All Xiao Qi (a pseudonym) ever wanted to do was become a teacher.

But that dream was suddenly shattered when his application was turned down by the local education bureau Jinxian county, East China's Jiangxi Province late last year after a pre-employment physical examination found him to be HIV-positive.

"It was my dream to become a school teacher. Now all of a sudden, they slam the door in my face. I had to take legal action to make my own voice heard: AIDS patients have the legal right to equal job opportunities," Xiao, who had spent a great deal of time and energy in applying for the post, told the Global Times.

Eventually, he received 45,000 yuan ($7,213) in compensation from the local education bureau after mediation by the court.

It was the first case of an AIDS patient receiving compensation after suffering job discrimination on account of his condition. 

"The case is significant. In the past, no AIDS patients won their cases or got compensation for employment discrimination. Xiao Qi's case is the first of its kind," Cheng Yuan, director of the Nanjing-based Tianxiagong (meaning "justice for all"), an NGO dedicated to eliminating discrimination against people with disabilities, hepatitis and HIV/AIDS, told the Global Times.

However, legal specialists and lawyers have doubts on whether the victory of the case can be representative.

"Job discrimination on people living with HIV/AIDS is severe in China. If we want to solve the problem thoroughly, certain laws that disqualify people living with HIV/AIDS from holding government posts should be rectified," Cheng said.

Thunderbolt

Living in the suburbs of Nanchang, capital city of Jiangxi Province, Xiao has always been the apple of his poverty-stricken family's eye. His parents struggled to pay the tuition fees and living expenses for his education from their subsistence allowance.

Xiao planned to show his filial piety by finding a well-paid job and help with the family finances after he graduated from a teaching university in Jiangxi Province with an excellent academic record last year.

He participated in a recruitment round for school teachers in Jinxian in June last year and passed the teacher qualification examination with the highest score.

But after Xiao was asked to take a pre-employment health check on August 29, everything changed.

On September 3, Xiao received a phone call from the local education bureau, telling him he was disqualified from the teaching post as he was HIV-positive.

Xiao was stunned. "It was hard for me to believe this. How could I have been infected with such a disease? It felt like the sky was falling," said Xiao, who had no idea of his condition before the examination. He vaguely alluded to a bad romance that might have been the cause of the illness.

A devastated Xiao cried for days, before resolving to fight back.

"I learnt from some other AIDS patients and via the Internet that the law guaranteed the legal rights of AIDS patients to work, and they told me my legal rights had been violated," Xiao told the Global Times.

Xiao decided to defend himself. In November 2012, he sued the local education bureau over their decision to reject his application.

 "We found the local education bureau had flaws in its employment procedure, because they called Xiao and informed him of the rejection of his application for the teaching post, which is against the law," Zhang Yongxiang, a public interest lawyer representing Xiao, told the Global Times.

According to the law, an employer has to inform the applicant in writing if he or she does not meet the related requirements.

The local education bureau took an aggressive attitude to Xiao before he filed a lawsuit against it.

"At the very beginning, officials either hung up the phone or warned that they would never give compensation to Xiao, regardless of whether we took legal measures or not," Zhang said.

They softened their attitude following mediation, Zhang said.

 Zhang was asked by the court to hold discussions with representatives of the local education bureau twice in late November. Zhang proposed the education bureau give compensation or find Xiao alternative employment.

The latter idea was rejected by officials from the education bureau. "Parents would not send their kids to our school if they knew we had a teacher with AIDS, and other teachers might be reluctant to work with an AIDS patient," Wan Xiaolan, the Party secretary of the local education bureau, said.

From a humanitarian perspective, Wan said, the education bureau decided to provide compensation for Xiao.

Xiao and the county's education bureau reached an agreement after several rounds of fierce discussions. It was announced by the court on December 27 that a consensus had been reached..

Under the agreement, Xiao agreed to withdraw his lawsuit against the county's education bureau, while the bureau would pay 45,000 yuan to him in compensation.

Xiao felt comforted by the result. "No AIDS patients who sought compensation for employment discrimination have ever won their cases before, and I thought I had been lucky enough to get compensation," Xiao said.

Xiao gave the compensation to his parents so that they could pay for their pension fund.

Discrimination problem

Out of a population of over 1.3 billion, China has an estimated 780,000 people living with HIV/AIDS.

HIV employment discrimination remains a significant problem. "Despite the fact that HIV is transmitted through limited and established channels, many people are unwilling to work with people living with HIV/AIDS," Cheng Yuan, member of Tianxiagong, told the Global Times.

According to a survey in 2007, 65 percent of employers would discriminate against people with HIV. Another survey published in the Chinese Journal of Clinical Psychology found that 90 percent of participants had lost their jobs at least once as a result of their HIV status.

Working opportunities for AIDS sufferers remain scarce, Cheng said. "It is impossible for them to work in hospitals, governments, schools or large-scale companies. They mainly work in privately-run companies where they can hide their condition," Cheng said.

Previously, it was commonplace for job discrimination lawsuits to be rejected by Chinese courts before even going to trial. It was only in August 30, 2010, that China's first-ever lawsuit was accepted by an Anhui provincial court for employment discrimination against a man on the grounds that he was HIV-positive.

Xiao Wu (a pseudonym), who applied for a teaching post in Anqing, Auhui Province, was rejected by the local education bureau after he was also found to be HIV-positive.

The local court ruled that the local education bureau had not been at fault in turning down Xiao Wu, as the Physical Examination Criteria for Recruitment of Civil Servants stated that people with infectious diseases, including venereal diseases and AIDS, are disqualified from becoming civil servants.

Xiao Wu's case triggered a huge wave of controversy among scholars and the public. Many of the questions centered on the legal suitability of the criteria, in other words, whether the criteria for civil servants could be applied to the recruitment of teachers.

China has seen in total four cases of AIDS patients suing against employment discrimination on account of their condition. The cases were similar in that all of the claimants sought teaching posts. They had all passed the exams and interviews and were declined by the local education bureau due to their HIV-positive status.

Legal confusion

"The laws are self-contradictory. They applied the Physical Examination Criteria for Recruitment of Civil Servants when they recruited a teacher and prohibited AIDS patients from becoming a teacher or a public servant, but according to the Regulation on the Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS, the legal rights for people living with HIV/AIDS should be protected, including the rights of marriage, employment, medical treatment and education," said Yu Fangqiang, director of Tianxiagong.

In November last year, six lawyers sent a letter to the State Council, requesting that legislators review the Physical Examination Criteria for Recruitment of Civil Servants and delete related clauses that prohibited people living with HIV/AIDS from working in the government sector, in order to protect the equal rights of AIDS patients.

There had been no response from the State Council over the issue as of press time.

Xiao Qi now works as a salesman, with a monthly salary of around 1,000 yuan. Xiao said he felt sad that after all his years of education, he failed to find his ideal job.

Xiao Wu ended up working in a privately run primary school in Anqing by hiding his condition. The high pressure of work and insecurity of the job has left him exhausted.

"Private schools can sack you at any time," Xiao Wu complained, adding that he used to be overloaded with classes all day long.

"We have to live behind masks. I have to keep a distance from my colleagues and students. I am worried they might find out about my illness," Xiao Wu told the Global Times.

"The central and local governments should make a specific regulation on what type of jobs people with communicable diseases, including AIDS, can do and what kinds of jobs they can't," said Hong Daode, a criminal procedure law professor at the China University of Political Science and Law.