Prostitution in China
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.
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.
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.
[4] 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.
[14] 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.
[17] 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.
[18][19] The potential benefits of prostitution as an alternative form of employment include greater disposable income, access to upwardly mobile social circles and lifestyle options.
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.
[25] 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.
[44][45][46] The North Korean government system of harsh punishment through forced labor camps or the death penalty can fuel trafficking in neighboring China.
[47] Many of the estimated 10,000[48] North Korean women and girls who have migrated illegally to China to flee abuse and human rights violations are particularly vulnerable to trafficking.
The women are then moved to cities farther away to subjected to forced prostitution in brothels or through internet sex sites, or compelled service as hostesses in nightclubs or karaoke bars.
Omar Warriach, Amnesty International's South Asia director has criticised administrations of both countries for allowing large scale mistreatment of Pakistani women without expressing any concern.
[99] During the same period the Finnish military officer Carl Mannerheim reported that several streets in Hotan were occupied by Uyghur prostitutes who specialised in selling their services to travelling merchants.
According to the local police, in China there are seven categories of prostitutes:[112] The first and second tiers have become the focus of heated public debate because they are explicitly linked to government corruption.
[116] Legal control of prostitution was effected on the basis of provincial rulings and localised policing initiatives until the introduction of the "Security administration punishment regulations" in 1987.
For the first time the death penalty may be used, but only in exceptional cases of organising prostitution activities, involving additional circumstances such as repeated offences, rape, causing serious bodily injury, etc.
[124] The ultimate goal is to stop managers and workers within the predominantly male-run and male-patronised hospitality and service industry from profiting from and/or encouraging the prostitution of others.
Government intervention in commercial recreation has found concrete expression in the form of the 1999 "Regulations concerning the management of public places of entertainment".
As a result of strong calls to curb official corruption, during the mid to late 1990s, a whole host of regulations were also introduced to ban government employees both from running recreational venues and from protecting illegal business operations.
A number of international NGOs and human rights organisations have criticised the PRC government for failing to comply with the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, accusing PRC of penalising and abusing lower tier prostitutes, many of whom are victims of human trafficking, while exonerating men who buy sex, and ignoring the ongoing problems of governmental complicity and involvement in the sex trade industry.
On the contrary, some commentators contend that legally recognising the sex industry, in conjunction with further economic development, will ultimately reduce the number of women in prostitution.
[138] Some commentators in China and overseas contend that the PRC's policy of banning prostitution is problematic because it hinders the task of developing measures to prevent the spread of HIV.
These include the lack of independent trade unions, and limited access of individuals to civil redress with regard to occupational health and safety issues.
A good example is news of an orgy between 400 Japanese clients and 500 Chinese prostitutes in 2003, which, partially because of anti-Japanese sentiment, was widely publicised and met with considerable outrage.
[147] Another highly publicised case was that of Alex Ho Wai-to, then a Democratic Party candidate for the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, who was given a six-month re-education through labor sentence for hiring a prostitute.
Both films, whilst being critically acclaimed abroad, performed poorly in mainland China, only partially due to government restrictions on distribution.
The most notable author on the subject is the young writer Jiu Dan, whose portrayal of Chinese prostitutes in Singapore in her novel Wuya, was extremely controversial.
Well-organized criminal syndicates and local gangs play key roles in the trafficking of Chinese women and girls in China, recruiting victims with fraudulent employment opportunities and subsequently forcing them into commercial sex.
Some Chinese men are reportedly circumventing this brokerage system by traveling to Southeast Asian capitals and entering into legal marriages with local women and girls, then returning to China and subjecting them to forced prostitution.
