State-run newspapers in China have reported that AIDS is spreading quickly throughout China. An estimated 500,000 Chinese are infected, the majority of them rural villagers using drugs.

Testing has confirmed that 18,000 Chinese have the AIDS virus, HIV, leading health experts to project that all told more than a half million may be infected, the Beijing Daily and other newspapers reported.

AIDS has been spreading in China, with cases rising about 40 percent a year. The communist government, at first slow to react, has in recent years increased testing and tried to raise public awareness.

Alarmed at the latest figures, advisers to the State Council, China's Cabinet, met Thursday, urging that regulations on AIDS prevention be speeded up and appealing to all society to work together to stop the disease, the reports said.

Three quarters of the AIDS sufferers are between 18 to 39 years old, 70 percent contracted the disease through drug use and most live in rural China, the Beijing Daily said, citing Shen Jie of the Health Ministry's infectious disease department.