If you do research online you will find out the old profession is somehow a promising industry in China. It goes well since 1980, the reform year. But wait, let's check the history of the old profession in China:
Prostitution flourished in 14th-century China as wealthy Ming Dynasty officials visited mistresses, kept concubines, registered brothels and taxed courtesans. But by the late 1940s, Communists were campaigning against prostitutes -- along with other "socially unreliable" groups such as bandits, opium-smokers and adulterers -- by monitoring people's housing, hairstyles and makeup.
Now let's take a overview of this topic on wiki:
Shortly after taking power in 1949, the Communist Party of China embarked upon a series of campaigns that purportedly eradicated prostitution from mainland China by the early 1960s. Since the loosening of government controls over society in the early 1980s, prostitution in mainland China not only has become more visible, but can now be found throughout both urban and rural areas. In spite of government efforts, prostitution has now developed to the extent that it comprises an industry, one that involves a great number of people and produces a considerable economic output. Prostitution has also become associated with a number of problems, including organized crime, government corruption and sexually transmitted diseases. For example, a Communist Party official who was a top provincial campaigner against corruption was removed from his post after he was caught in a hotel room with a prostitute.
Prostitution-related activities in mainland China are characterized by diverse types, venues and prices. Prostitutes themselves come from a broad range of social backgrounds. They are almost all female, though in recent years male prostitutes have also emerged. A large number of Russian women work as prostitutes in China. Venues typically include hotels, karaoke venues and beauty salons.
Officially, prostitution is illegal in mainland China. The government of the People's Republic of China has vacillated, however, in its legal treatment of prostitutes themselves, treating them sometimes as criminals and sometimes as behaving with misconduct. Since the reappearance of prostitution in the 1980s, government authorities have responded by first using the legal system, that is, the daily operations of institutions like courts and police. Second, they have relied on police-led campaigns, clearly delineated periods of intense public activity, as a form of social discipline. Despite lobbying by international NGOs and overseas commentators, there is not much support for legalisation of the sex sector by the public, social organizations or the government of the PRC.
Well let's take a close look at individual prosititutes:
Feb. 24th, 2007
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.
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.
Most are from the countryside: rural women placing all their hopes for the future in China's increasingly competitive urban centers. Some entering the trade are older than those in the past, and some are much younger. The changing demographics reflect the country's rapid economic growth and make a statement about the insatiable quest for money that permeates Chinese society.
"There was no open prostitution 25 years ago," said Jing Jun, a sociology and AIDS policy professor at Tsinghua University. "Fifteen years ago, you didn't find sex workers in remote areas and cities. But now it's prevalent in every city, every county."
Estimates of the number of prostitutes in China vary widely, from 1 million who earn their primary income from sex, to eight or 10 times that, including people who sometimes accept money, gifts or rent in exchange for sex. That the numbers have been allowed to increase illustrates the tricky relationship officials have with the ancient profession.
Some experts say a complete evaporation of social values caused the explosion of the trade, and they cite the young sex workers who are in the business for easy money and fancy clothes. But the majority of prostitutes have violated old social mores out of desperation to help their families, Jing said, and an important change in perception may be underway.
"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."
And as the growing number of sex workers forces the price of sex to plummet, health workers are also concerned about a rise in medical risks.
"The impact is very simple. Sometimes a sex transaction is only 10 yuan [$1.33] in Sichuan province, under a bridge or an overpass," Jing said.
Jing said about 40 percent of the female sex workers tested by China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention two years ago were older than 35. "Among sex workers infected with HIV-AIDS, 60 percent are older than 35. That means there are some really desperate women," Jing said. "The lower you go in price and quality of the sex workplace, the lower the rate of condom use."
There were 174,506 reported syphilis patients in China last year, up 31 percent from 2005, said Wang Quanpei, a Nanjing-based researcher with China's CDC. But because many people with sexually transmitted diseases visit unregistered doctors, and partly because many hospitals specializing in these diseases are badly managed, the actual number of infected patients is estimated to be as much as 10 times higher than reported, experts said.
AIDS education in China is inadequate, and awareness of STDs remains poor, surveys show. Increasingly fierce competition among prostitutes means that often-ignorant customers have growing leverage over prostitutes who feel disadvantaged.
In a karaoke bar in northern Beijing, for instance, a 37-year-old prostitute from Hubei province said her main goal was saving enough money to support and win custody of her 9-year-old son, who lives with an estranged and abusive husband.
"If I was still with my ex-husband, he would have chopped me into pieces if he knew what I did for a living," said the woman, who asked to be identified only by her last name, Wang. "There are other ways to do business, but I need the money. Old women like us can't make a lot of money here."
She doesn't visit a gynecologist very often, because she doesn't believe she is sick. And each week, Wang watches the more cautious sex workers in the bar lose clients to other prostitutes.
"Another girl named Lily was abandoned by a customer named Big Brother Yao because she refused to have sex without using a condom," Wang said. "He's a frequent visitor here, and he's famous for not using a condom. He never called her again. She lost that business forever."
When Wang's customers insist on not wearing a condom, she usually gives in. She feels safe because she doesn't have sex with customers "very often," she said. "Who said that you will be infected as soon as you have sex with your customer?"
Her clients would probably agree. Most men who seek out prostitutes think sexually transmitted diseases are no more serious than a cold and are easily cured, according to preliminary results from a 2006 survey by the Institute for Research on Sexuality and Gender at People's (Renmin) University.
These days, prostitution is becoming less of an organized business and more of an exercise in individual entrepreneurship. Mid-level sex workers with a few years of experience are striking out on their own in residential compounds, renting apartments and finding their own customers, "because it's safer than a club or bar that's exposed to a police raid," said sexologist Pan Suiming, who heads the institute, referring to the occasional official efforts to crack down on the trade. "Competition is fierce."
Male prostitutes, whose prices have also been affected, say their customers are no longer just bored or lonely middle-age women but mostly a growing number of female sex workers who hire them in order to erase the sting of being used themselves.
The 22-year-old freelance prostitute tells her family she works in a supermarket. Armed with an elementary school education and a short stint as a textile factory worker, her only other job before becoming a sex worker was washing dishes 12 hours a day in a hotel in Shandong.
"There was a karaoke parlor in that hotel, and all the girls there didn't have to work at all, yet they made big money! I worked all day but only got 400 yuan [$53] a month," she said. "It's all because of money that I became 'bad' and joined this business."
By and by, call girls have more knowledge on how to make easy money and even goes very far :
The Street Prostitute Gives The Microsoft Senior Manager An MBA Lesson
I suddenly felt the need to get a woman, so I hurriedly concluded a meeting and I was looking for a street walker in front of the International Trade Modern City building. A Wenzhou MM saw me and very professionally came at me in a straight line and stopped right in front of me. Thus followed the story that astonished me greatly as if I had attended a lively MBA course. In order to faithfully preserve the intent of this girl, I have tried to reproduce her original words according to my memory.
"Mister, what do you want to do? ... Good, the full package -- cold and hot water; the anal tongue drill; bondage with red strings. In the Zhaoyang district, I loved to get business in front of the Modern City building. Over here, I only work two places: Modern City and Qingguang Center. Did you know? Before I saw you, I circled around the entrance of Modern City twice before I finally saw you! People who come out of office building definitely want the full package ..."
"Oh? You have a method!" I agreed.
"A working girl must also have scientific methods," she said. I was surprised and I got curious: "What scientific methods?"
"I have to know statistics. I have made detailed calculations. Let me tell you. I work 22 days a month, and my daily cost is 272.7 RMB ..."
"How did you arrive at that?" I asked
"You calculate. I have to pay 3,000 RMB a month to rent a high-class apartment. In order to put myself in a higher class than other working girls, I spend 1,500 RMB a month on clothing and cosmetics. I need about 1,500 RMB a month for food. I work 22 days a month. On an daily basis basis, isn't my average daily fixed cost 272.7 RMB?" I was a bit surprised. I have been getting girls for ten years and this is the first time that I heard a working girl compute her costs this way. Previously, the other girls all told me: 300 RMB per trick, or 800 RMB overnight.
"Costs should not be calculated on a per-trick basis. It should be calculated on a time basis. You see, I keep a record each day. I can see the detailed records for each month. I have done a data analysis. The averarge idle time gap between customers is seven hours. If I get someone who wants to have a quickie, then it will take about one hour to earn 100 RMB. That is, each 100 RMB customer takes 8 hours in cost, or 12.5 RMB per hour. This is not making money! If we say that customers who want cold and hot water, full body licking and the anal tongue drill are like meals, then a 100 RMB customer is not even a bite of food. You can only say that this is just a sprinkle of MSG."
Great! This girl did not sound like a street walker. She seemed more like an accountant. "So what you do then?" I was even more interested and I continued my questioning. It looked like I was going to learn something new on the way to the girl's apartment.
"You must not stand mindlessly at any place to wait for customers. You choose the place based upon the location, time and customer. You must actively decide on your agenda." I was very surprised, but this sounded significant. "Someone said that street walking is a profession that depends on luck. I don't think so. You have to stand in the position of the customer and consider things from the customer's perspective." This sounded very professional, and very much like many business management teachers who say "put yourself in others' shoes."
"Let me give you an example. You are at the entrance to a hospital. There is someone holding some medicine and there is someone else holding a wash basin. Which person will you pick up?" I thought about it and I said that I didn't know.
"You take the one with the wash basin. If you have a minor complaint that you want to be examined and to get some medicine, you don't want to let yourself go too far afterwards. Anyone who is carrying a wash basin has just been discharged from the hospital. When people enter the hospital, some of them die. Today, someone on the second floor dies. Tomorrow, someone on the third floor dies. Those who make it out of the hospital usually have a feeling of having been given a second life and they recognize the meaning of life again -- having fun is the most important thing. So on that day, that person told me, 'Fuck! ... let's go and get a room at the hotel. I'll give you 2,000 RMB for the night. You dress like a nurse so that I can release my frustrations against those damned nurses.' He gave me 2,000 RMB immediately without even blinking. Would you say that he wants a massage and then a quickie? Absolutely not!"
I began to admire her.
"Let me give you another example. That day at Panjiayuan, three sets of people were waving at me. One was a young man who had just finished shopping in the shopping mall and was holding some small gift boxes in his hands. Another was a couple of old men in western suits with ruddy faces flushed from drinking. The third one was a man who wore a silk shirt and a down jacket and holding a notebook computer bag and hauling a mobile suitcase behind him. I spent three seconds looking at each person and I stopped in front of the third man without hesitation. When we got into the room, the man said: 'Desert storm, crystal romance ...' Before even finishing, he could not help but ask, 'Why did you stop in front of me without hesitating? There were two people in front. If you went with them, I would be too embarrassed to compete.' I replied, 'That young man was holding some gift boxes. He has a date with his girlfriend tonight, so this is definitely not an overnight job. The two old men have just finished drinking; they will go to sleep immediately afterwards and so it won't be an overnight job either. You are on a business trip because you have a notebook computer back and a suitcase. I can see that this will be a business expense. You are staying at the hotel by yourself and so my guess is that this would be for overnight.' The man said, 'You are right. I got you for the night.'"
"Are those people dressed in shorts and singlets in front of hair salons likely to be rich customers? Will they go and get a room at a hotel overnight? A high-class hotel won't even let them enter."
That makes sense! I was liking this more and more.
"Many working girls complain that business is tough and there is a crackdown recently. They are trying to pin the cause down on other people. If you keep pinning the cause on other people, you will never get any better. You must look at yourself to see where the problem is." This sounds very familiar. It seems like "One time, someone at the zoo flagged me for a quickie. Later, another person at the zoo flagged me also for a quickie. So I asked, 'How come all you people who look for girls at the zoo want a quickie?' He said that the zoo has a public bus hub and they were waiting for a bus and got a quickie during the time. So I suddenly understood. At the zoo, there are no offices, no hotels, nothing. There is only a public bus station. Those people who are looking for working girls have just gotten off one bus and are waiting for another one to go home. The customers who are looking for girls here usually only want to have a quick in-and-out."
"Therefore, I say that the attitude determines everything!" I have heard dozens of company CEO's say that, but this was the first time that I heard a working girl say that.
"We need to use scientific methods and statistics to conduct business. Those people who queue up at Sanlitun every day for business will never make money. How are you going to afford cosmetics and clothes to make yourself look better at 5,000 RMB a month? This is murder? This is slowly murdering your youth. You must arm yourself with knowledge. You have to learn knowledge to become a smart person. A smart person learns knowledge in order to become a very smart person. A very smart person learns knowledge in order to become a genius."
"One time, a person wanted to go to my home. I ask, 'To do what?' He said for massage plus breast massage. I said that this not good -- how about a direct XX? He said that would be too expensive. I said, 'It does not matter. You have enough experience from doing this so often. You pay 200 RMB for a breast massage. You do what I say and you can pay only 200 RMB. The rest is on me.' In the end, we did it my way. I provided extra service, but XX is a lot quicker than breast massage. Giving a massage and a breast massage takes up so much time that I can't work on additional business. XX was over in 10 minutes. I took only 200 RMB. The customer was very happy in being able to save 100 RMB. For me, it was just closing my eyes and taking a rest lying down. By lying down for a short while, I saved half a day's time. As I said before, my average daily cost is 272.7 RBM. It was very worthwhile for me."
"In Beijing, not counting working at high-class nightclubs, a working girl takes home seven to eight thousand RMB a month. The good working girl can get around twenty thousand. The top driver can get fifty thousand RMB. Out of the 100,000 working girls in Beijing, there are about two to three working girls who can make more than eighty thousand RMB a month. I am one of those two or three. Furthermore, it is very stable without too much fluctuation."
Great! By this point, I admired this working girl more and more.
"I often say that I am a happy hooker. Some people say, 'That's because you earn a lot of money. Of course, you must be happy.' I tell them, 'You are wrong. This is because I have a happy and active mind, and that is why I make a lot of money.'"
What a wonderful way to put it!
"You have to appreciate the beauty that your work brings. Standing in the street in Sanlitun in winter, many working girls complain, 'Oh, that damn weather again! What rotten luck!' You must not be like that. You should try to experience the beauty of the city. There are many nice-looking gay guys passing by. There are many tall modern buildings; although you cannot afford them, you can still enjoy them with an appreciative look. While making love in the park, you can look at the green grass. In the winter, it is white. How beautiful! Look in your wallet -- more than 1,000 RMB. That is even more beautiful! Each job has its own beauty. We need to learn how to experience that beauty in our work."
"Five years ago, I was a manager at the Heaven On Earth night club. Three years ago, I was the top attraction at three different saunas. But I quit. There was no point in making just 30,000 or 50,000 a month. I decided to walk the streets. I want to be a happy hooker. Ha ha ha ..."
When we arrived at her apartment, I gave her my business card and said, "Are you interested in coming this Friday to my office and explain to the Microsoft workers about how you operate as a working girl? You can treat it as if you were on bed for the one-hour full package. I will pay you for the time that you talk to us. Give me a call."
Then I began to write down this lively MBA lecture in the bathroom of this working girl's home.
Now There are many foreign prostitutes join in this industry:
The Beijing demi-monde, like everything else here, changes its form constantly. Right now the Mongolians are back in town. For a few years now, Beijing has been a lucrative target for the enterprising and broad-minded beauties of Ulan Bator. The Mongolian ethnic type is well suited to the business, with Oriental looks on generous quasi-Russian figures.
But last time I was here there were none in sight; the visa tap had been turned off. Now it is dripping again; the girls can have two-week visas, whereas it used to be three months. (Trying to curtail prostitution is the world’s second oldest profession, and one is reminded of the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dyke.) The stories are all the same; no work, large families, fatherless babies, feckless male relatives.
Whether or not one regards the work itself as unpleasant, the attendant circumstances certainly have been. The girls are foreigners working illegally, and thus have no rights. A Mongolian girl I knew a few years back told me that she had known four colleagues who died in Beijing; two drunken accidents, one murdered by a client, one picked up in a police round-up and made to stand in waist-deep cold water for hours, from which she picked up a fatal infection.
Penalties for Prostitution in China
The penalties for engaging in prostitution are generally pretty light, with those getting caught generally getting a few months in jail and fines at worst. Instead of closing down known brothels officers with the Public Security Bureau prefer to crndone off the neighborhood where prostitutes live and issue fines for people with no residence permits. Most can get off by paying a bribe to a policeman or official.
In Shenyang in Liaoning province and Puian in Fujian province prostitution is not only tolerated but even encouraged by officials who tax the san pei girls at a rate of between 100 yuan and 300 yuan a month. One pimp told the New York Times, "The police here are all my friends." He then he explained that he is former policemen himself.
Occasionally the penalties can be quite harsh. In Foshan, a town outside Shenzhen, a man was sentenced to death and his sister was given life in prison for running a prostitution ring, which had only been in operation for three months and had netted only $1,000. It is widely believed the brother and sister received such severe penalties because they were migrants and they presented a threat to local businesses. In Beijing, a madam who was charged with pimping "more than a dozen" prostitutes out of a hotel, bath house and restaurant she partly owned was sentenced to death. She appears to have been unluckily picked out to make an example of.
Crackdowns on Prostitution in China
In January 2006, authorities launched a crackdown on massage parlors and discos in Shenzhen as part of a clean up campaign. More than 3,000 people took the streets to protest the action and thousands of armed police were deployed to maintain order.
In November 2006, police publically paraded about 100 women and their alleged johns during a crackdown on prostitution at karaoke bars, saunas and barbershops in the district of Futian in Shenzhen. The offenders, dressed in identical yellow smocks and black pants, were sentenced to 15 days in jail and were forced to walk down the streets as television camera rolled and loud speakers read out their names, their addresses and the misdeeds they had been accused. Newspaper photographers snapped their pictures and thousands of residents looked on.
The action appeared to have been aimed at publically humiliating the offenders and use them as an example. Many Chinese were outraged the police would violate the privacy of the offenders in this way and were particularly incensed because the tactics were like those used in the Cultural Revolution. Internet chatter generally sympathized with accused prostitutes and sharply attacked what the police had done. One person quoted in the New York Times wrote: “Even people who commit crimes deserve dignity. Must we go back to the era of the Cultural Revolution.”
One Shanghai lawyer told the Washington Post, “These people were just alleged criminals. It was not yet determined that they had violated the law. The police publically humiliated them, which violates the legal process. This brutal form of punishments has long been abandoned by our society with the development of civilization and a legal system.”
In 2009, the Chinese government carried out a three-month crackdown on prostitution before the regime’s 60th anniversary celebration with a focus on groups that lure women into prostitution and operate entertainment venues that allow prostitution and anyone who conducts illegal sex-related activities with minors.