Beijing ? China has 223,501 people infected with HIV, the official Xinhua News Agency said today, a sharp drop in previously reported figures.

The brief dispatch from Xinhua did not give any more details.

In 2004, China scaled back the estimated number of people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, from nearly 1 million people to 840,000, and then further lowered the estimate to 650,000 in 2005.

Experts have said the estimates are probably accurate because they are in line with a change in the way data are collected.