China is one of the major proponents of censorship when it comes to bullying its citizens. This applies to freedom of expression, social behavior and, in particular, the sex trade. Pornography is strictly forbidden in China.
VAN-readers already know that the authorities in China take vehement action against online pornography and that sometimes even contents are affected that can only be interpreted as erotic in the broadest sense. In China, f.e.x, it is forbidden to eat a banana in front of a webcam.
Only recently there was a bounty offered to catch producers of porn movies, which is set at 120,000 dollars. That is an amount so high that the average annual salary is exceeded 12 times. An immense incentive and an enormous risk for porn producers in China.
Prohibitions are inhuman and useless
But as with prostitution, pornography also shows that it can only be forbidden, not magically removed as such. The need is there, and where there is a will, there is a way and a provider, no matter how great the legal danger may be. As a result, prohibitions always tend to criminalize a large part of the population.
Despite the immense censorship of their Internet, the Chinese watch pornographic content regularly. This is confirmed by a study by Yummy, China’s most popular website for female sexuality. The company found that porn consumption is the norm, not the exception, especially in cities.
Pornography is an everyday product in China
A good 70% of the men and 50% of the women interviewed stated that they consume pornographic content at least once a week. In a country that wants to monitor its citizens digitally and socially, these are quite astounding figures.
Zhao Jing, the founder of Yummy, says: »We already know that the Chinese people watch porn. But we don’t know much about what they like to see and how it affects people.«
Pornography as insufficient but desperately needed sex education
The study concludes that pornography plays a valuable role in China. For many Chinese millennials, pornography has to provide sexual education because there is no functioning sex education in the censored, rigid system.
Chinese porn consumers therefore claim that pornography educates them, inspires their own sex life and also improves their sex life. Almost half of the men and 30% of women said that they had already tried to recreate what they saw in their own sex lives.
In contrast to religiously oriented Western porn consumers, however, there is a great awareness in China that the depicted scenes do not represent typical sex in reality, but are fictional exaggerations. 90% of respondents said that porn and real sex are different.
Asian porn movies are popular
According to Chinese men, they prefer realistic scenes with active, expressive women. They also attach importance to a professional production level. Although the most popular pornography among male users is Chinese, these productions are likely to be the most difficult to find, as producers are forced to operate in the underground. Alternatively, Chinese men also like to resort to Japanese porn.
Chinese women are a bit more cosmopolitan. They like to watch gay porn from Japan, Korea or Western countries. All in all, Chinese women are far more open-minded about Western pornography than their male counterparts.
Peculiarities of Asian porno genres
One of the reasons why pornos produced in China are so popular is due to a slightly different preference when it comes to scenarios. Among the most popular terms in China are »Silk Labo« and »Xart«, Japanese porno genres, which focus on a dominant man and an idealized, gentle woman and in which romance and plot play an essential role. Therefore foreign producers might take note. There is a huge market for this kind of scenario.