When Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue hit the newsstands in China for the first time, with sexy singer Beyoncé on the cover, the competition was fierce.
Readers here had already seen the February issue of For Him Magazine, which features a Chinese singer named A Duo posing like a dominatrix, clutching her breasts, wrapping her naked body in celluloid and bending, sweat-drenched, over a submissive man.
China’s racy FHM also offers tips on “how to do it in five minutes” (because a “sex break is the same as a coffee break”) and features stories with titles like “The Dangerous Sex Journey of QiQi.”
The images and text would hardly be shocking to Western readers. And the photographs are tame compared with what appears in magazines in Japan and other parts of Asia.
But in China, where pornography is outlawed by the ruling Communist party, the images are not only highly provocative but perhaps the latest sign that sex and sexuality are infiltrating the mainstream media.
And this powerful burst of sexual energy seems both a symbol of how rapidly China’s transformation is unfolding and, to some, a harbinger of the troubles ahead for a nation that will inevitably struggle to absorb its newfound freedoms.
“There is a fine line between the open mind and sexual indulgence,” says Xie Xialing, a professor of sociology at Fudan University in Shanghai.
Even five years ago, Chinese books and magazines were banned from showing pictures of scantily clad models or publishing content deemed to be offensive or morally corrupt. The only sexual content to be found was in sex-education pamphlets or photo books of nude Chinese women sold as “art works” at big-city airports.
Today, however, with China’s economy booming and the government loosening its hold on the personal lives of everyday citizens, magazines are beginning to publish soft-core pornographic photographs, sexual fantasies, even clues about where to pick up call girls.
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