Sexuality in China today.

Sex and Sexuality in China. Edited by Elaine Jeffreys. London and New York: Routledge, 2006, 184 pages. Hardcover, $120.00.

Reviewed by Fang-fu Ruan, Ph.D., Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, 1523 Franklin St., San Francisco, CA 94109. E-mail: [e-mail].

The academic and systematic research of Chinese sexuality has a relatively short history, starting with the famous sinologist R. H. van Gulick (1910-1967). In Japan in 1951, he published a rare collection: Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period, With an Essay on Chinese Sex Life From the Han to the Ch'ing Dynasty, BC 206-AD 1644. Despite the fact that only 50 copies of the book were printed, the academic study of Chinese sexuality was created. A decade later, van Gulick published Sexual Life in Ancient China, which is still the only historical book concerning sexual life in ancient China published in the West.

Joseph Needham, a world-renowned scholar, biochemist, a member of the Royal Academy, and the great British historian of Chinese science and technology, was another pioneering scholar of sexual life in Ancient China. In his Science and Civilization in China, Vol. II (1956) he discussed Taoist sexual technique. In Volume V (1983) Needham scientifically examined other aspects of sexuality in China. As a continuation, I expanded the study to contemporary China with Sex in China." Studies in Sexology in Chinese Culture (1991, New York and London: Plenum).

Due to the progression of China's open door policy and modernization in the 1900 s and 2000 s, many more studies on sexuality in China were published. Among those works is the book reviewed here, Sex and Sexuality in China, edited by Elaine Jeffreys. The editor is a lecturer in China studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, who has published on prostitution in China (Jeffreys, 2004). She is currently working on a text that examines the legal regulation of new sexual behaviors in the People's Republic of China.

In Sex and Sexuality in China, the chapters are marked by a diversity of subject material and theoretical perspectives, but they turn on three related concerns. First, the book situates China's changing sexual culture, and the nature of its governance, in the sociopolitical history of the People's Republic of China. Second, it shows how China's shift to a rule of law has generated conflicting conceptions of citizenship and the associated rights of individuals as sexual citizens. Finally, the book demonstrates that today China does not operate strictly to repress sex; it also is implicated in the creation of new spaces for sexual entrepreneurship, expertise, and consumption.

A strength of the current volume is that the contributors consist of both Western and Chinese scholars, especially some top native Chinese sex researchers who still live and work in mainland China, such as Suiming Pan and Yinghe Li. Pan is professor and director of the Institute for Research on Sexuality and Gender at the Remin (People's) University of China, Beijing. He is widely acknowledged as one of China's foremost scholars on issues of sex and sexuality, especially on the academic studies of female sex workers in China. Li is a professor and senior researcher at the Department of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is widely acknowledged as China's foremost female scholar on sex-related issues, and was listed by the noted magazine Asian Weekly as one of the top 50 persons who have impacted China. She has published extensively on the subjects of male homosexuality and female sexuality.

The current book is rather brief; its eight chapters are composed of fewer than 200 pages. This may be one of the book's strengths, as its size is not intimidating. The eight chapters tackle some of the hottest issues, including the origins and nature of China's sexual revolution, the changing nature of marriage and divorce in China, sexual citizenship, sexual rights and the sexual policy in the People's Republic of China, the current situation of male homosexuals, sexual storytelling, sex shops and (female) sex workers, and sex-related bribery, corruption, and other sociosexual problems in contemporary Chinese society.

This concise book is a valuable resource for scholars in the fields of sexuality and culture, directly appealing to both East Asia and China specialists. Still, the concise nature of this volume means that it lacks basic introductory material on China and Chinese sexuality. For those who might need or desire such background for providing a context in which to situate the current volume, Ruan and Lau (2004) provide such coverage.

References

Jeffreys, E. (2004). China, sex and prostitution. London and New York: Routledge.

Ruan, F. & Lau, M. P. (2004). China. In R. T. Francoeur & R. J. Noonan (Eds.), The continuum complete international encyclopedia of sexuality (pp. 182-209). New York: Continuum. (Available free at http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/ccies)