Joanna McMillan - Sex, Science and Morality in China

After decades of near silence on the matter, sex is being talked about in China. But who is allowed to speak? What is being said? And whose purposes are being served?

Sex, Science and Morality in China provides a detailed examination ofthe work of Chinas foremost sex experts from 1999 to 2005. It analyses theknowledge they are producing knowledge that sets out natural ways of beinga man or woman and sees monogamous marriage as the most advanced form ofsocial bond and scientific sex as the basis for family and social stability.

Including groundbreaking material on transsexuals, fetishism, sex aids andpornography, this book seeks to qualify claims of a sexual liberalization in China.It shows that the knowledge that sex professionals are producing is neither innocent nor inconsequential and that amid catalogues of prescriptions linking self-management to the collective good, people are making decisions about how to livetheir sexual lives. Sex, Science and Morality in China will be essential reading forscholars of Chinese studies, cultural studies and gender studies.

Joanna McMillan is a freelance writer specializing in contemporary Chinese social issues. She gained her PhD from the University of Leeds and held a research fellowship at SOAS, University of London.

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First published 2006
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
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Transferred to Digital Printing 2009

2006 Joanna McMillan

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ISBN10: 0415376327 (hbk)
ISBN10: 041554677X (pbk)

ISBN13: 9780415376327 (hbk)
ISBN13: 9780415546775 (pbk)

The research for this book was funded by a post-doctoral fellowship from the Economic and Social Research Council held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and by a studentship from the Arts and Humanities Research Board held at the University of Leeds. The Universities China Committee in London provided additional financial support towards fieldwork costs. I acknowledge all with gratitude. I am indebted to Delia Davin (University of Leeds) and Frank Diktter (SOAS) for their broad confidence and distilled doubt during the evolution of this project. Two anonymous reviewers made invaluable comments on the first draft of the manuscript, for which my thanks. Thanks too to Li Ruru and Flemming Christiansen, both at the University of Leeds, for kindness and comments along the way. The Mary Ward travel writing group did much to delay this work by encouraging me to explore another form of writing. I am ever grateful especially to Nick Pretzlik, Jon Lorie and Iain Spooner for having been detained. Many people helped me during this research, some with their generosity with data, some with leads and others by keeping me company in the writing and in the field. In alphabetical order of family name I wish to thank: Alessandra Aresu, Che Yan, Chen Fuguo, Chen Juan, Chen Kai, Chen Xiaoyu, Geoff Crothall, Harriet Evans, Fan Minsheng, Gao Dewei, Geng Wenxiu, Susan Giblin, John Gittings, Guo Xinghua, Guo Youning, Hu Xiaoyu, Elaine Jeffreys, Joan Kaufman, Li Yinhe, Liu Dalin, Liu Hongsheng, Liu Huiqing, Lu Dachuan, Lu Shengbo, Lu Zheng, Luong van Hieu, Ma Xiaonian, Calum MacLeod, Tim Manchester, Pan Suiming, Pan Taozhi, Qian Xianming, Qian Yuemin, David Rutsaert, Alan Searl, Shu Xin, Alan Smith, Billy Stewart, Weipin Tsai, Wang Fang, Wang Fei, Wang Luning, Ann Warden, Owen Wells, Louise Williams, Yang Wenzhi, Zhang Junhua, Zhang Xinyuan, Zhang Yan, Zhu Yundi and Zou Ang. Finally, my thanks to those many people in China whose names I do not know but whose lives I brushed and who trusted enough to offer me their stories. Of those there is more to tell.

A recent story in the Peoples Daily on group sex, one-night stands and commercial sexual encounters ran under the headline China undergoing sexual revolution (Peoples Daily 2003a). Making predictions about catching up with Western countries in no more than twenty years, the article suggested that China is, after many years of sexual repression, finally opening up to sex. A fashionable journalistic shorthand, the openness motif is used to signal approval of a range of reform era changes: borders have opened up to the outside world, the market has opened up to enterprise, the Communist Party has opened up to capitalists and, as if by descriptive reflex, attitudes have opened up to sex. The term conjures images of a liberal sexual culture, accepting of personal preference and respectful of difference, with men and women organizing their intimate lives free from state interference and social censure. This book shows that nothing could be further from the truth.

The production and practice of expert opinion about sex is, in the reform era, both economically profitable and politically desirable. There is a booming market in marriage manuals, sex clinics and sex shops have opened all over the country, advice columns are a mainstay of popular magazines, and sex education programmes are broadcast daily on television and radio. Sexual matters have never garnered such attention nor been the focus of so much popular discussion. The mere fact of a diversity of means to talk about sex, however, should not be assumed to signal a diversity of points of view. Attention has to be paid to who is entitled to speak, what they say and do not say and who is included or excluded, empowered or disqualified, by what is said (Porter and Hall 1995: 9). This book shows that what constitutes sexual knowledge and its deployment in practice remains marked by deep conservatism, moralizing and intolerance of difference.