[1] The Plasma Economy campaign boomed due to demand by biotech companies, and became a lucrative source of income for middlemen.
[3] In the early 1990s, China restricted the import of blood products, while calling for local investment by foreign pharmaceutical companies, especially to the province of Henan, where numerous plasmapheresis stations were built.
They turned to their own blood as a ready source of cash income that would allow them to participate in China’s newly liberalized market economy.
It is estimated that by 1999, 43% of its blood donors in Caixian County in Henan were infected with AIDS,[3] in the village of Wenlou, over 65% of residents tested had contracted HIV.
[7] A full-length play The King of Hell's Palace premiered at London's Hampstead Theatre on 5 September 2019, and gave a dramatisation of the events of the plasma economy scandal in Henan Province in the 1990s.