Prostitution

Laws against prostitution exist throughout the region. Some compulsory testing for sexually transmitted infections has been reported in China and Vietnam, although sex work is officially prohibited (UNAIDS 2012: 2). China, which mounted a national campaign against prostitution in 2010 as part of a larger crackdown on crime, has an administrative law that allows the detention of sex workers for ‘re-education through labor’ (UNAIDS 2012: 93). Personal com­munications from Kunming in 2011 indicated that detention periods of six months without trial were fairly routine for transgender sex workers. The law in Hong Kong does not prohibit sex work in private, but criminalises soliciting, advertising, and brothels (UNAIDS 2012: 102, 104). Male prostitution is advertised on sophisticated commercial websites in China and Hong Kong, and perhaps most other parts of the region. Prostitution in Japan is defined in heterosexual terms in the Prostitution Prevention Law (Baishun Boshi Ho, 1956, effective 1958), and so does not cover male prostitution.