NYT: A Village Grows Rich Off Its Main Export: Its Daughters (China)

[DeepModem Mom]

A Village Grows Rich Off Its Main Export: Its Daughters
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

Published: January 3, 2005


...."If you don't go to Thailand and you are a young woman here, what can you do," said Ye Xiang, 20, whose features still had the pudgy look of a teenager's. "You plant and you harvest. But in Thailand and Malaysia, I heard it was pretty easy to earn money, so I went."

At least 20 other young women from this tiny hamlet, which clings to a hillside just off a side road near the Mekong River, have headed off to foreign lands to work in the sex trade. "All of the girls would like to go, but some have to take care of their parents," Ms. Ye said.

In this regard, there is nothing peculiar about Langle, at least nothing peculiar for this part of Yunnan Province, whose women are favorites in the brothel industry from Thailand - whose national language is related to their own dialect - to Singapore.

Experts say that in some local villages a majority of women in their 20's work in this trade, leaving almost no family untouched and the young men without mates. Not long ago, many of the recruits were kidnapped to become modern-day sex slaves, but these days the trade has become largely voluntary....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/03/international/asia/03china.html?8hpib

[w4rma]

1. That's where the religious and corporate right-wing is taking us here

Prostitution is illegal there, and it flourishes. Making something illegal does not stop it. You must use social and anti-poverty progams to prevent folks from doing this because of desperation. This prostitution is used by the same people here in America who have teamed with the religious right-wing.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Because of China's one-child-only law, families choose males as they

can financially support their parents. This has left the country with an imbalance of males demographically.

I don't understand why women would be exported as they would be a commodity (so to speak, no anti-feminism meant) in terms of marriage. But then again, if prostitution pays more than the wages of a son of a farmer, then I can understand that decision.

[bleedingheart]

3. I wonder what the AIDS infection rate is in that region?

[THUNDER HANDS]

7. its spreading like wildfire through Russia now

I wouldn't be suprised if its doing quite nicely in China now as well.

[warrens]

4. Sickening

China is going to pay bigtime for the way it treats its peasants.

[apple_ridge]

5. And what do you do with hundreds of millions of males that

have no chance of finding a mate?

[CottonBear]

6. Encourage homosexuality? n/t

[THUNDER HANDS]

8. porn?

gotta be something better than the sex trade.

[Cheswick2.0]

9. start a war for them to die in

[barbaraann]

10. Prostitution is not a beautiful act between consenting adults.

n/t