Beijing ? China is on the brink of an “explosive” AIDS epidemic and could have 10 million infected people by the end of the decade, according to a U.N. study released Thursday.

The report urged the Chinese government to spend more on education and prevention, and complained that many Chinese officials lack commitment to fighting AIDS. Talking more openly about the disease will help to remove its stigma and make people willing to come forward for testing and treatment, it said.

China reported its first AIDS case in 1985.

Now the country is “on the verge of a catastrophe that could result in unimaginable suffering, economic loss and social devastation,” said the 89-page report, “HIV/AIDS: China’s Titanic Peril.”

It said data collected last year showed 30,736 people were infected with the HIV virus, 1,594 had full-blown AIDS and 684 people had died from illnesses related to the disease.

But, it said, the true number of people carrying the AIDS virus was far higher, between 800,000 and 1.5 million most of them infected through intravenous drug use or poor sanitation in China’s blood-buying industry.

That figure could soar to 10 million by 2010, said Siri Tellier, chairwoman of the U.N. Theme Group on HIV/AIDS in China, which prepared the report.

“Once you have a certain concentration of it, it will hit the general population,” she said.

The study warned that sexual intercourse both heterosexual and homosexual is fast growing as a means of infection. “All indications point to the brink of explosive HIV/AIDS epidemics in increasing numbers of areas and populations, with an imminent risk to the widespread dissemination of HIV to the general population through sexual transmission,” it said.

In April, state media reported that intravenous drug use accounted for 68 percent of infections, while blood-selling accounted for 9.7 percent.

That was the most specific official estimate yet of people infected by China’s blood-buying industry, blamed for spreading the virus to thousands of poor, rural villagers.

Collectors bought blood from villagers, pooled it and extracted plasma the liquid part of the blood sought for medical uses. They then reinjected the blood back into the sellers, apparently to limit their blood loss.

Though the government has set up safe blood banks and held a first-ever AIDS conference last year, the report indicated efforts still fall short of effective prevention.