2007 Beijing 798 Art Festival (Photo : Getty Images)
The Beijing Academy of Social Sciences and the Social Science Academic Press released in June a blue paper suggesting legalizing prostitution because it actually exists everywhere in China.
NewsChina reported on Tuesday that a prostitution ring made of high school students was recently broke in Shanghai and Chongqing. The members, who are young and educated, are part of the ring voluntarily and have not been coerced into the sex trade.
Some of them could be seen on the dance floor of Richbaby, wearing very short skirts to attract male clients. Because Shanghai is now strict when it comes to minors entering those kinds of establishments, three girls with schoolbags were recently seen being asked to leave the premises by the security staff of the club because they are under 18.
The nightclubs are now enforcing age restrictions after an incident in November 2011 when 20 high school girls were caught engaged in the flesh trade, and their pimp, ironically, was a 13-year-old girl.
But unlike in the past when some of the prostitutes were forced by their family circumstances, such as poverty, to walk the streets, only few of the 20 juvenile sex trade worker come from broken families. One was from a single-parent family, another was adopted and three were abused or spoiled by their parents, revealed Han Konglin, the prosecutor responsible for the cases.
Social researcher Tong Xiaojun of the China Youth University for Political Science interviewed the girls and was struck by the story of one, Xiaoba, who went into the flesh trade because of love for eating that she spends daily about 100 yuan on snack foods, while her allowance from her parents is only 20 yuan.
But not all walk the streets. Some offer their services through the internet, like three members of a gang sentenced by the Xuhui People’s Court on Wednesday to 11 years in jail, reported China.org. The three set up a website from Thailand but with a server in the US. It had 3 million members.
