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Sex Trade Thrives In China 

Localities Exploiting A Growing Business

By Peter S. Goodman 
Washington Post Foreign Service 
Saturday, January 4, 2003; Page A01

SANYA, China -- Liu, whom The Post is identifying by only her
family name, and the others .... are part of what may be China's
most dynamic capitalist enterprise -- a flourishing trade in sex.
Though technically illegal, it has become increasingly open and
ubiquitous in cities and towns across the world's most populous
country. Some local governments have tapped into the flow of mo-
ney by taxing the trade. As many as 10 million people take part
in the industry, according to an estimate in the 2001 U.S. State
Department human rights report for China.

 Local governments are enmeshed in prostitution through their
ownership of hotels that draw customers and profit from the
trade, but for the Communist Party, whose legitimacy rests in
part on having supposedly eradicated such social vices, the
thriving industry is deeply embarrassing. That has stymied ef-
forts to regulate it and limit its harm.

In a way, Liu and her cohort are models of the kind of rugged in-
dividualism that China's leaders have sought to inculcate as they
have tied the country's future to the free market. "These prosti-
tutes have solved the unemployment problem for themselves," said
Pan Suiming, a sexology professor at People's University in Beij-
ing.

But not without grave cost to themselves and Chinese society in
general. The sex trade is an increasingly significant channel for
the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, according to health
officials. Since 1995, cases of gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia
have increased more than 30 percent annually, according to
government data. Experts say those numbers are surely low given
that most patients seek treatment in private clinics that do not
report data to central authorities. More than 120 million Chinese
are already infected with hepatitis B, and at least 1 million
have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, according to the govern-
ment.

"They don't want to talk about prostitution," said Xu Keyi, who
oversees the Di Tan Hospital Research center for Sexually
Transmitted Diseases in Beijing. "They figure the communist sys-
tem is the best system in the world, so we wouldn't have prosti-
tution. It's an ugly thing and we don't like ugly things."

China's government tolerates prostitution for its economic value.
For one thing, many in the trade are helping to support families
back home in struggling rural areas.

That has helped make China's sex trade one of the world's more
brazen. At the Zhaolong Hotel in Beijing -- a five-star,
government-owned establishment that is often full of Chinese mil-
itary officers -- an older woman solicits male guests in the lob-
by during evening hours, in a normal voice and in full view of
hotel staff. At other hotels around the country, male guests are
routinely awoken by hotel receptionists, who ask, "Are you lone-
ly?" A company that calls itself Yuan Union organizes sex parties
geared to foreign diplomats and businessmen in Beijing, Shanghai,
Shenzhen and other major cities, according to an e-mail solicita-
tion.

Four years ago in Shenyang -- an industrial city in China's
northeast -- the mayor, Mu Suixin, urged the opening of bars and
massage parlors as an antidote to unemployment.

He gave prostitutes licenses and applied 30 percent taxes to
their earnings. The resulting windfall encouraged other cities to
follow suit.

When a client arrives, requesting a private room, the girls snap
to attention. He might invite them back to his hotel for sex,
handing over as much as $125. It is more money than Liu made in
two months as a salesclerk in her hometown 1,000 miles away.

Three years ago, Liu was making $50 a month in a state-owned
department store in Dangyang, a city in the central Chinese pro-
vince of Hubei.

 When a private businessman took control, he laid off workers,
including Liu, to cut costs. Liu's parents, who once enjoyed
stable incomes from state-owned businesses, were now heavily in
debt.

Money-losing state companies are closing, leaving tens of mil-
lions out of work. The women -- and, increasingly, men -- who
work in the sex trade are among tens of millions who have forsak-
en homes in China's poorer, interior regions for better prospects
in coastal areas booming with foreign investment and new wealth.

Liu, then 23, followed a friend who had already moved away and
landed a sales job in Shenzhen, booming with money from the
thousands of Hong Kong people who moved there to save on living
costs. Liu found her sales job for about $100 a month, twice her
salary at home. (But, and still, ) (s)he was barely getting by.
Some months she was borrowing from her friend.

Early last year, she decided it was time to move on. Her cousin
was already in Hainan, working as a hostess. Liu called her.

Hainan markets itself as a family tourist destination and conven-
tion locale. But once the sun sets, young women begin arriving at
the beach resorts.

At first, Liu worked in the same karaoke place as her cousin. Two
months ago, she switched to the Guoxi, a higher-class place fre-
quented by visitors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan.
Every few weeks, she said, one of the men invites her to his
room.

Liu is earning about $400 a month, she said. It is enough to send
home about $50 and still set aside much of the rest. Enough for
the slinky dresses she needs to buy at the market, and enough for
the makeup that occupies a low table in the bedroom she shares
with her cousin. They split the $90 monthly rent with a third
roommate, a former police officer from Hubei. A color television
occupies a table in their sitting room.

Liu has designs on putting away enough money to go back to Hubei
and open up a flower shop. Maybe next year.


 copyright washingtonpost 2003
  
.. yeh, maybe next year.

3 responses total.

Prostituition is a virus of capitalistic society..China got it thro its open
market policy.

"Capitalistic" was the norm before Marx.

Excuse me, please donot get confused between Feudalism and Capitalism..

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