History of Gender Commons^™

Anti-Trafficking Campaign And Karaoke Bar Hostesses In China, Tiantian Zheng

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This article discusses the adverse effect upon sex workers of China’s abolitionist policy that focuses on forced prostitution and launches anti-trafficking campaigns. The argument developed in this paper is based on over twenty months of fieldwork between 1999 and 2002 in Dalian. I will first discuss karaoke bar industry and China’s policy of anti-trafficking campaigns. I will then demonstrate the impact of this policy on hostesses in karaoke bars. I will follow it with an account of how, unlike the government’s perception of forced prostitution, hostesses voluntarily choose their profession and actively seek sex work in countries such as Japan …