Sex made in China
Inflatable dolls piled on top of each other at a factory in Jiqi village in Zhejiang Province. Photo: Guo Yingguang/GT
The faint lettering on the wall around the village courtyard declares the building to be the Jiqi Primary School but the ferocious guard dog indicates the dilapidated building has changed its use. The former primary school is now a sex doll factory.
Jiqi villagers appear bemused by the new industry that has opened here, in Fenghua, East China's Zhejiang Province, but national health officials worry about the quality of plastics and chemicals used in the pleasure toys.
While China's sexual modesty appears to have lightened up over the last decade or so, it seems the government remains so embarrassed by the subject it has failed to create appropriate standards to govern the burgeoning sex toy industry.
China produces more than 80 percent of the world's sex toys and the industry employs more than 1 million people. These include hundreds of thousands who work in small assembly plants like the one in Jiqi. More are employed in tiny shops that are called "Adult Health Stores" in Chinese but are more blatantly labeled "Sex Shops" in English, which have seemingly sprung up in every neighborhood in cities around the country.
No regulations, no standards
"There is not a single regulation or standard for the manufacture and development of sex toys in China," said Su Weiguo, chairman of China Council on the Science of Sex and member of the National Standardization Commission for Reproductive Health Care Products.
The sex doll factory in Jiqi opened just a month ago and seems typical of the small rural plants that produce millions of the gadgets. "The primary school moved, so we rented it as our factory," said Ma Xujie, the 32-year-old manager of the factory that is owned by a five-year-old company that sells its products nationally and internationally.
The former classrooms have been converted into assembly lines where several women chat as they affix outsized breasts, long legs and a variety of heads to the life-sized, blow-up dolls. At the end of the line an older woman is in charge for wiping the dolls clean with a cloth soaked in some sort of solvent, and then folding and packaging them.
Each of the dolls undergoes testing and the inflated, naked, anatomically correct female dolls that are stacked like so much cordwood in a classroom resemble some sort of avant-garde art instillation.
Villagers, including children, occasionally make their way past the barking dog to see the novel products and watch the workers go about their humdrum business of assembling the dolls in the former school. A group of women from a nearby clothing company have come to take a look and can't stop giggling.
"We heard that a factory making human-sized dolls had just moved into the village, and we were very curious," one of the women told the Global Times.
Dolls of different races
As a woman hugged a doll and posed for pictures, it seemed she didn't know that they were used by men to pleasure themselves. One of the visitors commented that the dolls' faces and eyes are cute and beautiful. The factory makes dolls with Asian faces made up to look like schoolgirls that seem destined for Japan. Other models include heads with long blonde hair that are surely destined for Europe and North America.
The 700-square-meter assembly line employs 14 workers, all but one are women. Manager Ma says they put together 6,000 sex dolls every month.
Ma said he does not know the exact nature of the materials used in the dolls or whether the plastics are of a grade that is safe for human cuddling.
In the city of Fenghua, Zhejiang Province, Wang Fabing told the Global Times that his plant ships 30,000 gnarly looking vibrators each month. He said over the last five years 70 percent of his products were sold overseas but domestic sales are rising sharply.
Soaring domestic demand
"The domestic demand has been increasing year on year, and I expect to see a continued increase in sales in China," said Wang, adding that they should soon reach 60 percent of total sales.
A report by the Liaoshen Evening News said the sex toy market in China is growing by 63 percent year-on-year. Public opinion research shows that 93 percent of adults have come to accept that some people enjoy using sex toys.
"Sex toys are playing an increasingly important part in people's sex lives, especially older couples and people living with disabilities. Sex toys can improve and complete their sex life," Su told the Global Times.
While changing sexual attitudes and mores may be good for the sex toy industry, they have also led to a gold rush mentality in which small, unregulated manufactures are putting out products that may be made with plastics designed for industrial use.
"The quality of sex toys for export is way better than those sold on the domestic market," said Su, adding that other countries have product safety standards, that are absent in China.
Su's own research on China-made sex toys shows that some vibrators are being made from industrial silica gel rather than raw materials made for human contact. He also found faulty insulation on battery-powered vibrators that could give a user an unintended shock.
Liu Yuehua, a dermatologist with the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, told the Global Times that sex toys not made with materials intended for the human touch can cause skin allergies and some of the chemical agents applied to the toys can poison people.
Liu Jiwu, director of Contraceptive Medicine with the National Population and Family Planning Commission said a commission to look into the sex toy industry was proposed in 2009 but it took two years for it to be finally founded.
Su now sits on the commission that started its work last year and has been tasked with developing regulations governing the raw materials, packaging, marketing and promotion of sex toys. The commission isn't expected to report for another two to three years, said Su, adding that without the requirement to report product designs and composition, researchers are finding it difficult to collect data.
The free-wheeling, unregulated sex toy industry has also become a cutthroat business, with manufactures being forced to find ways to cut costs.
Ma, the inflatable doll maker, has had to lower his prices by 20 to 40 percent after orders dropped by half last year. "Many small factories stepped into the market last year and forced down prices. This vicious competition has resulted in poor quality dolls that are also affecting customers' health," Ma said, who insisted his dolls are made from raw materials imported from the US.
Promising industry
"Sex toys and sex aids are a promising industry in China that needs the right promotion," said Su, suggesting that the industry could soon employ many more people if the products are allowed to be properly promoted and the ban on advertising is lifted.
Huiren Shenbao, a Chinese herbal erectile medicine, is currently the only sex aid that is advertised on late-night TV with the obscure slogan "I am good if he is good." It is reported to earn billions of yuan a year.
"High domestic demand has stimulated employment in the sex toy industry and is pushing its expansion," Su said.
"I've been told by some sex toy agencies that vibrators will soon be allowed to be sold in supermarkets and shopping malls," said factory manager Wang, adding that he plans to produce a more subtle, less intimidating model of vibrator to make it easy for his products to be sold in public retails outlets.
Government won't condone their use
Wang and others in the industry may have a long wait ahead of them. Sex toys are equated with porn which is outlawed and both are considered signs of moral decadence.
Su said developing regulations for the sex toy industry faces a huge hurdle as they will need to be approved by a government department which by extension will be seen as condoning their use. He said an official with the Ministry of Health told him the sale of sex-related products aren't likely to receive a government seal of approval while the police are still cracking down on pornography.
"It takes a long time for a proposal to become policy especially when it's related to sex," said Su who pushed the National People's Congress to allow condom advertisements in magazines to help raise public awareness of safe sex.
While governments and politicians hide behind a false sense of modesty, a pressing health issue relating to the safety of sex toys may be quietly building into a crisis.
Fang Bo, a lawyer at Beijing Yusheng Law Firm, believes people who may have been harmed by their toys are reluctant to sue or seek compensation.
"Many residents just accept it as bad luck because they're embarrassed to let others know they've been harmed by a poor quality sex toy," said Fang.
For people working in the village factories the novelty of sex toys has long worn off and causes no shame. "It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's just a job like working in a clothing factory," said Zhu Guirong, a 19-year-old woman who was checking the circuitry of a vibrator.
The original story about China's sex toy industry was published on the Global Times newspaper's InDepth section on April 24 with the title "Sex made in China."
China produces over 80 percent of the world's sex toys, which has led to more than 1 million employees working for several thousand adult shops and companies around the country. The sex toy industry has become a looming behemoth, but there is not a single regulation to govern it, which has left the market in chaos.