The rate of HIV transmission has continued to spread at the alarming annual rate of 46 percent among students in Guangzhou, according to the Guangzhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Students made up almost four percent of all new cases last year, while they only accounted for 0.74 percent back in 2002. Three quarters of the 172 reported HIV cases among students in Guangzhou came from same-sex intercourse among males.

A study said a lack of HIV/AIDS awareness and a more open attitude towards sex has contributed to the rise in the number of HIV cases. But as China Daily reports, the Guangzhou CDC said nearly 93 percent of Guangzhou students were given HIV/AIDS prevention education in 2014.

“Since 2008, the number of HIV/AIDS cases among male college students has increased much faster than those among females… About 80 percent of newly detected cases involve sex between men,” said Wu Zunyou, head of the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention.

Before a city-wide crackdown sparked by a CCTV report that revealed rampant prostitution, Guangdong’s own Dongguan was hit with a full-blown HIV crisis. At the beginning of 2014, local media reported that as many as 2,000 of Dongguan’s sex workers had HIV, with some of them engaging in prostitution.