Around 575,000 people in China have been infected with AIDS as of October this year, and health experts are raising alarm over the unprecedented rise of new HIV cases among young men, mostly high school and college students.

The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) said that before 2009, HIV/AIDS cases were highly brought on by intravenous drug use, blood transfusions, mother-to-child transmission and other factors.

Like Us on Facebook

But now, sexual transmission accounts for 92 percent of all new infections.

China CDC said men who have unprotected sex with men have become the new group with the highest infection rate.

As China observes World AIDS Day on Tuesday, health officials have expressed alarm over an increase in new infection among university students in elite groups who have had unprotected sex.

From 1985 to 2005, statistics showed that 30 percent of all  infections in China were from blood trade and sharing of needles in intravenous drug use.

Reports said the government was able to contain the two modes of transmission but it felt helpless to intrude into the private sphere of ordinary people's lives, as shown by the rapid increase of HIV/AIDS through heterosexual and homosexual sex.

From 1985 to 2005, just 0.3 percent of reported new infections occurred among men having sex with men. By the end of June 2015, that had risen to more than 27 percent, the statistics showed.

Wang Ning, an AIDS specialist at the China CDC, said that a  new high risk group is fast emerging and this is composed of 15 to 24-year old male high school and college students.

Ning said whereas before when most of the  infected young males came from far-flung and underdeveloped provinces in China, now the new infected males came from major cities where the so-called elite groups belong.

"Even though this special group has the information to prevent AIDS, when they indulge in high-risk behavior, they don't use their knowledge to protect themselves," Ning said.

So far, more than 3,500 infected students  were recorded this year, which is five times more compared to 770 cases in 2008. Around 81 percent contracted HIV through gay sex.

Ning said some of the causes of the rise in young male infection is the lack of sex education in schools as well as the emergence of social media and mobile dating apps.

TagsWorld AIDS Day, HIV, AIDS, Aids in Asia, Aids in China