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Pornography trade prospers in China
August 30, 2004
Beijing - The pregnant woman slices through the crowd on a busy sidewalk.
"Yellow movie," she whispers to two passing men - the Chinese slang for
pornography. Holding her belly, she guides them to a grassy area, lifting a
clump of sod to reveal several knockoff discs from the United States and Japan.
Her eyes darting for police, she makes the sale: 20 yuan, or about $2.40, for
two video compact discs. Then, as quickly as she appeared, the soon-to-be
mother is gone.
In cities across China, women hustle porn on pedestrian overpasses and at
tunnel entrances. Many are pregnant; others carry 1-year-olds often rented for
as little as a dollar a day. The babies are both props and shields: They enable
buyers immediately to identify the sellers, and the women exploit a loophole in
Chinese criminal law that allows for only a brief detainment of pregnant women
or those with infants.
"Everyone knows the Chinese need to do something to take these children out of
harm's way," said the director of a China-based children's rights group, who
spoke on condition of anonymity. "But how do you tell the Chinese government
anything?"
In recent years, the government has taken a comparatively lax enforcement
approach to sexually explicit movies, magazines and Internet images, all of
which are illegal here.
This summer, however, frustrated government officials took new steps in dealing
with the burgeoning pornography problem, launching a nationwide crackdown on
the sale of so-called yellow discs and the operation of pornographic Web sites.
President Hu Jintao, calling for a people's war against such "contaminated
material," pledged to punish pornography purveyors severely.
"This is China's new big problem," said a Beijing official familiar with the
anti-porn crusade. "Many people consider pornography the nation's No. 1 social
ill, even more so than gambling and drugs. It's become that serious."
Only a generation removed from a time when writing a love letter was grounds
for punishment, China's airwaves are now awash with "sex talk" radio shows.
Graphic sex novels such as "Breakup Dawn" and "Happiness That Lasts Half-Day
Long" have become bestsellers.
China's new sexuality has come at a price: Along with the spread of HIV and
AIDS, the popularity of pornography among youth has Communist Party officials
alarmed. Teens regularly surf porn at the Internet cafes that serve China's 90
million online users. Many of them have personal computers and cellphone
screens featuring soft-porn images.
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