Numbers range all over the board, from the official estimates one sees from time
to time of 3 million prostitutes nationwide, to U.S. State Department reports
that have placed the figure at 10 million, to a Chinese economist, Yang Fan,
who has estimated there are 20 million sex workers in the country, accounting
for fully 6 percent of the country's gross domestic product.
Coming back to anecdotal impressions, it would not surprise this writer if all
of these figures were low. Beyond the numbers, though, it is when one considers
that before economic changes were introduced a quarter- century ago, there was
essentially no open prostitution in China at all - none - that one is most
astounded.
Ordinarily, a phenomenon that had grown so fast and become this vast would be
grist for all manner of conversation, from the public health implications of
near-universal prostitution, to the social causes of gender inequality, high
unemployment and blossoming organized crime, just for a start. From there one
might move on to a discussion of profound changes in social values to the need
for legal reform.
One of the most basic notions in law is that an unenforceable law is a bad law.
The existence of millions of prostitutes makes a mockery of China's legal code,
whose formal banning of a deeply entrenched activity forces women into the
hands of organized crime and furthers their vulnerability and marginalization.
Perhaps the most striking feature of China's booming prostitution industry,
though, is how little ink is expended on it, how seldom its extent is even
acknowledged.
In a relaxed moment the other day, a Chinese official made this startling
confession: "I read the foreign press to learn about things that are happening
in China. The Chinese press doesn't write about bad news."
When I moved to object to categorizing news as "good" or "bad," he waved me
off, saying: "Don't worry. When there are problems, I think it is good to focus
on them."
Although generally invisible in polite society, two very different kinds of
prostitution have managed to work their way into China's national consciousness
in the last few weeks, and they speak volumes about a huge and yawning class
divide here.
At the end of November, officials in Shenzhen, the southern boomtown, got the
bright idea of reviving the Cultural Revolution for the purposes of temporarily
cracking down on its prostitutes.
This came to pass as a face-preserving measure after a regional television
station broke with decorum by mentioning the existence of this industry in a
city famous throughout Asia for its sex trade.
To send the message that Shenzhen was actually a clean and proper place, the
police dressed several dozen prostitutes in identical yellow smocks and marched
them through the streets of Futian district, to be shamed by a jeering crowd
and have their names and hometowns announced to all.
A few weeks earlier, beginning with the still unfolding political corruption
scandal in Shanghai, Chinese newspaper readers were treated to stories
detailing the sex lives of public officials, including the city's party leader,
Chen Liangyu, who is said to have maintained 11 "mistresses."
The quotation marks are warranted because in its apparently most common,
high-level Chinese form, such relationships are typically as money- based as an
hour with a sauna girl, only more elaborately contractual, sometimes including
the frequency of sex, and are, of course, incomparably more lucrative.
Soon, Chinese blogs and Internet forums were competing to reveal the details -
albeit rumored details - of public officials and their kept women from one end
of the country to the other.
In parts of Africa, another region of the world where such practices are rife,
these women are known as "second offices." Journalists who work on that
continent learn that one usually reliable gauge of corruption is the
flamboyance with which politicians bring new women aboard.
For a long time, the late leader of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko, was a dubious
champion in such matters, establishing families with both his wife and her
identical twin, among many other liaisons.
China's governing class may have something even on Mobutu, though. According to
press reports, when he was caught up in a corruption scandal in 2000, the head
of the Jiangsu Province Construction Bureau, Xu Qiyao, was found to have had
relations with over 100 women, including a mother and her daughter. Lin
Longfei, the former Communist Party secretary of Zhouning County, in Fujian
Province, reportedly kept 22 mistresses simultaneously and held a banquet for
them all in May 2002.
The mistresses of officials don't get dragged through the streets. Indeed,
their easy path to wealth is envied by many. Low and high, there is degradation
for all women, though, in this commerce, and nowhere so much as in the silence
that surrounds it.
International Herald Tribune
