, let alone those in senior high school and college. But schools and parents are not willing to tell these young people how to protect themselves,’ he said.

‘Also, young people are facing more temptation in this information age. I have heard of some college students offering sex through the Internet for money to buy things such as an iPhone’.

Dawei added: ‘College students are in a relatively active stage of sex. There will be more and more cases of HIV infection among them if they are not guided in the right way’.

