BEIJING — Despite China’s continued crackdown on illegal porn, the country is losing the battle according to a sex scholar.
The Wall St. Journal reported that Katrien Jacobs, an associate professor in cultural studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said in an interview that the guardians of public morality are on the ropes.
Her comments appeared in Danwei, an online morality watchdog magazine.
She also mainatined that the government’s zealous approach to stamping out “harmful” adult content often shuts down non-porn sexual websites.
“There are several statistics that show the net-porn industries are surviving and flourishing despite the ban. It seems indeed that porn cannot be banned and that the PRC government is perhaps even secretly letting it into the country. But besides their bombastic cleanup campaigns, they also censor web communities that stand for sexual freedom or queer identity. It seems as if sexual minorities, sex artists and activists are much more vulnerable than those involved in mainstream commercial porn, especially at this moment when film festivals are being shut down and human rights activist are being tortured and detained. These are the dark times of China’s civil right and sexual creative The scholar also said that porn actually plays a role outlet, but there is still so much porn and sex entertainment available that we can see it as safer outlet,” Jacobs said in the interview.
The scholar also said that porn plays a central role in educating young Chinese men about sex, which the country feels is a disturbing trend considering a recent scandal over a new sex education textbook for Beijing primary school students called, “The Steps of Growing Up,” that’s being slammed by critics as being pornographic.
A new book by Jacobs,“People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet,” is set to be released in November.
