China's Sex Crackdown Is Doomed to Fail

My last visit to Dongguan, China's widely acknowledged and often acclaimed prostitution capital, was in 2011 (for a factory visit), and included a breakfast meeting at a well-known U.S. chain hotel, in view of the elevators that whisk customers to their rooms. It was a memorable meal: Over eggs, my companions and I watched as those elevators discharged a flood of young women, one after the other, yawning and rubbing their eyes, clad in last night's high-cut dresses. Not one stopped for breakfast, nor to settle room charges at the front desk. They simply sashayed out the revolving doors and into Dongguan's smog.

More than likely these young ladies were representative of the 500,000 to 800,000 prostitutes which Chinese media estimate who worked in Dongguan up until 9 p.m. on February 9, when authorities launched an unexpected crackdown on the city's thriving but still illegal (prostitution has been illegal in China since 1949) sex trade. The numbers, as reported by Chinese media, speak to the scale: In 2011, revenue from sex-related businesses in the city totaled around $8 billion, or roughly 14 percent of Dongguan's export manufacturing-based economy. The industry included some "807 massage and bath houses, 1,228 hotels, 636 hair salons and 465 KTV parlors." Shutting down a trade of this size requires manpower: Dongguan deployed "more than 6,000 police" to do the job, sending prostitutes and johns fleeing to safer havens. That's not the end of it: on Sunday, China's Public Security Bureau called upon police across China to follow the example set in Dongguan and to "firmly crack down" on prostitution, as well as gambling and drugs.