LOS ANGELES—China is already the world’s largest prolific exporter of sex toys, manufacturing an estimated 70 percent of sexual pleasure devices sold around the world. But thanks to rapidly liberalizing sexual attitudes among China’s younger generations, as well as the social isolation stemming from the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, the domestic market for sex toys is surging in China.
According to a new report by the French Press Agency (AFP), the market for sexual aids in the country of 1.4 billion people — the world’s most populous nation — is now valued at nearly $15 billion.
That figure still leaves China behind Western countries, as well as other Asian nations such as Japan, in sex toy consumption, however. The disparity appears largely due to the Chinese government’s ongoing enforcement of conservative attitudes toward sexuality, with President Xi Jinping strongly pushing “family values” and traditional marriage.
Porn remains illegal in China, and the government is so determined to eradicate adult content from cyberspace — and everywhere else — that in 2018 it began offering cash rewards up to $120,000 for citizens who snitch to authorities on porn producers and content creators. That reward is about 12 times greater than the wage earned in a year by the average Chinese worker.
Nonetheless, demand for porn is on the rise in China, receiving a new boost from the pandemic lockdowns. But Chinese porn consumers must often use euphemisms and coded terms for the material they seek, to avoid alerting authorities.
The use of sex toys, however, is not illegal — just frowned upon, culturally. But those attitudes are changing as China’s millennials and young people have become more open about sexual matters, according to the AFP report, which notes that young women, specifically, are driving the fast-growing sex toy market.
"Quite a lot of women... who are sexually active have a very open attitude towards using sex toys," said Yi Heng, a sex advice blogger with more than 700,000 followers on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, told AFP. "They see it as very natural and normal."
But Shanghai-based market analyst Steffi Noel said that the current surge in sex toy sales may be largely driven by the pandemic, and could fall once daily life in China is fully restored to pre-coronavirus norms.
"The people who bought during the pandemic were mainly first-time buyers," Noel said, speculating that as many as 70 percent of those consumers will never make another sex toy purchase.
China’s export market, on the other hand, shows no signs of slowing down, with overseas sex toy sales jumping 50 percent in the first half of 2020, compared to the previous year. Vibrators and sex dolls make up most of those sales, which were concentrate mainly in "France, Italy and the US," according to Noel.
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