Zhao Qingmei was put to death in Guizhou province “in recent days” after her final appeal was rejected, the Guizhou Daily reported.

Zhao was convicted with six others of forcing the 22 pupils, some of whom may have been as young as six, and an older girl into prostitution in the impoverished mountainous province from March to June 2006, the paper said… The report said the other defendants, including Zhao’s husband, were given sentences ranging from jail time, including life sentences, to death with a two-year reprieve, a punishment normally commuted to life in prison.

China annually executes more people than the rest of the world combined, last year putting to death more than 1,700 people out of a global total of almost 2,400, according to Amnesty International.

© cschultz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: child abuse, execution, human trafficking, prostitution
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Later, however, it was revealed that the post was not written by prostitute Yan Deli, but a disgruntled ex-boyfriend with the surname Yang. Yan tested negative for HIV. But the hoax raises questions about personal privacy on the Internet. From China Daily:

A blog that falsely proclaimed that a Hebei province woman is HIV positive was a hoax by an ex-boyfriend intent upon revenge – and a case study into the debate about people’s right of privacy in cyberspace.

The woman, Yan Deli, a native in Hebei province, tested negative for HIV/AIDS Monday by the local disease control center.

[...] The hoax has caused worries about the violation of privacy in the virtual world, and raised questions about how much the blogger and the websites should be held responsible.

Yu Guofu, a lawyer with Beijing Sam & Partners Law Firm, said the blogger will face legal consequences, because the violators of laws in the virtual world – an extension of the real world – should be punished as well.

But the difference, Yu said, is how quickly illegal content can be spread on the Internet, and how difficult it is to collect proof of a crime on the Internet.

Read also a blog post by Chang Ping on the subject of privacy and defamation on the Internet [CN].

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: hoaxes, Internet privacy, privacy rights, prostitution, Yan Deli
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A brief introduction to the Beibei Wenquan Temple in Chongqing: the Wenquan temple and its first master were established in the first year of the Northern and Southern Dynasties (423 A.D.), and is linked to the Mahayana sect. It has gone through the tides of great changes through the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing Dynasties. … Past notable figures include Hui Guan, Cheng Pin, Chang Tai, Da Fang, Xiang Yan, Long Shu, and so on. The Wenquan temple is a famous temple in the area, having thorough teachings and traditional instruction on Buddhist thought.

重庆北碚温泉寺简介：温泉寺于慈应禅师创建于南北朝景平元年（公元423年），属大乘佛教临济宗。历经唐、宋、元、明、清，沧桑兴废 … 历代高僧有慧灌、成聘、常泰、大方、香延、隆树等。温泉寺为川东名刹，教化四方之所，传承法脉之地。

Recently however, the temple’s auspicious location has attracted some attention, and some desire to transform the temple into Chongqing’s largest relaxation and vice establishment, or a “bathhouse.” Several moneyed and coarse capitalists, in collusion with corrupt local officials, have staged the world’s biggest joke: it uses the Wenquan temple as its building material, a bathhouse as its front, and prostitution as its aim.

而如今，有人看上了这一方风水宝地，欲在这里建重庆最大的休闲色情场所，“洗浴中心”。几个财大气粗的资本家，在勾结当地腐败官员后，上演了本世纪最大的笑话……用温泉做料，洗浴为名，情色交易为主。

The temple received some pro bono counsel from those who tried to understand their situation. But in my decades of experiences in this society, they don’t have much hope; it’s inconceivable that they’d get very far. Perhaps after one phone call, the shadow of their simple lives could disappear without a trace.

法律界人士在了解情况，准备无偿为寺院提供法律援助。但以我几十年的社会经验，对此并不抱有太大的希望，无法想象他们能走多远。或许只须一个电话，他们单薄的身影就会消失的无影无踪。

The Religious Affairs Management has used “inspection” as an excuse, persisting in disrupting the temple’s normal order.

宗教管理部门以“调研”为借口，坚持干扰佛寺正常宗教秩序。

These are some precious [Song Dynasty] Buddhist cultural artifacts. Take one more look at them — they are hidden by the large road to the bathhouse, and no one knows what their fate will be.

The final era of culture. Aside from the government’s influence, what else will we sacrifice on the road for our so-called economic development? After 100 years, how will later generations criticize our period of history?

这些都是国宝级的佛教文物
　　再看一眼他们吧
　　因为它们正好挡在情色洗浴扩张的大路上，没人知道它们的命运…
　　文化的断代，除了政治的因素之外，还要牺牲在所谓的经济建设的道路上吗？
　　百年后，后人该怎么评说这段历史？

Aside from seriously hurting the Buddhists’ feelings, the cover-up of the illegal behavior ironically coincides with the second session of the World Buddhist Forum in Wuxi. Thousands of monks from 56 countries will assemble to talk about “Harmonious Society, Unity of the Multitudes.” This is a serious provocation of the country’s religious policies and Buddhist interests!

而如此严重的损害佛教徒宗教感情，侵吞佛教教产的违法行为却发生在第二届世界佛教论坛在中国无锡盛大举行的时候，来自56个国家的僧团及数千名佛教徒聚集无锡梵宫畅谈“和谐世界，众缘和合”之际。是对国家宗教政策和佛教利益的严重挑衅！

The regional authority’s important “written comments,” that was authorization for the [bathhouse plan] implementation.

区级领导的重要“批示”，并且开始执行。

Do you dare to look upon the State Council’s religious policies?

而这些国务院的宗教政策文件你们敢看吗？

Update: We have changed the headline and introduction to this post, which previously implied that the entire temple would be demolished. We thank Xujun Eberlein for pointing this out, and for providing additional details about the fate of the Beibei Wenquan Temple.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bathhouses, Buddhism, Chongqing, prostitution
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China’s rapid economic growth over the last two decades has seen the emergence of many new industries, including the sex industry. This pod explores this issue through eyes of two male prostitutes, immersed in this secret world.

See also Video: China Sex Workers, via Current.com

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: prostitution, sex industry, videos
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Four Chinese men have been jailed for up to 5- years for running a male prostitution service that sold sex to other men, state media said Wednesday.

Zheng Shuyi registered the website nannanboy.com — the word “nan” being Chinese for “man” — and advertised it as a spa, but he used it to recruit male prostitutes, the official Xinhua news agency said on its website (www.xinhuanet.com).

He then hired two rooms and sold sex for up to 400 yuan ($60) a session, the report said.

The prostitutes, based in the eastern province of Zhejiang, “went when they were called and offered their services,” it added.

Read also Male prostitution ring smashed in Zhejiang from Forgotten Archipelagoes.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: prostitution
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A 5,000-word article, “serving the people, Anxi (安溪)’s tax bureau breaks down Singaporean firm,” popped up on Internet forums after the October week-long holiday last year. Wang Quancheng (王泉成), the Singaporean Chinese and leading character in the article, offended his local tax authorities due to his lack of understanding of the rules of the game, or the “under-the-table rules.” Opening up Anxi County’s first four-star hotel Mingyuan (明园大酒店), Wang returned to his hometown to establish his business. But he is not a fan of “taking care of” tax officials and often refused to treat the cadres with free, fancy meals (霸王餐).

The hotel alleges the county tax bureau owed 18,000 yuan in meals and hotel stays but couldn’t collect the receivables after numerous attempts. When one day a hotel employee went up to the tax bureau for the payment, he was slammed for “not understanding who’s the boss (不识相).” Soon, the tax bureau and the city tax inspection bureau made an allegedly retaliatory raid on the hotel and left a few tickets, totaling 1.87 million yuan fines in “urban property taxes” and “xiaojie taxes (小姐税).” (Xiaojie, literally “miss,” also is a euphemism for “prostitutes” and such.)

(...)
Read the rest of Anxi, Fujian: Levying “Xiaojie Tax” With No Fault – Legal Daily (17 words)

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fujian, official corruption, prostitution
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The Ministry of Commerce has ordered all public bath houses to make their premises more accessible to public inspections in a bid to fight the growing sex trade. The ministry released draft rules on Thursday that require bath houses with massage rooms to be viewed openly from the outside. Foot-massage parlors must have their cubicle doors unlocked when attending clients. The draft rules have been posted on the ministry’s website to solicit public opinion before September 10….[Full Text]

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: prostitution, public health, sex
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The 22-year-old was a freelance prostitute. Henna-haired, eyebrows painted and dressed no differently than a college student, she moved from beauty salon to beauty salon, taking calls on her mobile phone from salon managers when they couldn’t find enough girls for all their customers.

She said she wasn’t as well paid as call girls in some of Beijing’s toniest hotels. Nor was she as poor as the women on construction sites, who sometimes service scores of migrant workers a night for barely more than $1 per customer. Two years ago, when she worked in her native Shandong province, she charged $27 for a session. [Full Text]

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: prostitution, sex
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Hardline Pakistani Islamists at the weekend released six Chinese female hostages and one man, ending a 17-hour crisis that highlighted a fresh challenge to the regime of pro-US military ruler General Pervez Musharraf.

The kidnappings on Friday night from a massage parlour in an upmarket neighbourhood of Islamabad was part of a crusade by Islamists in the capital, targeting what they consider immoral activities. The Islamists claimed the massage parlour was in fact a brothel.

The incident threatened to dent Pakistan’s relations with China, its closest ally, and the Islamists later claimed to have freed the captives to preserve bilateral relations with Beijing. [Full Text]

Read also the People’s Daily report on the release which, as the China Post points out, doesn’t mention the brothel claims.

© Gao Fei for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: kidnapping, Pakistan, prostitution
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Dozens of students had seized nine people (including two Pakistanis) from a massage parlor in an upscale neighborhood of Islamabad shortly after midnight, police official Mohammed Naeem said.

Maulana Mohammed Ishaq, a cleric at the city’s radical Red Mosque, said the nine had been brought to the mosque to teach them not to indulge in “anti-social activities.” [Full text]

See also “Kidnapping deals severe blow to ties with China” from Gulfnews.com.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Pakistan, prostitution
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China’s slavery scandal widened Tuesday with the state-run press reporting that young girls had been forced into prostitution at a brickyard work camp where abuse and beatings were routine.

The latest reports come as the slavery ring that was initially reported only in Shanxi and Henan provinces in north and central China had in fact been operating elsewhere around the country for as long as a decade.[Full text]

© Patricia Kim for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: human trafficking, labor rights, prostitution, Shanxi brick kiln, slaves
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The sacked deputy chief of Shanyang County’s public security bureau in Shaanxi Province, He Qi, has admitted to his crimes in court.

He and 13 members of his gang are facing trial in the city of Shangluo for running a prostitution racket, detaining people illegally, extortion and blackmail, drug trafficking, robbery, embezzlement and destroying accounts.

The trial of He and his gang members entered its third day yesterday, and the hearing was expected to last nine days because the case was complicated and involved many people.

“The gang committed 52 crimes since 1998 and amassed wealth worth more than 1.6 million yuan ($200,000), victimizing 26 policemen, officials, entrepreneurs and farmers,” the court indictment said. [Full Text]

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: police, prostitution
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The Dutch called it the Spanish disease; Russians the Polish disease; Turks, the Christian disease and Tahitians, the British disease. But syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease (STD), seems more of a Chinese disease these days. In China the chance of catching it is now more than 28 times greater than it was in 1993. Syphilis cases are increasing in many countries but the extent of China’s rise, in relative and absolute terms, dwarfs figures from America, Canada and Europe. That is the conclusion of a study by Zhi-Qiang Chen and his colleagues at China’s National Centre for STD and Leprosy Control published in the latest issue of the Lancet, a medical journal. Both the broader implications of the increase, and its details, are troubling.[Full Text]

© Mo Ming for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: prostitution, public health, sex
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Syphilis, virtually eradicated in China under Mao Zedong, has become a viciously-growing epidemic there, driven by prostitution, internal migration and poor health controls, a new study warns…

In 2005, it had surged to 5.7 cases per 100,000, a figure that may well be a serious under-estimate, according to the paper by Chinese epidemiologists.

In addition, the number of babies born with syphilis has shot up. Congenital syphilis occurred among just 0.01 per 100,000 live births in 1991; in 2005 it was 19.68 — an annual rise of nearly 72 percent over that time. [Full Text]

Here is the background information of “Prostitution in the People’s Republic of China” from Wikipedia.

View the China Daily version AFP story here.

© Wu Nan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, Mao Zedong, prostitution, public health, sex
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For people who saw the event on television, the scene was a chilling flashback from 30 years ago: Social outcasts and supposed criminals, in this case prostitutes and a few pimps, were paraded in front of a jeering crowd, their names revealed, and then taken to jail without trial.

The act of public shaming was intended as the inaugural event in a two- month campaign by the authorities in the southern city of Shenzhen to crack down on prostitution. Chinese law enforcement often works on the basis of campaigns, and for its organizers the idea of marching 100 or so prostitutes, all dressed in identical yellow smocks, before the cameras must have seemed like a clever way of launching a battle against the sex trade.

(...)
Read the rest of Shenzhen’s public humiliation of sex workers provokes a backlash – Howard W. French (75 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: prostitution, Shenzhen
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Shenzhen’s streets were the scene of a good old-fashioned public shaming this week. To launch a two-month-long crackdown on prostitution, police trotted out more than 100 men and women accused of working as pimps, madams, street girls and their johns. Local press like Southern Metropolis Daily caught the proceedings in the Shenzhen community of Shazui, better known by its street name, “Mistress Village”. On Wednesday, in the style of a show trial, suspects were lined up and introduced one by one. Each was forced to step forward when his or her name was called, then was marched back to the paddy wagons. As punishment, police announced, they were being held for 15 days of “administrative detention”. Over 1,000 onlookers gathered round. Occasionally, the crowd applauded.

But the minute news of the shaming hit the Web on Thursday, controversy erupted. By Friday morning, more than 105,000 respondents had participated in a survey on Sina.com asking what they thought of the rally. Against it: 69.1 percent, who thought the tactic “invaded the privacy rights of the parties involved.” In favor: 24.5 percent, who believed the display “conducive toward cracking down on crimes involving sex.”

On bulletin boards and in editorials, a load of commentators professed the opinion that the shamed party was in fact the police…

(...)
Read the rest of Wrong To Shame “Chickens”, Won’t Scare Monkeys – Survey (252 words)

© Jonathan Ansfield for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: privacy rights, prostitution
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…In the time since mainland China implemented reforms, women in impoverished regions have escaped poverty by means of prostitution, and in those places there has appeared a situation of ’smile at poverty but not at prostitutes’. This reflects women’s low status, a decline in women’s moral standards and a decline in societal moral standards as well. This kind of phenomenon is of the same nature as the issue of women becoming “gold digger” wives; all involve the behavior of women selling sex as a commodity. Only the former (sex workers) are short-term, with multiple retail, while the latter (full-time wives) are long-term, with one-time wholesale. If legal means are used to sanction, to only sanction the former but not the latter is illogical, and nobody would support a stance which would see legal sanctions being put on the former….

Click to see the original post: The Legal and Moral Problems With Sex Work by Li Yinhe, translated by Global Voices Online (need to scroll down).

The police cracking down a Red-light district in Kunming (from Fengniao):

(...)
Read the rest of Photo Series: A Red-light District in China (0 words)

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Li Yinhe, photos, prostitution
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© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: migrant workers, prostitution
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The police in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang, recently arrested more than 10 college student prostitutes, who sold their body for 800-100 renminbi, or $100-120, a time. Also arrested was a college boy who was dismissed from a major university in Hangzhou for theft. He gets 200-300 renminbi from every girl he introduces to the clients through his password-protected web site, which people need to pay 50 renminbi for a password to access.

What surprised the police is that many of the girls are from relatively well-off families and many don’t feel ashamed by their sex trade. And some even say that many girls on campus do what they are doing too, although most don’t tell others.

© Michael Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: prostitution
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