The sex industry is controversial in China, in part because of its celebrated absence during the Maoist period. In keeping with Marxist theory (Engels 1972 [1884]), the early Chinese Communist Party (CCP) viewed prostitution as an expression of the degraded position of women under feudal-capitalist patriarchy, and therefore as incompatible with the goals of building socialism and establishing more equitable socio-sexual relations. Following its assumption of national political power in 1949, the CCP embarked upon a series of campaigns that purportedly eradicated the sex industry from mainland China by the late 1950s (Jeffreys 2004: 96—97). The extraordinary nature of this feat meant that it was (and still is) vaunted as one of the major accomplishments of the early communist regime. A PRC Government white paper describes the abolition ofprostitution as effecting an ‘earth-shaking historic change in the social status and condition of women’ (Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China 1994).
Prostitution rates remained extremely low during the Maoist period due to the requirements of socialist centralised planning, involving nationalising industry and curtailing population mobility. By 1957, an estimated 90 per cent of China’s urban population belonged to a work unit (danwei), a state-owned enterprise or institution that was meant to overcome the alienation of labour by merging life and work, and which allocated all manner of welfare and services for its employees — housing, education, healthcare, policing, consumption goods, and entertainment (Jeffreys 2012: 2). The Maoist-era system of allocation, in conjunction with a system of household registration (hukou), created a geographically fixed population which was permanently open to surveillance. Most urban Chinese spent their entire lives in the closed community of a work unit and rural agricultural producers became tied to their place of birth because the state allocated work and resources, and therefore needed to know the identity and location of its workers. The comprehensive nature of this system contributed to the absence of visible prostitution in Maoist China by restricting the physical and social spaces in which commercial sexual activities could occur (Jeffreys 2012).
The revival of prostitution in China is associated with the dramatic changes that have accompanied the PRC’s post-1978 adoption of a market-based economy. Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, an estimated 150 million people have migrated from poor rural areas to take up transient work in developing urban centres, primarily in areas relating to the construction of infrastructure and China’s burgeoning hospitality and service industry (Batson 2009: 9). Economic reform has also contributed to the heterogenisation of China’s cities as new residents move in to take up new forms of work, other sectors of the population have become self-employed and newly rich, and a more diversified consumer society has emerged. While lifting millions out of poverty and creating a new class of millionaires (Goodman
2008) , this has led to rising income inequality. In tandem, there has been a massive upsurge in rates and types of prostitution. The typical ‘sex seller’ is characterised as a young and poorly educated rural migrant worker, although in practice sex sellers include people from privileged backgrounds, tertiary students and government officials (Jeffreys 2004: 97—100, 168—69).
Figures relating to the number of sex workers in contemporary China vary. A 2009 report by the US Department of State claims that between 1.7 and 6 million women in the PRC earn their primary income from prostitution, with a further 8 to 10 million women occasionally accepting money as well as gifts or rent in exchange for sexual services (US Department of State
2009) . Estimates by medical researchers focusing on prostitution as a vector for the transmission of sexually transmissible infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS, suggest that there are between 4 and 10 million women selling sexual services in China today (Li Li et al. 2009).
Expanding on these figures, journalists and academics often cite a Chinese economist, Yang Fan, who claimed in 2000 that there were 20 million sex workers whose related purchase of goods and services accounted for more than 6 per cent of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) (French 2006; Zhong 2000). In Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China, Zheng Tiantian (2009: 66) reiterates these uncorroborated claims and suggests that the contribution of the underground sex industry to China’s GDP in the 2000s may be greater than 12.8 per cent. These estimates are problematic, given the difficulty involved in quantifying the share of GDP accounted for by consumption of participants in a black market sector of the economy, and a lack of empirical evidence on consumption patterns by Chinese female sex workers. These estimates do, however, contribute to general understandings that the sex industry is an important component of life in China.
Commercial sexual services can be found in a wide variety of places throughout the PRC, incorporating such remote and economically underdeveloped regions as Guizhou and Tibet (Nanfang Renwu Zhoukan 2009; ‘Prostitution thriving’ 2005). Venues include hotels, bars, karaoke/ dance venues, health and fitness clubs, saunas, cinemas, teahouses, foot-washing and hair-washing salons, barbershops, truck stops, and temporary work camps. They also include public spaces such as beaches, parks and the unlit spaces beneath overpass bridges (Lin et al. 2010: 5—13; Jeffreys 2004: 97-98).
The prices charged for engaging in a commercial sexual transaction vary according to location and the nature of supply and demand. Prices range from CNY 10 (USD 1.60) to several hundred and even several thousand yuan, depending on whether the transaction is negotiated by an individual street operator or through intermediaries in low — or high-grade establishments (Liu 2011: 109-20; Zheng 2009: 85-89; Jeffreys 2004: 98). Prices also vary based on the relative attractiveness of the provider. Sellers of sexual services are usually women under 40 years of age and especially between 18 and 22 years of age (Sun et al. 2009). Those who meet certain aesthetic requirements (physically attractive, exotic, educated) earn more than their less ‘attractive’ counterparts, with an individual’s earning capacity diminishing as their age increases (Sun et al. 2009; Fang et al. 2007).
Prices paid by buyers of sexual services (usually men aged 20—65 years) vary in line with their socioeconomic status. In China, blue-collar workers are often associated with the purchase of quick, cheap sex from poor migrant workers in the streets or in low-grade venues, such as footwashing salons and barber shops, in order to satisfy natural biological urges or to compensate for emotional stresses (Lin et al. 2010: 8). Conversely, private entrepreneurs and government officials are associated with the consumption of sexual services from women of recognisable ‘quality’ in high-grade venues, usually as part of leisure practices connected with corporate masculinity, and the establishment of business circles and deals (Jeffreys 2008: 240—41; Uretsky 2008: 801-14).
Originally restricted chiefly to adult heterosexual prostitution, the market for sexual services in China has expanded to include male-male prostitution, female-male prostitution, youth prostitution, and child prostitution. The majority of male sex workers are single men between 18 and 24 years of age (Kong 2010: 177; Jeffreys 2007: 163). As with their female counterparts, they have often moved from poor communities in the rural hinterland to urban and more developed parts of the PRC to look for work and sometimes to study at college or university. Commonly referred to as ‘money boys’, many of these young men reportedly self-identify as heterosexual, but are willing to provide male-male sexual services in exchange for relatively large sums of money. Others define themselves as bisexual or gay and claim to enjoy experimenting with their sexuality while earning money (Kong 2010: 182; Chapman et al. 2009: 693). At the same time, they express concern over their triply stigmatised identity as homosexuals, rural migrants and sex workers, and worry about the future because their ability to earn an income from commercial sex is age-related and hence short-term (Kong 2010: 180-90). Quick transactions negotiated and conducted on the street cost CNY 10-30, sexual services arranged at or provided in a recreational enterprise cost CNY 50-500, and an overnight stay may cost CNY 1,000 (Chapman et al. 2009: 695). Customers of money boys are middle-aged men from all walks of life, including entrepreneurs, senior government officials, police officers, university professors, and foreign nationals (Ho 2008: 506).
Men who offer commercial sexual services to women are allegedly growing in numbers too. Media reports based on anecdotal evidence suggest that middle-aged women on holidays from Hong Kong and Taiwan sometimes pay for male companionship and potential sex partners in karaoke/dance venues, as do young mainland Chinese women who desire uncomplicated and/ or extramarital sex (Miller 2006). Ethnographic research suggests that female sex workers in the Pearl River Delta region sometimes purchase sex from male migrants, both to have ‘fun’ and affirm their higher-class status as someone who can afford to purchase sexual services from a man of lower socioeconomic status (Ding 2008: 95-96).
Youth prostitution is also increasing. Media reports allegedly based on interviews and local investigations indicate that growing numbers of female university students are selling sex in a voluntary capacity to pay for education fees, meet men with money and influence, and augment their social identity by using disposable income to purchase designer clothing and brand-name cosmetics (Chen 2003). Likewise, high school students aged between 13 and 18 years have sold sexual services via informal friendship networks to affluent entrepreneurs and government officials aged between 30 and 50 years in high-grade hotels for fees ranging between CNY 2,000 to 20,000, with virgins commanding especially high prices (Nanfang Zhoumo 2002). At the same time, cases involving the forced prostitution of girls under the age of 14 years demonstrate the need for continued governmental controls over criminal aspects of the prostitution industry (Shenzhen Daily 2009; International Harold Tribune 2007).
In short, the sex industry has expanded rapidly in reform-era China. Prostitution businesses now exist throughout the PRC, and sellers and buyers of sex come from all sectors of society. The growth of the sex industry inevitably has raised questions about the PRC’s policy of banning it.