The recent raid on three Beijing nightclubs, the largest such bust since the capital's notorious Passion Club was shut down in 2010, was the latest step in the challenging fight against the Chinese sex trade.
The industry has long been a tricky issue, but its scale has rapidly expanded in recent years with the growth of social media, which has made enforcing the law harder than ever, said Li Yinhe, a sociologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
The sex trade has reaped huge profits in recent years, with related industries alone making up around a seventh of the GDP of one Guangdong Province manufacturing city in 2014, according to the Xinhua News Agency in 2015.
The recent crackdown on the three Beijing nightclubs - the Baoli Club, the Landai Club and the Lihai Mingyuan nightclub - which saw 77 people arrested for prostitution, is a drop in the ocean, Li told the Global Times.
In December 2016, Beijing police took into custody hundreds of people in Baoli Club, located in Beijing's Dongcheng district, and many at the two other clubs in Haidian district, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said in a statement on Sunday.
There was a hidden sex network behind the busted Beijing nightclubs, the Beijing News reported. It reported that the sex workers at all three were employees of the same company and would often do shifts in different venues.
A source who visited the Baoli Club was quoted by the Beijing News as saying that the cost of hiring a sex worker ranged from 5,000 to 8,000 yuan ($726-1,163).
Protective umbrella
Lu Weiqi, deputy director of the Municipal Public Security Bureau of Dongguan, a Guangdong boom town long known for its rampant prostitution, once described the sex trade as a profit chain involving hotel operators, contractors, managers, pimps and the sex workers themselves.
Police have never succeeded in eradicating the industry during past crackdowns, he said, even after the local authorities conducted a wide-ranging campaign in 2014 after the media exposed its sex industry.
It is difficult for police to collect evidence and identify those involved in the sex trade because of the "protective umbrella" that keeps them safe, Lu was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
Several Dongguan officials and 36 police officers were punished for negligence and abusing their power, 17 of whom have been prosecuted or face prosecution, following the 2014 crackdown the Ministry of Public Security said in February 2015. Dongguan police and officials are widely believed to have sheltered prostitution, Xinhua said.
Moreover, as the sex industry keeps up with the times and finds new ways to market itself online and offline, crackdowns are becoming increasingly difficult, Li said.
"It's impossible to eliminate prostitution in this circumstance and a crackdown would be a waste of police manpower," he explained.
Beside the industry's efforts to remain elusive, out-of-date laws and regulations leave police without the legal tools they need while opening the door to corruption.
The Law on Penalties for Administration of Public Security says that those who buy or sell sex face just 10 to 15 days of detention and a fine of no more than 5,000 yuan, said Liu Wei, a Beijing lawyer.
"Under this system, police officers have absolute power over who is detained and the length of the detention. They are both players and referees, which easily breeds corruption," said Liu Renwen, a law professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Eliminating prostitution?
Beside law enforcement challenges, the "flourishing and existence of prostitution is due to the unbalanced allocation of resources in society, resulting in those unable to earn enough selling their body for money," Peng Xiaohui, a sexology professor at Wuhan's Central China Normal University, told the Global Times on Thursday.
The key to reducing prostitution could be to provide better public welfare, according to Peng.
However, Li said that the sex trade is likely to see greater demand in the future as men significantly outnumber women in China.
Beside prostitution itself, related legitimate industries such as KTVs, massage parlors and hotels, have an impact on local GDP, Li said.
For instance, after the Dongguan authorities cracked down on prostitution the local economy lost an estimated 50 billion yuan ($7.67 billion) in annual spending, around a seventh of local GDP, Xinhua reported in February, 2015.
