Michael Sidibe, the head of UNAIDS, has been urging donors not to assume China no longer needs help in its fight against HIV. despite its economic progress, China continues to need, according to Sidibe, a “catalytic fund”. In our own work in China, we share this assumption and applaud Sidibe for saying so: China is indeed a powerful nation with its own capacities, but friends and partners continue to have a big, and often collaborative, role to play.