Population, Gender, and Disparity - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 80

corruption, make arrests, and dole out tough punish-
ments to perpetrators. Bangladesh has assigned the
death penalty to traffickers, but corruption has
thwarted many of their efforts to stop the process.
Another insidious form of trafficking is becoming
increasingly common in China. Because of a stringent
population policy that has limited most people to having
only one child, plus the fact that boys are preferred, there
is a shortage of women to marry . Consequently , traffick-
ing in potential brides has become a profitable business.
Usually in collusion with local officials, traffickers kid-
nap young women from their villages and deliver them to
another village far away where there is a man willing to
pay for a wife.
Another lucrative racket in China involves the sell-
ing and trafficking of babies, usually female. A number of
these children have been unknowingly adopted by Amer-
ican couples who pay more than US$25,000.

Songachi, which means “golden tree,” is a sprawl-
ing red-light district in Kolkhata (Calcutta), India.
Hundreds of multistory brothels lining dirty , narrow
alleyways hold more than 6,000 prostitutes. Health work-
ersstarted a sex-workers' union in 1992 with the assis-
tance of WHO in an effort to increase condom use and
reduce the incidence of AIDS. This is known as the
Songachi Project, which promotes the “3 Rs”—Respect,
Reliance, and Recognition—and trains older sexworkers
and madams to promote the use of condoms. Condom
use did increase and HIV infections went down to only
9.6 percent in 2005. (This stands in sharp contrast to
the 50 percent infection rate in Mumbai (Bombay)
brothels.) However, all is not well in Songachi. New
studies show that HIV prevalence is particularly high
among new arrivals—27.7 percent among girls age 20
or younger. It turns out that girls who say they always
use condoms actually don't. Since men don't want to
use them for paid sex, girls are forced to lie to investi-
gators by their pimps and brothel owners. (Figure 3-8)
Boys are not immune to the sex industry . They often
see prostitution as a way out of poverty , and many pursue
the urban sex trade. Both boys and girls participate in the
exceedingly lucrative, worldwide, pornographic movie
and video business.

Globalization and the Sex Industry

Globalization is a contemporary and growing trend in
the sex industry that has long been sustained by Euro-
peans, North Americans, Australians, Middle Eastern-
ers, Japanese, and other groups. This flourishing
enterprise has spawned a counterpart: “sex-worker/-
entertainer” migration streams. The Philippines, Thailand,
China, and other Asian sources provide thousands of sex
workers to such key destinations as Japan, Taiwan,
South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern
countries. Some 35,000 women leave the Philippines
yearly to work as “female entertainers” in Japan. T Terms
such as entertainer or artist mask the reality of “body as
commodity .” Although some nations such as Thailand
and the Philippines have enacted restrictions and regu-
lations for employment abroad, they are largely ignored.

PROSTITUTION IN CHINA
China has more prostitutes than India. Some esti-
mates are as high as 10 million. However, there is a
difference from other Asian countries. Few women
are forced into brothels against their will. Most pros-
titutes are freelancers who have choices out of several
options.
A well-educated woman might become a paid com-
panion of a rich politico or businessman on a business
trip. She might become the long-term mistress of a
wealthy man. She might hold a job in bar, club, or mas-
sage parlor working on commission. Or, she might prefer
to work as a ding-dong xiaojie calling hotel rooms at a late
hour to offer a “massage.”
A significant number of women manage to escape
North Korea into the northeastern region of China for-
merly known as Manchuria. In fact 60 to 70 percent of
defectors are female. Many turn to prostitution for lack
of other opportunities to make a living. In that region
of China, there are many large industrial cities with
hundreds of thousands of potential customers. How-
ever, the Chinese government does not want North
Koreans in their country . They arrest the women and
deport them back across the border. There they are ar-

SEX TOURISM
Globalization has spurred on sex tourism, which is big
business in Asia. Brothels are ubiquitous, especially in
cities. Some, including Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City
(Saigon), Taipei, and Manila, are known as sex cities be-
cause of the thousands of mostly heterosexual men who pa-
tronize bars, sex shows, massage parlors, private clubs, and
brothels that cater to men' s desires. Very young virgins are
in high demand. No wish goes unmet. More than 60,000
girls offer sex services in the Philippines, and the number in
Thailand is over 800,000. Some Japanese companies organ-
ize sex trips to these centers for their employees.