Ways That Are Dark

The Washington Post has published a well researched article on prostitution in China, illustrating the connection between China’s bounding economy and the rise in the number of sex workers. As more women enter the field, prices for services are plummeting. The article, Oldest Profession Flourishes in China, begins with the story of a 22 year freelance prostitute working in Beijing:

By the time she came to Beijing last June, the market price for women like her was $20. With a couple of customers a day, she could make $1,350 a month, save most of her earnings and still send money home, she said. But now, because of increased competition from younger workers newly arrived from the countryside, her price has dropped to $13.

“I’m getting older,” she said over a simple dinner of vegetables and spicy chicken in a Beijing suburb, a slim gold ring on each middle finger. “Though the price has gone down, the number of customers is up. I used to receive two visitors before, and now I have three to four a day. My income is the same, I just have to work a little harder.”

No longer limited to well-known bars or a growing number of karaoke parlors, prostitutes are everywhere in China today, branching out onto college campuses, moving into private residential compounds and approaching customers on mobile phone networks.

In some spots, the article really gets to the heart of the matter. It points out that the rise in prostitution does not necessarily correspond to a decline in values, in fact “the majority of prostitutes have violated old social mores out of desperation to help their families.”

Jing Jun, a sociology and AIDS policy professor at Tsinghua University, is quoted in the article as saying:

“They are absolutely moral. A lot of these women send half their income back to support their families. They’re more filial than I am,” Jing said. “Among government officials, Chinese social scientists, health professionals, they are coming around to see that prostitution is not fundamentally connected to a lack of values but a lack of jobs, choices, opportunities and education.”

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Prostitution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.