Sex sells a lot in China. Like, I guess, in most other places where man has left a foot print. (Well, not maybe on the moon. Not yet, anyway.)
But because of the sheer size of the county and its population and the fact that authorities here are seemingly tolerant about it, the rampant nature of the sex industry in China is staggering.
Take the case of Dongguan, an industrial hub in the heavily industrialised province of Guangdong in south China. As many in China knew, Dongguan, a city of around eight million people was also the sleazy hub of the Communist country’s sex industry, earning itself the sordid sobriquet, “sex capital of China”.
A sting operation by China Central Television (CCTV) earlier this week brought out in the open in lurid details what many in the country already knew – a massive sex industry was operating in the city under the more-than-tolerant eyes of the police and authorities.
The report showed reporters calling up police stations to inform them about specific venues where sex was being sold. The response: zero.
The reaction from the government was swift; it launched one of the biggest crackdown on prostitution and pimping in recent history.
Numbers in the sex industry are always difficult come by but by some estimates at least 300000 people are involved directly or indirectly in the profession in the southern China city.
Though outlawed in China in 1949 when the Communist Party of China took over the country, the sex industry flourished, increasingly openly, in the last few decades as the economy opened up at a furious pace.
What probably led to the growth was also the rapid increase in the population of migrant labourers who moved out of rural China and moved from city to city where the construction industry was booming, which basically meant, everywhere.
Take the case of Beijing. I am not aware of a formal study on the number of sex worker in the city which has a population over 20 million at present. But those who have lived here for a while could possibly vouch that the industry is flourishing. Much of it, to be frank, isn’t hidden or underground either
From massage parlours to bars in popular night spots to five-star hotel lobbies, sex workers are liberally sprinkled everywhere during day and night.
Even in busy malls under glittering lights, prospective clients are often approached by sex workers coming out of invisible corners.
Not only Chinese, there is an abundance of international sex workers across Beijing. In fact, in a particular stretch of Beijing which is peppered with Russian-styled bars -okay, at least the signs are in Russian – women from CIS countries could retire to the client’s hotel room at a price.
In Shanghai, sex workers and their pimps walk the street near the famous bund area on the river pretty much under the nose of local policemen.
In Shenzhen, another industrial hub in Hong Kong’s neighbourhood, where traders from all over the world come to do business, sex for money is a given, many say.
I have heard stories about guests in hotels, across Chinese cities, being woken up by mid-night phone calls with the voice on the other end offering: “massage, massage”.
That practice has apparently winded down. But in most hotels even now, guests will find a small laminated stand with a picture of flowers and women, offering foot, body, head and deep tissue massages.
That doesn’t mean that all parlours in Beijing or elsewhere offer sex or a “happy ending” massage – as it is snidely known here – but it is hard to deny the sense of stigma and scandal associated with these places.
By the hard crackdown on the industry in Dongguan – at a place where it hurts the most because of its reputation – the government is probably trying to send a signal to those involved and those protecting the practice.
“The central government might be sending a signal to Guangdong province, the bellwether of the country’s economy. Besides economic growth, the province should also pay attention to its social moral standards and anti-corruption,” the South China Morning Post quoted an official as saying.