Strong support for crushing sex trade: poll

An overwhelming majority of residents in Dongguan, Guangdong province, support the recent clampdwwown on the local sex trade, according to a Global Times poll.

The survey found 72.7 percent of respondents were in favor of the crackdown, following a Sunday television exposé of the rampant prostitution business. Only 3.1 percent opposed the move, and 21 percent were neutral.

The survey, conducted by the Global Times Global Poll Center on Wednesday and Thursday, collected responses from 647 local residents aged over 18 who have lived in Dongguan for more than six months.

The poll found that female and senior respondents, and those with a lower educational background tended to support the campaign.

Over 77 percent of female respondents supported the crackdown compared to 67.8 percent of males. Respondents aged over 50 gave the highest support rate of 79.1 percent, with the lowest approval rating among those aged between 30 and 49.

Respondents with a college or higher diploma recorded the lowest approval rate for the campaign, 65.8 percent, while nearly 79 percent of respondents with a high school or vocational school diploma supported the campaign.

Provincial authorities and law enforcement announced Monday a sweeping 90-day campaign against the sex trade, with special emphasis on finding those who provided a "protection umbrella."

Police had apprehended 920 suspects across Guangdong as of Wednesday. A total of 144 people involved in the 12 venues that were exposed by the China Central Television (CCTV) report were detained, with 51 still at large.

Police made 18,372 inspections of entertainment venues, including 3,592 to karaoke bars and 4,201 to sauna and massage parlors. Thirty-eight karaoke bars and 156 sauna and massage parlors were closed, said the provincial public security department Thursday.

With local residents seeming to back the campaign, posts expressing opposition or a satirical attitude on Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo surpassed 13 percent. The topic trended above other talking points from Sunday to Wednesday, according to a public opinion monitoring result in the survey.

The unusual dynamic indicated public discontent with the CCTV undercover report which "improperly" focused only on sex workers rather than their bosses. CCTV was interpreted to be standing on the moral high ground as a symbol of public power and striking against a disadvantaged group, Peng Xiaohui, a sexologist with Wuhan-based Central China Normal University, told the Global Times.

While over 70 percent of the 460,000 respondents in surveys held by sina.com.cn and ifeng.com thought the campaign would not solve the problem, around 55 percent of local respondents took a rather optimistic attitude.

Better promotion of moral and ethical values was considered by 56.4 percent as the key measure to tackle the sex trade, followed by a constant government clampdown and industrial restructuring in Dongguan.

However, only 7.6 percent of respondents opted for "attacking protection umbrellas," a surprise to experts who have been stressing the significance of the measure, as the sex trade is inevitably intertwined with corruption, gambling and other organized crime, including drug dealing or even human trafficking.

The People's Daily on Thursday called for positive moral and legal values in society in response to the "supportive comments" to the sex trade made by some opinion leaders on the Internet. "While people are free to continue discussing legalizing prostitution, public order and moral value should be the bottom line in the cyber world," read an opinion piece in the paper.