Abstract
For decades, transnational scholars have urged sociologists to decenter the United States in research and pursue interdisciplinary research agendas that recognize how global economic and political regimes transcend the boundaries of individual nation-states. Sex work is a transnational market; workers and clients regularly cross and move in and out of the sovereign borders of nation-states across the globe. The policies in local contexts that police and harm sex workers reinforce transnational capitalist, white supremacist, and patriarchal power. Transnational inequalities, neoliberal capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism shape the motivations and workplace experiences of sex workers throughout the world.
China’s Commercial Sexscapes: Rethinking Intimacy, Masculinity, and Criminal Justice situates China’s commercial sex industry in the context of a changing global economy. A transnational approach shows that the financial crises that have struck various nations through the world are a catalyst for entry into sex work. As Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang adroitly demonstrates, this is the case for many women in China. Many women who once labored under deplorable conditions in factories are leaving the sweatshop and instead are trading sex. The women working as a “tempting girl” on the street report making a rational choice to trade sex. Not only are they now earning six times more than they did in the factory, but sex work also makes them feel autonomous and more cosmopolitan. Although far from an economic paradise, it is still critical that these street-based sex workers say that despite the risks of sex work, which include violence and health risks, they still feel this work is better than factory work.
For high-end sex workers, trading sex is not only a means by which to earn a living but also is a pathway to intimate relationships and even marriage. Quite different from the women who work on the streets, high-end sex workers often develop close relationships with their wealthy businessmen clientele. In creating and reciprocating desire, their experiences of the labor improve and often lead to genuine intimacy. These results make space for these women to combat the stigma of sex work and allow them to see themselves as successful cosmopolitan women. For some of the women who married wealthy former clients, however, the transition was challenging, and, interestingly, many missed their old lives and autonomy as high-end sex workers. Tsang also shows that it is most likely for affluent non-Chinese clients to marry these women, which is a critical finding that Tsang could have better connected to white supremacy and transnational marriage. In general, race is undertheorized in the book, but for scholars of “body work,” Tsang’s study makes a critical contribution. Women in these markets manipulate and alter their bodies to achieve culturally specific normative femininity and attractiveness. Western influence and imperialism, and the constant flow of capital between the East and the West, have not only increased wealth in the East and shaped economic policies but also have affected social norms in places such as China.
For cisgender men in China, new economic pressures have caused widespread economic anxiety and thrown masculinity into crisis, making single migrant cisgender Chinese men feel emasculated. As a result, they seek out street-based sex workers as a form of masculine validation. Tsang argues that three “entangled life tensions” shape this masculinity crisis. First, for migrant working-class cis men, working in factories and earning low wages threatens their symbolic capital and decreases their potential for marriage. Second, more broadly, in urban China their low-wage work marks them as failures. Third, while these men purchase sex as a vehicle for masculine validation, there is also tension around engaging in stigmatized behavior, which has the potential to exacerbate and worsen their social standing. Tsang’s discussions regarding hegemonic masculinity are a valuable contribution to researchers, students, and teachers in gender studies.
Overall, China’s Commercial Sexscapes is a stunning ethnography. Tsang spent three years in the field, interviewing 195 women who trade sex. Among these workers, Tsang interviewed 50 women who labored in a low-end bar, 50 from a mid-tier bar, another 50 from a high-end bar, and 45 street-based sex workers. A stand-out feature of this book is that it also captures the voices of clients. Tsang highlights the experiences and perspectives of Chinese consumers in each of the aforementioned contexts and clients who live abroad. In this master class on ethnography, Tsang also adopted longitudinal methods and interviewed 39 of the women over time, which provides the readers a glimpse into the relationships of the women who worked in high-end environments and subsequently married their affluent businessmen clients. These methodological choices generate rich data and an excellent book for instructing students in a wide range of methods courses. However, this successful ethnography will likely disappoint researchers and students of social policy.
In the concluding sections of the book, there is a glaring reluctance to situate the discussion of the issues within the criminal legal system or within debates regarding decriminalization, legalization, and criminalization, which minimizes the book’s overall contributions to policy-making. Tsang rightly calls out labor unions and political gatekeepers for not supporting adequate labor protections and human rights for sex workers. While Tsang says these issues represent “a challenge that needs to be addressed” (p. 48) and notes that “sex workers lack support or legal protection” (p. 145), Tsang fails to situate these challenges within political debates regarding the criminalization of sex work. Would the problems sex workers in China and around the world face be lessened through legalization or decriminalization? If Tsang is an abolitionist, how can the government reform policies that criminalize sex work to address the issues so meticulously documented in this book? In the final data chapter, Tsang’s penultimate sentence says, “China [must] let the detained sex workers experience a sense of dignity and warmth by providing meaningful rehabilitation” (p. 147). Tsang demonstrates that custody education programs, which aim to save and retrain sex workers, are dehumanizing, exacerbate stigma, and further marginalize sex workers. Also, the sex workers in the book express that transnational economic inequalities shape their entry into sex work. Thus, it is global capitalism that needs rehabilitation—not these women.
In the final discussion of the criminal legal system, Tsang notes, “Given the reports of rampant abuse and exploitation, some sort of oversight of law enforcement regarding sex workers is critical to the development of a more just and standardized approach towards detention” (p. 144). Readers will assuredly want to know what “some sort of oversight” means. Curiously, Tsang falls back on platitudes: “Educated people should protect justice and integrity. However, with hyper-materialism and the ‘moral vacuum’ soaring in China, most people seem to have forgotten how Confucian education enlightened them” (p. 145). As shown throughout the book, the problem this cohort of sex workers face, like sex workers around the globe, is not a morality problem—it is a systemic problem.
Tsang writes in the hope that exposing the atrocities in custody centers and other criminal legal practices will put pressure on the government to act. Still, the state has no economic, political, or social motivation to do so. Given the lack of sex-worker-led movements in China, it is unlikely that the government will address these issues meaningfully. If there is an absence of grassroots organizing among sex workers to push the government to address these issues, why? Was there any evidence within this robust sample that such a movement might develop? Despite these criticisms, overall, China’s Commercial Sexscapes contributes critical knowledge to public understanding of transnational sex markets and gender in continually changing social worlds.