Abstract
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been undergoing economic and social change at a rate and scale that is unprecedented ever since the country abandoned socialist-style centralized planning and adopted market-based economic reforms, with a policy of opening up the country to the rest of the world. The PRC has also become open about their sexual behaviors and attitudes. The dramatic nature of these changes compared to the perceived sexual austerity of the Mao era has led numerous commentators to claim that China is undergoing a sexual revolution. Sex in China observes and discusses the Chinese people’s behaviors toward sex and sexuality, from marriage, to the promotion of using condoms, to homosexuality, youth, and sex, to commercial sex.
This book opens with a discussion of marriage and the ‘one couple, one child’ policy. In China, marriage is a social and political arrangement. Marriage and family relations in China are governed by the Marriage Law (1950, rev. 1980, 2001). The Law abolished polygamy and arranged and forced marriages, and established a new marriage and family system based on the free choice of (heterosexual) partners, monogamy, and equality between the sexes. China defended the ‘one child per couple’ policy by claiming that adopting such policy was the only way of preventing massive population growth, which would have a negative impact on national development and security. The policy has affected virtually every aspect of life in China. It immediately contributed to the PRC’s already rapidly declining fertility rate. The policy seems to be a success. According to Jeffreys and Yu, China has the world’s highest documented sex ratios at birth. In 1989, the ratio was close to world average; by the end of 2000s, there were nearly 120 boys for every 100 girls. Because the ratio is not quite balanced, married couples who want their first child to be a boy continue to seek medical help.
In Chapter 2, Jeffreys and Yu discuss how Chinese youths understand sex(iness). The authors begin the chapter by explaining that Chinese youth are heterogeneous. Their sexual behaviors and activities are influenced by family backgrounds, gender, and other social and cultural factors. Jeffreys and Yu cite Everet Zhang (2011), who claimed that China’s youth ‘sexual revolution’ occurred in three important stages. The first stage involved the re-emergence of ‘romantic love’ in the late 1970s. The second stage began in the early 1990s, and saw an expansion of commercial media, popular culture, and a consumer society. The third stage witnesses increased expression of sexual desire, as indicated by dating, flirting, and other sexual activities. For celebrity blogger Mu Zimei, love is purely physical and transient. It starts with taking off one’s clothes and ends with an orgasm. However, parents, educators, and government authorities have attempted to control the changing sexual behaviors and attitudes of Chinese youth in various ways. Parents and teachers frequently warn adolescents of the dangers of ‘premature love’ and premarital sex. On the other side, today’s youth define their sexual rights in various media spaces, especially on the Internet. Online dating, cybersex, virtual marriage, and game marriage have become a part of Chinese youth’s sexual adventures and self-discovery. With their avatars, they ‘meet’ their sexual partners online. Youth and sexuality online could be indications of China’s modern consumerist society.
Jeffreys and Yu also examine the issue of gays, lesbians, and queers in China, where publicly expressed views on homosexuality range from rejection to acceptance, although many people are growing more tolerant, especially young educated, urban people. According to historical records, homosexual practices were largely tolerated by government authorities in imperial China. This cultural tolerance began to be replaced with intolerance during the Qing Dynasty. Nonnormative or nonreproductive forms of sex were pathologized. Homosexuality began to re-emerge in the public sphere in the 1980s along with the gradual opening up of Chinese society and the international ‘discovery’ of AIDS. The word tongzhi is a popular term for homosexuals. With the glorification of globalization since the late 1990s, the Internet has proven to be a pioneering force in building indigenous tongzhi discourses in China. Gay magazines, books, and movies are more strictly censored than gay websites. In terms of coming out to others, Chinese homosexuals do not tell their parents that they are gay or lesbian. They also avoid heterosexual marriage. When they choose to marry, they marry heterosexual people and either keep their same-sex sexual desires hidden or confess their homosexual sex life. Another approach is they join a contract marriage, i.e., a marriage between a lesbian and a gay man, who present themselves to family and work circles as a heterosexual couple.
Jeffreys and Yu discuss commercial sex in China. They cite the International Herald Tribune on how the sex industry is probably the fastest-growing industry in China. In China, as in other parts of the world, providers of commercial sexual services are usually women less than 40 years of age, in particular, women between 17 and 24 years. They enter prostitution as a response to underemployment and limited opportunities for upward mobility. Prostitution is found not only in the cosmopolitan cities of Beijing and Shanghai, but also in remote and economically underdeveloped regions such as Guizhou and Tibet. Venues for commercial sex include high- and low-grade hotels, karaoke/dance venues, bars, health and fitness clubs, saunas, cinemas, teahouses, foot- and hair-washing salons, barbershops, truck stops, and temporary work camps, as well as public spaces such as beaches, parks, and underneath overpass bridges. The quite surprising thing is the new phenomenon of youth prostitution. Media reports, as cited by Jeffreys and Yu, indicate that an increasing number of female university students are selling sexual services to pay for education fees. In 1991, the PRC’s highest legislative body, the National People’s Congress (NPC), issued a prostitution-specific law that strictly forbade the selling and buying sex. A revision of this regulation states that a person who commits prostitution or person who buys sex will face five to 10 years in prison.
The book then turns to sex and public health. Jeffreys and Yu found that the reported incident rate of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in China has risen sharply since the mid-1980s, as indicated by the spread of HIV and AIDS. Jeffreys and Yu identify four stages in the spread of HIV and AIDS in China. Stage I began with the identification of China’s first AIDS case (Beijing, 1985). In Stage II, authorities identified HIV-infected persons among intravenous drug users in western and southwestern regions of China (e.g., Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Yunnan Province, and the Guangxi Autonomous Region). Stage III, which began in late 1994, is associated with increased attention to commercial plasma donors and the recipients of blood transfusions in poor central provinces. The last stage occasions authorities’ acknowledgment that the spread of HIV and AIDS is linked to sexual transmission. In early 2003, in order to prevent the transmission of HIV and AIDS, the PRC introduced a pilot program, the ‘China Comprehensive AIDS Response.’ Later that same year, it launched the ‘Four Frees and One Care Policy,’ making China one of the first countries with a free national AIDS treatment program. In 2005, the PRC adopted a system of standardized services at STI clinics. The standardization was meant to facilitate more efficient monitoring and evaluation practices, such as laboratory diagnostics and health care.
The final chapter in this book is on how sexual education can develop in China. According to Jeffreys and Yu, publications in sociology and education began to appear in the late 1980s, and included translations of canonical Western texts and original research. In 1986, Pan Guangdan, a renowned sociologist and eugenicist, republished a 1944 translation with scholarly commentary of Henry Havelock Ellis’s Psychology of Sex (1933).
This book is rich with the results of qualitative and quantitative research, as well as historical research. The book provides a detailed overview of sex life (from the mundane to the unusual) in China, and how the Chinese interpret their sexual life within society. The book is an excellent choice for general readers, as well as social scientists: anyone, in fact, who is curious about sex and sexuality in China.