Page 111 - Chinese Woman Living and Working

98 ELAINE JEFFREYS
ILO International Labour Organisation
NGO Non-governmental organisation
WHISPER Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt

Notes
1 From the very founding of the People’s Republic, the work of eradicating prostitution—a
feat that had not been accomplished in capitalist countries—was heralded as a task of great
historical significance and an important measure towards realising the liberation of all
women. See ‘Duanping jiefang jinü’ (1949). The subsequent construction of the CCP’s
eradication of prostitution in the 1950s as a sign of the political capacity of the new regime,
and the concomitant primacy of Chinese Marxism, is evidenced by the fact that this feat
continues to be lauded despite the transparent revival of prostitution in China today See
chapter 1 of a Chinese government white paper entitled ‘Historic Liberation of Chinese
Women’ (2000), which cites the CCP’s eradication of prostitution in the 1950s as effecting
an ‘earth-shaking historic change in the social status and condition of women’.
2 In a report to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on 28 February 2000, the
Chinese Cultural Minister, Sun Jiazhen, is cited as stating that ‘the problem of prostitution’
in the PRC is virtually out of control, see Kwan (2000).
3 For arguments in favour of abandoning the 1949 Convention see the website of the Global
Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW).
4 See Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, ‘Proposed United Nations Convention Against
Sexual Exploitation’.
5 The study in question is Lim (1998).
6 According to the Chinese system of administrative sanctions, citizens who are classified as
sellers and buyers of sex may be physically detained for varying periods of time, and may also
be obliged to undergo reform through rehabilitative education and labour. However, the
practice of detaining such people cannot be viewed as equivalent to penal incarceration as in
the West. This is because detention for rehabilitative education and labour is defined as the
maximum administrative punishment that can be imposed upon those who have committed
illegal acts, but whose criminal liability is not deemed sufficient to bring them before the
courts. In theory, therefore, the activities of those who participate in the prostitution
transaction are not criminalised in China. Rather, such activities are viewed as undesirable
forms of social behaviour that can be opened to governmental programmes of corrective
intervention.
7 This is not to deny the existence of prostitute collectives and organisations. It is simply to
point out that, unlike trade unions, these organisations are not based on a group of work-
ers—identified and unified by a shared or similar form of occupation-who collectively
agitate within their workplaces, and with union members from other workplaces, to
improve their conditions of employment. In fact, attempts to unionise sex workers in Australia
and elsewhere have proved unsuccessful to date, largely because the majority of women who
work in ‘the sex sector’ do not want to be formally identified and thereby represented as
‘sex workers’.
8 The work of China’s ‘new social scientists’ on prostitution, for instance, is often conducted
in conjunction with the Chinese public security forces, and popular Chinese-language texts