Officially, prostitution is illegal in mainland China. Section 5: Discrimination, Societal Abuse, and Trafficking in Persons. The government of China has vacillated, however, in its legal treatment of prostitutes, treating them sometimes as criminals and sometimes as behaving with misconduct. Since the reemergence of prostitution in the 1980s, government authorities have responded by first using the legal system, that is, the daily operations of courts and police. Second, they have relied on police-led campaigns, clearly delineated periods of intense public activity, as a form of social discipline. Despite lobbying by international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and overseas commentators, there is not much support for legalisation of the sex sector by the public, social organizations or the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Prostitution and related activities in mainland China appear in diverse forms, at various venues and prices, and with prostitutes coming from a range of social backgrounds. They are almost all female, though in recent years male prostitutes have also emerged. Venues include hotels, massage parlors, karaoke bars and beauty salons.
While the sale of sexual intercourse remains illegal throughout mainland China, as of 2013 erotic massage, more commonly known as massage with "happy endings", is legal in the city of Foshan in Guangdong province. In June of that year, the Foshan Court determined that the sale of erotic massage is not the same as prostitution.
After taking power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) embarked upon a series of campaigns with the aim of eradicating prostitution from mainland China by the early 1960s. Since the loosening of government controls over society in the early 1980s, prostitution in mainland China not only has become more visible, but can now be found throughout both urban and rural areas. In spite of government efforts, prostitution has now developed to the extent that it comprises an industry, one that involves a great number of people and produces a considerable economic output. Prostitution has also become associated with a number of issues, including organized crime, government corruption, hypocrisy, as well as sexually transmitted diseases. Notably, a CCP official who was a major provincial campaigner against corruption was removed from his post and expelled from the party after he was caught in a hotel room with a prostitute in 2007.
History
Maoist era Following the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, local government authorities were charged with the task of eliminating prostitution. One month after the Communist takeover of Beijing on 3 February 1949, the new municipal government under Ye Jianying announced a policy to control the city's many brothels. On 21 November, all 224 of Beijing's establishments were shut down; 1286 prostitutes and 434 owners, procurers, and pimps were arrested in the space of 12 hours by an estimated 2400 cadres.
Due to the enormity of social issues that had to be addressed, and the limited budgets and human resources of local governments, most cities adopted the slower approach of first controlling and then prohibiting brothel-prostitution.Ed. Ma Weigang (1993). 禁娼禁毒 (On Strictly Forbidding Prostitution and Drugs). Beijing: Juguan jiaoyu chubanshe. p. 8. This method was used in Tianjin, Shanghai and Wuhan. Typically it involved a system of governmental administration which controlled brothel activities and discouraged male patrons. The combined effect of such measures was to gradually reduce the number of brothels in each city until the point where a "Beijing-style" closure of the remaining brothels was deemed feasible and reeducation could begin. The number of sex workers in Shanghai had grown to 100,000 following the Second Sino-Japanese War, and it was here that reeducation programs were undertaken on the largest scale.
By the early 1960s, such measures had basically wiped out visible forms of prostitution from mainland China. According to the People's Republic of China (PRC) government, venereal diseases were almost eliminated from the mainland contemporaneously with the control of prostitution. To mark this victory, all 29 venereal disease research institutes were closed in 1964.
In accordance with Marxist theory, women who sold sex were viewed as being forced into prostitution in order to survive. The eradication of prostitution was thus vaunted as one of the major accomplishments of the Communist government and evidence of the primacy of Chinese Marxism.Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. "Historic Liberation of Chinese Women". The Situation Of Chinese Women. Retrieved on 22 November 2005."短评解放妓女 (A Brief Commentary on the Liberation of Female Prostitutes)". People's Daily, 22 November 1949. Prostitution did not exist as a serious object of concern in China for a period of nearly three decades. Recent studies have demonstrated, however, that the disappearance of prostitution under the Maoist government was far from complete.Hershatter, G (1997). Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. pp. 331–3.Shan Guangnai (1995). 中国娼妓过去和现在 (Chinese Prostitution - Past and Present). Beijing: 法律出版社 (Legal Press). p. 3. Pan Suiming, one of China's leading experts on prostitution, argues that "invisible" prostitution — in the form of women providing sexual services to cadres in exchange for certain privileges — became a distinctive feature of Maoist China, particularly towards the end of the Cultural Revolution.
Post-1978 Prostitution-related arrests during police campaigns (1983–1999)yearprostitution-related arrests198346,5341989–90243,1831996–7approx. 250,0001998189,9721999216,660 The resurgence of prostitution in mainland China has coincided with the introduction of Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up in 1978. According to the incomplete statistics composed on the basis of nationwide crackdowns, the rate of prostitution in China has been rising every year since 1982. Between 1989 and 1990, 243,183 people were apprehended for prostitution-related activities. Zhang Ping estimates that such police figures only account for around 25–30 percent of the total number of people who are actually involved. Prostitution is an increasingly large part of the Chinese economy, employing perhaps 10 million people, with an annual level of consumption of possibly 1 trillion RMB.Zhong Wei. "A Close Look at China's Sex Industry". Retrieved 30 November 2005. Archived from the original on 21 April 2002. Following a 2000 police campaign, Chinese economist Yang Fan estimated that the Chinese GDP slumped by 1%, as a result of decreased spending by newly unemployed female prostitutes.
The revival of prostitution was initially associated with China's eastern, coastal cities, but since the early 1990s at least, local media have reported on prostitution scandals in the economic hinterlands, incorporating such remote and underdeveloped regions as Yunnan,Duncan Hewitt, BBC News: Teenage prostitution case shocks China Guizhou, and Tibet. In the 1980s, the typical seller of sex was a poorly educated, young female rural migrant from populous, relatively remote provinces such as Sichuan and Hunan. Over the past decade, there has been a recognition that the majority of women who enter prostitution do so of their own accord. The potential benefits of prostitution as an alternative form of employment include greater disposable income, access to upwardly mobile social circles and lifestyle options. The state-controlled media have focused attention on urban residents engaging in prostitution, especially university-educated women.Wang Haibo (3 July 2003). "女大学生卖淫，我不相信是假新闻 (Female university students selling sex, I don't believe it's false news)". Hong wang. Retrieved 24 November 2005. Archived from the original on 13 September 2003. There also seems to be a growing acceptance of prostitution. In a 1997 study, 46.8% of undergraduates in Beijing admitted to having considered receiving prostitution services. On the demand side, prostitution has been associated with the gender imbalances brought about by the one-child policy.McCurry, J.; Allison, R. (9 March 2004). "40m bachelors and no women ... the birth of a new problem for China". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 December 2005.
Prostitution is often directly linked to low-level government corruption. Many local officials believe that encouraging prostitution in recreational business operations will bring economic benefits by developing the tourism and hospitality industries and generating a significant source of tax revenue. On occasion, police have been implicated in the running of high grade hotels where prostitution activities occur, or accepting bribes and demanding sexual favours to ignore the existence of prostitution activities. Government corruption is also involved in a more indirect form — the widespread abuse of public funds to finance consumption of sex services. Pan Suiming contends that China has a specific type of prostitution that entails a bargain between those who use their power and authority in government to obtain sex and those who use sex to obtain privileges.
Apart from violent incidents directly associated with prostitution, an increasing number of women who sell sex have been physically assaulted, and even murdered, in the course of attempts to steal their money and property. There have also been a growing number of criminal acts, especially instances of theft and fraud directed at men who buy sex, as well as bribery of public servants. Offenders often capitalise on the unwillingness of participants in the prostitution transaction to report such activities. Organised crime rings are increasingly trafficking women into and out of China for the sex trade, sometimes forcibly and after multiple acts of rape.Zhang, pp. 25–9, note 9.Hughes, D., et al. China and Hong Kong: Facts on Trafficking and Prostitution . Coalition Against Trafficking in Women. Retrieved 2 December 2005.CWA Newsletter . Child Workers in Asia 13 (2–3), 1997. Retrieved 2 December 2005. Mainland China also has a growing number of "heroin hookers", whose drug addictions are often connected to international and domestic crime rackets.Wang Xingjuan (1996). 当前卖淫嫖娼的现象问题 (Some problems concerning the current phenomenon of selling and buying sex). pp. 27–8, note 6.
Sexually transmitted diseases also made a resurgence around the same time as prostitution, and have been directly linked to prostitution. Some regions have introduced a policy of 100% condom use, inspired by a similar measure in Thailand. Other interventions have been introduced recently at some sites, including STI services, peer education and voluntary counselling and testing for HIV."A Joint Assessment of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Treatment and Care in China". State Council HIV/AIDS Working Committee Office and UN Theme Group on HIV/AIDS in China, 2004.Zhang Feng (27 October 2005). "HIV/AIDS battle enters new phase". China Daily. Retrieved 3 December 2005.
Chinese women are sometimes required to submit a nude photo along with personally identifiable contact information as collateral when receiving a loan through gray-market lenders. If they fall behind in their payments, the photos together with the contact information are sold online to potential customers of prostitution or human traffickers.
In 2003 a report by Chen Jieren on university prostitution in China has sparked a country-wide debate about the issue, which has also been described as a "well-kept secret".
Foreign prostitutes African Uganda's Director of Interpol Asan Kasingye estimates that thousands of women from Kenya, Rwanda or Uganda were trafficked in 2011 to work as prostitutes in China, Indonesia and Malaysia.
European