China, criticized for a slow initial response to its HIV/AIDS crisis, has begun its first human trials of a new AIDS vaccine, Xinhua news agency said.

A 20-year-old man became the first volunteer to receive the AIDS vaccine on Saturday, followed by seven others, four of them women, Xinhua said.

Some 49 volunteers aged between 18 and 50 will receive the tests in three phases, the first lasting 14 months.

Experts have faulted China for being slow to recognize a growing AIDS problem, exacerbated by the cover-up of the blood-selling schemes in the central province of Henan that infected scores of people in the mid-1990s.

The government estimates that China, with a 1.3 billion population, has 840,000 people with HIV. Activists and experts say a more accurate figure would be between 1 million and 1.5 million.

The United Nations has said that the number of HIV/AIDS victims in China could rise to 10 million by 2010 unless serious steps are taken to fight the disease.

On World AIDS Day in 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao shook hands with AIDS patients at a Beijing hospital in a symbolic display of commitment to fighting the disease.

But efforts to step up AIDS prevention remain shackled by politics and conservative attitudes toward sex.

The HIV, AIDS virus, has infected more than 43 million people worldwide and killed 25 million. HIV is spread through sexual contact, blood and blood products and from mother to infant, but can be controlled to some degree with combination drug treatment called highly active antiretroviral therapy.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative has said dozens of potential vaccines are being tested and more than 70 human clinical trials have taken place although none has yet promised to conquer the virus.