Screenshot of the Paper video

 
Chinese sex doll makers' export orders doubled this year during the COVID-19 pandemic due to loneliness brought about by strict social distancing measures, media reports said. 

"We produce 3,000-4,000 dolls every month, most of which will be exported to foreign markets, including Europe, the US and Japan," Chen Qing, director of a doll factory in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, was quoted as saying in a report by Shanghai-based news portal thepaper.cn on Tuesday.

There has been an obvious surge in orders from Spain, Italy and Germany, the report said citing Yan Sixue, manager of an e-commerce company in Yiwu, East China's Zhejiang Province. 

Domestic demand has also risen during the outbreak, Chen said, noting that export orders currently account for about 90 percent of their total orders.

According to thepaper.cn report, export orders for adult products on AliExpress, a global retail platform operated by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, have seen a year-on-year increase of 50 percent since the outbreak while orders for sex dolls doubled during the same period. 

Since March, when the COVID-19 epidemic broke out in Italy, export orders from the country have increased by five times compared to the same period last year.

Most clients of the factory are middle- to high-income males aged between 30-35 years old. The dolls the factory produces are priced between 1,000 yuan ($143) and 20,000 yuan. 

Not all clients buy such dolls for sex. Chen said that some people buy the dolls for company or just as display goods.

Chen said they previously produced a doll for a foreign client who had lost his wife based on the wife's pictures. 

Adult products made in China account for about 70 percent of the global market, according to media reports. 

The size of China's adult product e-commerce market reached 30.66 billion yuan in 2018 and is expected to exceed 60 billion yuan in 2020, according to an industry report from Shenzhen-based data analysis organization iiMedia Research.